Promotion

Personalized Search Versus Personal Choice

admin — Sun, 18 May 2008 13:33:48 +0000

Personalized search is a hot topic especially since Yahoo! and Microsoft have announced they are aggressively developing this service. Most likely, people will be leery of personalized search if they think that this is just be another way for companies to market to them. Search engine research has shown that there are typically two types of searchers: information seekers and buyers.
Information Seekers
If personalized search is to work for the information seekers, then instead of lots of targeted marketing, the personalized search experience had better offer targeted information that the person can use. A better information search experience without having to bypass a slew of commercial sites would appeal to the information seeker.
Buyers
What if you already have the information you need or don’t want any information, but just want to make an online purchase? For buyers, information-only sites are something to be by-passed in the SERP’s. If personalized search can deliver the products and services the buyer wants, and not just what the marketers want to push before them, then buyers may find some value in personalized search.
Personal Choice
Personalized search must involve personal choice if it is to succeed. The Big Brother and privacy issues need to be held to a minimum. Personalized search needs to be an option that can easily be turned on and off as desired. Personalized search should not be equated with limited choices. The person needs to feel that they are in control and not the search engines. They also need to see real personal value in using this service.
What if a person is sometimes an information seeker and other times a buyer, or in the matter of seconds they switch hats? How will personalized search accommodate this person? Will the person have to toggle back and forth between a couple of different user profiles or click on and off a checkbox to switch between these two different forms of search? These are questions the SE’s will have to address in personalization.
Google
Google has a beta personalized search engine at: http://labs.google.com/personalized/profile.html that is pretty interesting to test. You’re told to click on Health, then the General Health checkbox and search for “stanford.” When searching for the word “bob” instead of “stanford” at the Minimum Personalize setting the first three results are “Bob the Builder,” “Bob Marley” and “Bob Dylan”. The rest of this page has no health related information on it as well. But, when the slider is pulled to Maximum Personalize, “Dr. Bob” has the first two positions followed the other results mentioned above. Its obvious Google has a ways to go in developing this.
Personal Privacy
If personalized search is to succeed, then personal privacy issues need to be addressed and concerns held to a minimum. Will personalized search involve searching your hard drive to see what your interests are? Will your interests be stored in a cookie on your computer? What happens when multiple users share a computer - will someone else get hit with all sorts of Preparation H advertisements because of the hemorrhoid treatment searches you wanted to keep private? And will children be affected by adult personalized searches?
These are all questions that the SE’s need to address so that people do not feel that their privacy is being violated or put at risk. The more control and choice the user has over personalized search the more likely it has in succeeding for the search engines.
Copyright © 2004 SEO Resource
SEO Marketing Consultants
Kevin Kantola is the CEO of SEO Resource, a California search engine optimization company, and has published many articles over the past 20 years.

Promotional Tools That Work For Online Businesses!

admin — Sat, 10 May 2008 11:35:47 +0000

Promotion… also known as selling. Not an easy task in today’s market, but with the right tools you can succeed. What I know is what I have learned in promoting a.k.a. selling my web site, spiritwhole.com, and trust me, I could write volumes by now. But, to make it short and sweet, here are some tips that you can use to get your business purring like a kitten that actually work:

Your friends and family. Yes, they love you, and most of them are more than happy to help you out. What I did was design a killer flyer and asked them to distribute them to their co-workers and the like. Now that’s cheap labor.
I wrote a few articles that interested me and tied them in with my business then, approached various sites that I thought would be genuinely interested. Most of them that I approached were interested and, guess what, people are reading my articles with my business name tagged at the end.
Donate a percentage of your profits to a good cause that interests you. This generates tons of interest in your business by word of mouth and by association with the company that you are donating to. And hey, you’ll have better karma too.
Send small inserts with your bill payments. Yes, with your bills. Traffic to my site doubled after I began doing this. The people that you pay money to are opening the envelope and depositing the checks that you sent to them. Why not add a small insert with your payment….they promote like crazy with inserts when they send you the bill. You’re just returning the favor.

About The Author
UW Graduate, 1989, BA Bus. Admin.
Owner, www.spiritwhole.com
Animal Lover
Published Poet
info@thespiritwhole.com

Promote Your Website: Search Tools

admin — Sat, 10 May 2008 11:34:31 +0000

Many companies after spending a substantial amount of money on the
development of their websites assume that once the website is
published on the Internet, people will flock onto it and, therefore,
do not take website promotion as seriously as the development part
of it. Today, with millions of websites around, no matter how great
your website is, if you don’t promote it effectively, you will not
get the visibility that your site deserves.
Effective promotion of a website starts with submission of the site
to various search tools available on the Internet. There are two
different types of search tools: search engines and directories.
Search engines index their listings based on the information
retrieved by their spiders that crawl through the Internet following
links constantly looking for new websites. The directory listings
are compiled by human editors from the URLs submitted to the
directory. If your website is listed in the directories you can be
sure that the spiders of different search engines sooner or later
will index your site. That’s why you should start submitting your
website first from search directories.
Search Directories
Among all the search directories available on the Internet, Yahoo!
and DMOZ are the most important ones.
Open Directory Project or DMOZ
DMOZ is the second largest human compiled search directory on the
Internet after Yahoo! Open Directory Project is a huge web directory
of Internet resources. All submission to the directory is evaluated
by volunteer editors. There is no fee to be paid to get an inclusion
in the directory. As a human edited directory it might take more than
a month to get your site evaluated. Once you are listed in the DMOZ,
within two weeks to two months your website will start appearing on
search engines like AOL Search, Teoma, HotBot, Google, Lycos,
AllTheWeb, Excite, Go2Net and a number of regional search engines.
At present around 354 different search engines and portals use data
from Open Directory Project. This is one of the main reasons why
you must consider submitting your website to DMOZ.
Submitting your site to directories is a bit trickier then submitting
to search engines.
Following rules are common for almost all directories:
- Check to see if your website is already in the directory
- Write an objective description of your website
- Search out the specific subcategory from the directory hierarchy
- Follow the rules of submission as specified
Make sure you follow these rules while adding your website in DMOZ.
This will improve your chance to get your website accepted and reduce
the processing time.
Yahoo!
Yahoo! is by far the number one destination for Internet surfers.
Although the search results for Yahoo! is provided by Google, many
people still prefer to browse through Yahoo! directory to find
whatever they are looking for. This makes an inclusion to Yahoo!
directory quite valuable for ecommerce sites. Yahoo! presently
charges yearly fee of US $299 for each web site submitted. The fee
is nonrefundable, which means if for some reasons Yahoo! declines
to add your website in its directory you will not get your money
back! The only thing Yahoo! guarantees is that the editors will
look at your submission within seven days and send you an answer.
Should you consider submitting your site to Yahoo!? It all depends
on the kind of business you are in. Some sites receive an
overwhelming number of traffic from Yahoo!, others hardly receive
anybody. My suggestion: list your website in Yahoo! directory for
a year and see the outcome. If you feel comfortable with the result
you are receiving - continue. If the result is not satisfactory you
can always cancel their service after one year.
LookSmart
Although it is the third largest directory on the Internet as a
search portal LookSmart is not that popular. However, it provides
directory listings to MSN search, About.com, Infospace, Inktomi
and others. It is probably still the best way to get high ranking
in MSN search. LookSmart is a fee based service. You pay US $49
submission fee for the site review by their editors and 15 Cents
for each click through. Pay per click minimum monthly payment is
US $15.
For noncommercial sites LookSmart has a partner directory named
“Zeal”. Zeal is a community directory for Internet surfers. To
submit a site to Zeal you first have to become a member by passing
a quiz test. The reason I am mentioning Zeal here is - you can
actually submit noncommercial portion of your site to Zeal and
receive an appearance in all of the places that LookSmart listings
show up, without paying a pay-per-click fee.
Other Directories
Other small but notable directories that you should consider are
joeAnt, GoGuides and Gimpsy. Don’t expect large traffics from
these directories; however, they will help enhance your link
popularity. Link popularity is a concept which means- how many
sites have links pointed towards your website. Link popularity
is important because your website’s rank in the search results
depends on it in a big way.
Search Engines
Search engines use special programs to crawl the Internet and
index web pages. These robot programs are called “Bot” or “Spider”.
Spiders crawl up the Internet using links. That’s why it is so
important to have back links to your website. When you make a search,
the search engines show you the results that are retrieved from
the servers, where all the indexed web pages are cached. Only
when you click on a link from the search result you see the real
web page.
The most important search engines are Google, Altavista, AllTheWeb,
Teoma, Lycos and MSN, HotBot, AOL Search, etc.
Google
No doubt that Google is the best search engine available on the
Internet today. According to Google, they have indexed over 3.5
billion pages up to now! More Internet surfers are prone to use
Google because it has great search enhancing functions, and you
can always expect relevant and quality search results.
You can submit your link using Googles Add URL page located at http://www.google.com/addURL.html. However, if you have links
pointing towards your site on other websites, you can be sure
that Google’s spider, Googlebot will eventually come and index
you site. Contrary to popular believe once your site is indexed,
there is not need to resubmit your pages to Google, even if you
updated the pages. If, although it is not necessary, you submit
your website to Google, submit only the index page, it will find
the rest of the pages using the links anyway.
Altavista
Once powerful, Altavista started to loose grounds to other search
engines in a big way. Submitting to Altavista is fairly simple!
From the home page click on the “Submit a Site” located at the
bottom of the page. There are two choices for you: either you
can choose the “Basic Submit” service, which is free or for an
immediate inclusion, you can choose the “Express Inclusion”
service.
To prevent automatic submission of URLs, on the submission page
Altavista added submission code that has to be inserted manually
along with the URL. The Express Inclusion service costs US $39 for
the first URL for six months.
AllTheWeb
This search engine is becoming quite popular lately. It has a very
large database. AllTheWeb has very sophisticated search functions
like searches for pages linked to a given page, searches within
URLs or page titles, and searches limited by page size. It provides
search results and technology to Lycos and Ebay. Submission to
AllTheWeb is quite easy. Use the following link page to submit
your URL: http://www.alltheweb.com/add_URL.php If you need an
express inclusion, you have to use “Lycos InSite” service of
Terra-Lycos. The rate is US $35 for a full year inclusion.
Teoma
If you care about Teoma, a much hyped search engine, which is
actually an additional search engine of Ask Jeeves, you can use
its paid inclusion program located at http://ask.ineedhits.com/sitesubmit.asp?id=30270.
It charges US $30 per year for first URL and US $18 for additional
each.
Inktomi
You may not heard about Inktomi, but many popular search engines
use the results from Inktomi such as AOL, Excite, Go.com, HotBot,
IWon, Overture to name a few. For secondary search result even
MSN uses it! Yahoo! recently bought Inktomi. Which means that
very soon even Yahoo! might give priority to the search results
coming from it. Inktomi provides a paid inclusion service.
Inktomi sells its inclusion service exclusively through its
reseller partners. You can find them over here: http://www.inktomi.com/products/web_search/submit.html The fee
is US $39 per URL for a year and US$25 for subsequent URLs.
Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present
CEO of Rusbiz.com - a Global B2B Exchange with solutions to
create e-catalog, Web store, business process management and
other features to run a business online. You can read various
articles written by Nowshade Kabir at http://ezine.rusbiz.com.

Secret PopUp Technique - Can Drive Thousands Of Targeted Visitors To Your Web Site

admin — Sat, 10 May 2008 11:33:32 +0000

I think you all know that buying pop ups in bulk is a pretty useless way to get targeted traffic to your website. You know the ads 10,000 hits for 30 bucks.
Buy here is a very effective way to turn those useless banners into a targeted traffic machine!!
This will takeabout half an hour to do but will send some serious targeted traffic to your website, for your money.
Step one: Sign up for 5 or 6 banner exchange programs. Such as http://bannersgomlm.com
Step two: Build a simple blank web page with just the code for the banners of your banner exchange program and upload it to your server or build it on something free like freewebs.com
Step 3:Buy the cheapest popup, crappy traffic you can find. This can easily be found by going into google and searching for buy hits,buy traffic,buy pop ups and so. Just find the cheapest one.
Step4: Send this traffic to your url with all the banners from the banner exchanges.
See where this is going… now instead of just getting untargeted hits to your site from those terrible pop ups you are building up thousands of credits on your banner exchange programs which can have pretty targeted traffic!! Thus creating much more value for your pop up purchase.
I hope you try this out, and have great success.
Mark Flavin is the creator and editor of http://www.nicetodobusiness.com and is a specilist in the area of web site promotion.

Promote Your Website Using Newsgroups

admin — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 09:01:57 +0000

At present there are over 3.3 billion pages indexed by Google,
and that definitely does not cover the entire Internet. With so
many competitors around, you sure have to use every conceivable
method available to promote your website.
Newsgroups can be very powerful tools in your web promotion
endeavor if you use them actively.
What is a Newsgroup?
A newsgroup is a message board on the Internet where users come
to discuss topics of mutual interest. Each newsgroup is
dedicated to a particular subject of interest and consists of
messages posted by participants. You can find several ongoing
discussions surrounding various topics within a single newsgroup.
These topics are call threads. As a user you can start a thread,
post messages to a thread and make responds to other postings.
Before the Internet era, the way you know it now, back in
eighties and early nineties people used to connect to electronic
bulletin boards (bbs) through modems and post text messages for
others to read and answer. Usenet Newsgroups was started as a
collection of these bulletin boards. Along with the Internet,
Newsgroups have also started to grow rapidly. Thanks to the
Interface introduced by Deja News in 1995 use of Newsgroups
became simple and convenient, which also gave enough impetus to
this growth.
Today, Usenet discussion forums or Newsgroups indexed by Google
comprise over 800 million messages, which is around a terabyte
of information! It is calculated that over 10 million people
have regular access to Newsgroups!
Each newsgroup is formed with a certain purpose. This is
described in its charter at the time it is started. Normally
every Newsgroup has its own single subject. However there
could be many Newsgroups dedicated to one subject.
There are tens of thousands of newsgroups on every subject you
can possibly imagine. The subjects in Newsgroups are
hierarchically structured. Some of them are moderated, means
somebody controls the postings, most don’t.
How to use Newsgroups?
Since there are so many newsgroups, whatever your interest is
you will most likely find a newsgroup which will suit you.
Although, most email readers have built-in features to
subscribe Newsgroups the most convenient way to read newsgroups
today is to use “Google Search”. Once you are on the search
page of the Google, Click on the Groups from the menu. This
will take you to Groups search page with a directory of
Newsgroups under the headline ‘Post and read comments in Usenet
discussion forums’. The most common subdirectories for
businesses are located in alt, biz and misc. For example: If
you are in import and export business you might try alt.business.
imort-export, which has several groups within it.
Run a search using a keyword related to your online business
that you would like to promote from the groups search page of
Google. The result will appear chronologically, the most recent
one being at the top. Check out the most relevant Newsgroups
from the results. If your search produces a very big list of
results, try the advanced search option. Try reducing the time
frame of postings. By default Google searches within all
messages posted from 1981.
For really worthwhile information I’ll suggest to use moderated
groups. Most Newsgroups which are not moderated easily fill up
with spam and you really have to wade through them to find
something interesting.
Did you notice that Google has a new paid service under the
name “Google Answers”? For a fee Google nominated researchers
will get answers to your hard to find questions. The service
is located at http://answers.google.com. If you go through the
questions that are already asked, you will be amazed to see
that by searching newsgroups you will find answers to many of
them without paying a dime. Newsgroups are indeed a gold mine
of information!
Benefits of using Newsgroups
As an online business you can rip varieties of benefits from
effective use of Newsgroups.
Establish yourself as an expert of your chosen field
People will prefer doing business with you if they know that
you are an expert in your field. Post important and relevant
information in your chosen Newsgroup, answer to the questions
posted. Very soon, people from the Newsgroup will start
considering you as an expert and you will be amazed to see
quantity of new visitors checking out your site.
Conduct market survey
Newsgroups can be a great source of marketing information. By
asking questions in relevant Newsgroups you can find a way of
figuring out what people think about your product, your
website, etc.
Get new clients
There are Newsgroups, which are formed with the sole purpose of
various announcements and promotions. Prudent use of these
Newsgroups along with your relevant Newsgroups will definitely
increase your site traffic and get new clients.
Promote your site
In relevant groups you can post announcement about your site
launch, press releases, product information, etc. Participation
in the discussions in your subject matter with your signature
file, which should include your website address, will help
getting new visitors and increase the quantity of backward
links to your website.
Get answers to your questions
You can’t be an expert in every thing! Often, you will need
answers to various questions. Ask them in relevant Newsgroups
along with your signature file. Not only you will have answers
to your questions, along with this you will also promote your
site.
Make friends
Newsgroups can be a great place to find like-minded friends
and partners.
Posting do’s and don’ts
You have to be very careful with what you post in a Newsgroup.
Before making your first post, go through the FAQ and posting
rules of the Newsgroup and read some of the postings. You want
to position yourself as an expert not an idiot! Some Newsgroups
users are pretty aggressive. If they feel that you are spamming
their precious Newsgroup you will be flamed in no time.
Here are some basic rules:
- Don’t post commercials, advertisements or press
releases; unless the newsgroup specifically mentions that it
endorses these things.
- While posting a respond, stick to the original topic.
- Quote only the portion of the message you are responding not
the whole message.
- Don’t cross post. This means, do not post same messages in
several relevant Newsgroups.
- Never post unrelated messages to Newsgroups. This is considered
as spamming!
- While posting a message be specific and concise in the subject
line.
- Post your signature file with each and every message. This is
important for your web promotion!
- Check your spelling and grammar before posting a message.
The idea is to make valuable contribution to the Newsgroups and
by doing so at the same time promote your online business. Ask
questions that you perceive useful to you and others. Post
responds to messages, which are informative, thought-provoking
and of high quality. Soon you will build credibility among your
fellow Newsgroup members and start receiving a flow of loyal
customers.
Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present
CEO of Rusbiz.com - a Global B2B Exchange with solutions to
create e-catalog, Web store, business process management and
other features to run a business online. You can read various
articles written by Nowshade Kabir at http://ezine.rusbiz.com.

Benefits of Website Localization

admin — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:23:51 +0000

Benefits of Website Localization
Maximising profit today involves reaching beyond national markets. Accessing an international customer base is vital if a business wants to expand and participate in international trade.
‘Localization’ relates to the act of modifying a product to make it both usable and suitable to a target market. Website localization therefore refers to the process of taking an English, western-orientated, website and moulding it to conform to a foreign audience.
The World Wide Web, as its name suggests, is a means by which businesses can reach an international audience. Companies are now recognising that a key step in successfully approaching and selling to international customers is through website localization.
Website localization brings with it numerous benefits. The three main benefits of localization are:
Website localization crosses language barriers
32% of internet users around the world are non-native English speakers. With PC ownership and access to the internet most rapidly increasing outside of North America and Europe, this figure will increase even more. Website localization breaks linguistic barriers and opens doors to other continents.
Companies are now waking up to the fact that English is no longer ‘the’ international language but one of many including French, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese. With the number of companies now realising the benefits of website localization, there are more pages in foreign languages than ever before. This means if your company’s site has not undergone the localization process yet, it will be playing catch up in the future.
Website localization builds credibility
If your company only has a site in English and your competitor in all major languages, which one will gain more credibility? Localization of your website demonstrates that you are a truly international player. In addition, through localization it shows that you understand, value and have respect for that particular country or region.
Website localization increases revenue
Billions of dollars, pounds and francs in potential revenue are lost each year due to lack of investment in website localization. Most internet users will naturally feel more comfortable and understand a company better if their information, products or services are presented in their native language. By undergoing the website localization process you access potentially millions of new customers.
It is clear that website localization is a must for any truly international business. In addition to the technical and programming elements of website localization many cultural factors must be borne in mind.
For example, has language been translated properly and cultural variations in terminology, phrases, metaphors and sayings been taken into consideration? Have symbols, graphics, pictures, colours and general layout been viewed for their cultural applicability?
Website localization is a huge investment and should not be viewed as a straightforward process. When localizing your site, ensure you get the expertise of both a website designer and a cross cultural communications consultancy to ensure your site has maximum impact on the target audience.
Neil Payne is Director of cross cultural communications consultancy
http://www.kwintessential.co.uk
Permission is granted to reproduce the article in full on the condition I am made aware of any intention to use it. npayne@kwintessential.co.uk

Outsourcing Website Services - Can Your Business Benefit?

admin — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:23:12 +0000

Would it surprise you to know that Compaq Computer? outsources?
How about Underwriters Laboratories?? Gateway Computers??
Yes, even the Chicagoland Area Chamber of Commerce?!
I have been involved with projects involving each one of these companies.
They all outsourced specific portions of their projects.
Even Hyperformance Media out-sources specific project requirements!
Every business does not know every other business.
What I mean is, your business can not know everything there is
to know about printing (for example). Therefore, in certain
situations, it would benefit your company to outsource this
service to some printing specialists. It could save you time,
money, and benefits, leaving your employees their time to
continue to do what they do best, their job - with minimum
productivity loss!
In this simple example you can begin to see the many benefits.
* You have professionals creating the desired product.
* They will do a better job in less time.
* No need to buy additional equipment or software.
* No set-up, no training, no lost time.
* No payroll, benefits, or accounting headaches.
* Your employees remain focused on their goals and your
business productivity!
These are just a few of the many reasons used to justify
the outsourcing of some projects versus attempting to do
everything in-house.
Your business website is a mission-critical marketing tool.
Used properly, your website should be your most outspoken
salesperson. Your business should be getting more business
from the Web, if not doing business on the Web.
The successful marketing of your business website should NOT
be taken lightly. Yes, your company now has a webmaster on
the payroll full-time, not to mention the design and development
staff, but is your web presence working? Are you achieving
results besides just looking good?
Outsourcing the marketing services of your website gives you
the experience you desire and the results you need. Your
business needs to be found yesterday! Your business needs
customers to grow, not just survive! Who has your market share?
Let’s talk about getting some of that back! Let’s talk about
what changes can be put in place to GET BUSINESS from your website.
Today, tomorrow, and every year going forward!
Thanks - and good luck with your promotions!
Scott is the Founder and Sr. Internet Marketing Specialist for
Hyperformance Media, Inc. a website marketing firm located
just outside of Chicago, IL. since 1996. Specifically, he
has over 24 years of sales and marketing experience and
accomplishment in the computer industry.

4 Simple Tips for Targeted Traffic

admin — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:22:33 +0000

Here are 4 of the most easiest and simplest things to implement into a site for a very generous boost in traffic. These can all be implemented within a very short time. Of course depending on the Search Engine you most likely will have to wait for them to spider your site, but when they do,… the Targeted Traffic will come.
– Tip 1 –
It’s a good idea to insert a link to a sitemap into your index page at the bottom, if this is the page you paid for inclusion with.
Why?
This is so, when the search engine spiders crawl your site they will ALSO spider your sitemap thus indexing ALL of your other webpages via the sitemap. Thus, indexing your whole site into the search engine(s). And having each page in the engines is very good and beneficial for ya, thus giving you more coverage with your site.
– Tip 2 –
Try to restrict your website to a minimal number of directories as possible.
Why?
Search engines like to see a URL or web address of like:
http://www.yoursite.com/page.html
NOT one that looks like
http://www.yoursite.com/this_dir/that_dir/another_dir/page.html
So try to restrict your site to as few directories as possible and try to put your most important pages as close to the root directory as possible too. So the spiders don’t have to “fish through” directory after directory to find your pages.
– Tip 3 –
When creating your website, implement a “reverse pyramid style” construction.
Why?
Search engines like to see a broad to specific layout. Your index page, would be your broad or wide theme about your whole site, and your interior pages should focus in or “zero-in” to a specific interest. For example, if your site is on dogs, a more specific area or page would be show dogs and/or working dogs etc.
and finally
– Tip 4 –
When submitting your website to the engines, do a bit of research and seek out the search engine(s) that “feeds” the other search engines and thus submit to the one or ones that feed the most to other engines.
Why?
Many search engines get their results from other search engines. For example, Google, supplies results or feeds results to AOL, Netscape, and iWon. So, if you get indexed within Google, you will most likely get into the indexes of AOL, Netscape, and iWon since these other engines get their results from Google. You get the idea? So even though you might only be submitting to one engine, you are “indirectly” submitting to many more.
These 4, small but very powerful ideas implemented into your site will bring you a big boost of Targeted Traffic. Because don’t forget search engines are THE most largest source for Targeted Traffic online today.
This is because, whoever goes searching on a Search Engine is looking for one thing and usually one thing only. So if your site is present within the top pages of the niche or topic that visitor/searcher is looking for, you are the most likely candidate and target for him/her to hit by having your website right there in front of them.
Burke holds both a BSc. degree in Computer Science as well Certification in Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Strategies. He also regularly publishes The ACE! newsletter, in which he shares his experience, methods, and ‘what works’ with others. Burke can be contacted by
http://www.the-ace-ezine.com or
http://www.altacanweb.com

How to Promote Websites Popularity?

admin — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:21:52 +0000

Once your site is launched, half your battle is won. What lies ahead is the interesting and challenging part of the game. Learning the basics of HTML, creating pages etc actually gets boring for some and they leave it at that.. But once you are beyond the basics, life gets better. The next step is promoting your website. There are various ways to do it.
Press-Release: There are various websites dedicated to press-releases and announcements. You can submit your site briefings to them. What you have to make sure is, that your press release is not a general, ordinary, uninteresting paragraph. In such a case these websites are most likely not to publish it. It has to have a niche, news-value plus useful and interesting content. Make sure of an informative yet interesting headline. Likewise for body copy. There are various websites dedicated to press-releases and announcements. You can submit your site briefings to them. What you have to make sure is, that your press release is not a general, ordinary, interesting paragraph. In such a case these websites are most likely not to publish it. It has to have a niche, news-value plus useful and interesting content Make sure of an informative yet interesting headline. Likewise for body copy.
Link Exchange: Exchaning links with sites of similar/ complementary theme is the single most important and guaranteed technique to attain link popularity and move up in search engines. You must try and link to relevant sites as far as possible. You should also make sure that link pages of your own site are categorized properly and that they do not have more than 25 links on one page.
Writing Articles: Write articles related to your main theme
and post them to articles’ directories. There are many websites exclusively dedicated to articles. You can use articles available on such websites on your website, which may have been written by webmasters like you and me, and can post articles which other people can read or reproduce on their sites. The more people re-print your article on their sites, the better. It gives you the advantage of one way linking. The webmasters who use your articles, will in reciprocation place your sites link at the bottom of article along with your name.
You can also promote your websites by hiring professional
companies, who will do all the above and more for you and will charge you a certain amount for it. Some use software, some claim to do it manually. Depending on your budget you hire them. There are many more ways in between to promote your sites further which you learn as you proceed. Be sure about one thing, having a website on the net is pointless unless its reaching your target audience. And for it to reach them or have surfers visiting your site, promoting your site is a must.
The author is Purva Mewar webmaster of two Work at Home Business websites:
http://www.yesearnformhome.com and
http://www.work-at-home-earn-extra-income.com

What’s in a Name?

admin — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:20:44 +0000

Behind every good web page are codes only the search engines read. These codes help the search engines match your page with requests from their searchers.
There are two types of codes - or “meta tags” - that you care about. One is keywords and the other is the description.
Keywords are words and phrases associated with your site. If you’re selling a book on how to housebreak your dog, for example, your keywords might include “puppy, housebreaking, house break, paper train, dogs, puppies” and others.
There are several rules of thumb you want to follow when working with keywords:
1. List the words in the order of importance. Some search engines only take the first 10 words; others the first 50 words, etc. You can’t have too many keywords, but it is important to list them in order.
2. Use multiple spellings of the word if searchers are likely to use different forms. For example, puppy is different from puppies in the eyes of a search engine. Likewise, housebreak and house break are different.
3. Use the plural. If someone looks for “dog” it will be found in the word “dogs.” On the other hand, if they look for “dogs” it will not be found in “dog.” Be safe - use plurals.
4. Use lower case letters. With only 1 or 2 exceptions search engines ignore capitalization. So if someone looks for “Dogs” they will find “dogs.” On the other hand, if they look for “dogs” they may or may not find “Dogs” since the search engine might consider it a proper name.
5. Use the language of your customers. If you’re a professional you might search for “canines” but most customers are more likely to look for “dog.” So while you can include the more technical term, do so last in the list.
Your description is the other meta tag you want to write. Your description is what shows in the results of the search engine. It’s generally 2-3 lines long.
What happens if you don’t include a description? Often the search engine will make up its own description - taking the first several lines of your web page or the first few lines of code. Neither option is as attractive as the description you will write.
Remember that the purpose of the description is to make the site sound so attractive to your target audience that they want to click on your link in the search engine. So your best benefits and reasons why they want to visit your site should be in the description.
Finally, to really help the search engines find your site, use a descriptive title on each page. The title is what shows in the top bar of your browser. It’s what is listed in Favorites when someone sets a favorite or bookmarks your site. So you want the title to tell people what they will find when they visit the page.
For every page in your site, you should have a unique title, keywords for that specific page, and a traffic-pulling description. Yes, it is time-consuming to do that, but it’s worth the effort. You’ll be more likely to lead searchers to your page when they can see what they want in your title, your keywords or your description.
Dr. Jeanette Cates is an Internet strategist who works with experts who are ready to turn their knowledge and their websites into Gold. Her reputation as a speaker and trainer has earned her the title of The Technology Tamer. Jeanette shares her news and views in OnlineSuccessNews.com