Use Article To Increase Your Google Rank

It doesn’t really matter who you are; you definitely know something that’s worth sharing with other. In fact if you are a webmaster chances are you have a lot of knowledge that other’s could gain insight from. And that knowledge shared through articles can be a valuable asset to your website.

Interesting and informative articles are in big demand. Article directories meet this demand by making them available in one location for webmasters to use on their sites, in their newsletters, and in their Ezines. There are many article banks to choose from and you should sign up for as many as possible.

So you are wondering what qualifications you need to write an article?

You simply need to have knowledge on a topic, any topic that others might benefit from. You need to ensure your content is clean, contains no profanity, and no hate literature. Article banks will accept most articles that are interesting and informative as long as they don’t contain the above.

If you aren’t sure? Consider this. Would you read it? Does it catch your interest? If the answer is yes then there are most likely many others that would read it.

From search engine optimization, to how to grow the most beautiful roses, to buying jewelry, to lawyers and doctors. It’s all useful. From simple to technical to basic, your perspective may be anywhere from useful to universal.

Your articles should be written in proper English. If English is not your native tongue consider hiring a ghostwriter to write your article for you. Ghostwriters are also a valuable tool if you are not good at writing or simply don’t have the time. There are several sites online where you can obtain the services for a reasonable fee.

When submitting your article to the article directories be sure to read their submission guidelines. Only submit your article if it fits in an appropriate category. If it does not then find a different article bank that is more suited to your article.

The exposure you get from your article is unlimited and you can submit your article to thousands of directories if you like. These articles are an excellent way to boost your one way inbound links and they are a lot less hassle then finding good link partners.

Use the resource box to provide information about your site or yourself and be sure to include the active link to your site. Use the resource box to entice visitors to visit your site.

You can get traffic to your site because of search engines and the possibility or probability of someone reading the article, then clicking your link. You get a double hit – two for one. What more could you ask for. This is virtual marketing at its’ best! Exposure 24/7. Everyday, all day long, and the only effort required by you is to submit your article or articles.

So if you are looking for more exposure, improved search engine rankings, and to get your company in the lime light, you certainly should consider writing a few articles and submitting them to the article directories. In fact submitting one article each week can give you great benefits!

SEO Link Building with Web Content Secrets

It’s the timeless question: how do you get other sites to link to you? The most commonly discussed ways are reciprocal linking (swapping links) and buying links. Yet there’s another important tool for building links that should be a part of your toolbox: distributing content in exchange for one-way inbound links.

Comparison with Other Linking Methods

Reciprocal Linking: The big advantage of content distribution over swapping links is that the links built are one-way, and therefore presumably more valuable. Of course, reciprocal links still have value, but relying primarily on them might hamper your SEO efforts.

ndirect Reciprocal Links: I link my site A to your site, so you link your site to my site B. The problems are that this can be a lot of work, and also, Google can detect indirect links if you do it more than once with the same group of sites, which might make your linking arrangements look like a link farm.

Paid Links: The problem with paid links is 1) the costs add up; 2) search engines are getting better and better at discounting paid links. According to Matt Cutts’ blog, “I wouldn’t be surprised if search engines begin to take stronger action against link buying in the near future…link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext).”

Kinds of Content to Distribute

Articles. This is the essential kind of content distribution, to the point that many people consider content distribution simple as “article marketing.” However, you’re missing out on a few other sources of links if you only do articles.

News blurbs. A lot of news-style sites will only reprint pieces of a couple of paragraphs. The good news is that often enough the whole point of these news blurbs is to include links to other sites, in a sort of “look what we’ve found” kind of way, a la Slashdot.org

Press Releases. There are some sites that aggressively reprint press releases. A press release is like an article, only in a very specific press release format, and frankly that’s not that enjoyable to read. I don’t know why some sites are so head-over-heels over press releases, but, hey, that’s their business. The good news is that even if you can’t write and don’t want to hire a writer, press releases (at least basic ones) are pretty easy to do.

Tools, games and other webware. Sites with popular tools, software, Flash games and other webware often let other sites use it in exchange for a link. The big potential downside is technical support.

Images. Images, especially charts and photographs, are important forms of content on the web. If you have great images on your site and people ask you to use them on their sites, require a backlink in exchange. The problem with images is that they are so easily stolen. Stolen words can be uncovered with a web search. You could try to watermark images with a copyright symbol, URL, and the link requirement. But in the process you’d make the image much less desirable.

Web design templates. These have been freely distributed for a long time. Yet they are even more easily stolen than images. Also, if you embed a link in the footer of a web template, what you’ll get back are sitewide links, which are often thought to be filtered out in search engines.

Maximizing Content Distribution Links’ Effectiveness: Anchor Text
Anchor text. You need optimized anchor text to rank high for any competitive keyword. That means you need your target keyword in the anchor text, and very importantly, variants of the target keyword (too many links with the exact same anchor text may be filtered). The problem is that some sites by default don’t let you choose the anchor text of the link to your site. So you need to: 1) look for sites that do reprint content with optimized anchor text; 2) specifically ask for your target anchor text to be used. Also, do keep in mind that a true natural linking structure will require you to have a number of links that are not anchor-text-optimized, typically with the URL as the anchor text.

How to Find Sites

Finding sites to submit content is the biggest challenge. You can start by asking around to any other webmasters you already have a relationship with. Next, web-search. The classic method is “submit article” + [keyword]. Most of the sites you find this way won’t be good candidates, which is why this can be a bit labor-intensive. I use offshore labor for this step, as well as a program that will sort and store all the search results into a spreadsheet; otherwise it might not be worth it. Then again, the same would be true for finding reciprocal linking partners.

Ethical Issues and Best Practices

Golden rule: remember that there’s a human being who has to approve your article for submission.

Read and adhere to all submission guidelines.

Avoid automation. There’s almost always some detail of submission that requires a human eye: a multitude of html formatting requirements, changing site themes, etc.

Don’t submit by email unless specifically instructed. Using a contact form prevents possible sp@m accusations.

Only approach websites that request content submissions.

Don’t misrepresent reprint content as original.

Don’t submit the same content too often. After about two hundred reprints, a lot of people will be seeing the same thing over and over again and possibly complaining.

In short, as SEO gets more competitive, having more and more linking methods at your disposal gets more and more important. Don’t overlook this important tool.

The Five Things You Must Do Before You Can Start Selling On Ebay

Many people make a full-time living on eBay. This is not only possible but it is also quite easy once you know what you are doing. Some people just make a little extra money through eBay auctions simply because it is fun – it becomes a hobby.

Whether you just want to sell some old items lying about your house, or you want to build a business by becoming a PowerSeller, there are five things you absolutely must do before you can start selling on eBay.

1. You must Register. Begin by registering as a member of eBay.

This registration is free, and it will allow you to participate in auctions – as a buyer. As soon as you have completed your registration as a buyer, you can register as a seller simply by logging into your eBay account and clicking on the ‘Sell’ tab at the top of the page. The information that you will enter is very basic information, but as a buyer, you will need to enter a credit card number, or sign up for a paypal account.

2. Sign up with paypal.

Paypal has become one of the most popular payment gateways on the Internet. This website allows people to transfer money from their bank accounts or credit cards, and to transfer money from one Paypal account to another. Signing up is quite easy, but you will need to verify your account with a checking account, and you can optionally add a credit card to the account. Paypal is very secure. As long as you don’t give your password out to anyone, you shouldn&t have any problems.

Paypal is not required to sign up with eBay, but it is highly recommended. This will allow you to give your buyers more payment options. Signing up with Paypal is free.

3. Find items to sell. You may already have items that you want to sell.

For instance, if you have recently cleaned out your attic or your garage, you probably have tons of stuff that you want to get rid of. Some items won’t sell well on eBay, while others will sell like hot cakes! So a little research to see what sells well before you set up any auctions.

You can also find items to auction by going to yard sales around your area.

Many eBay PowerSellers sell brand new items through drop shipping companies as well. It is all just a matter of determining how you want to profit from eBay, and what items are hot sellers.

4. Set up your auction. Once you are signed up, and you are ready to set up your auction, eBay has a form for you to fill out.

Here, you will determine how you are going to sell the product. You can choose to sell a group of items, or just one item. You will have a list of categories to choose from, and these categories determine where your item is listed on eBay. Choosing the proper category for your item is essential – this is how people will find your auction.

You must choose a title for your auction. You want to use your title to catch the buyer’s eye. Coming up with a great title isn’t always easy, and it does require some thought. Look at some past successful auctions to get some ideas. Make sure that you follow eBay’s guidelines for titles!

Make sure that you use the form to add as much information about your item as possible.

The more information you can include, the more successful your auction will be.

Look at the history of past auctions for items similar to yours. This information will help you determine your title, your description, and even your reserve price. The reserve price is the absolute minimum bid amount that you are willing to accept.

You will be allowed to include pictures of your items, and it is very important that you do so.

Make sure that the pictures are clear, and take several different shots from different angles. Pictures will help make your bid more successful. Many bidders won’t even look at auctions that do not include pictures.

You will also need to determine how long your auction will run. Don’t make the auction too short – give bidders time to find your item and place their bids – but at the same time, don’t make it too long. Force bidders to act by getting their bids in before the auction closes!

eBay has many upgrade options that will make your auction more noticeable.

Depending on the reserve price of your item, it may be well worth it to take advantage of these upgrades to get your auction noticed more easily.

5. Communicate with your bidders.

Make sure that you monitor your auction, and keep the lines of communication with your bidders open. Bidders will have questions about the item you are selling. Make sure that you respond to the questions and comments in a timely manner.

Think of yourself as a shop keeper, and reply to the bidders just as you would to a customer who was standing in your shop!

CopyRight Ian D. Major 2005

Best Tips For Web Directory Submission Link Building Campaigns

The buzzword of the hour is ‘SEO’. It has transformed the architecture of sites, brought about many new jobs, and is now considered vitally important for those that want to take their online operations to the next level. In its simplest form, search engine optimization (or “SEO”) is about doing everything you can to boost your natural ranking in the major search engines. The algorithm that ranks your site (despite variations across engines) is a compilation of many different variables. There is no one magic secret or special key you can turn. The goal is really to check off as many variables as possible from that algorithm. The kicker is that, for the most part, we don’t actually know what is contained in these algorithms that are so important to us. We can, however, make educated guesses. And there are several aspects of SEO that most, if not all, industry professionals agree on. One of those factors is the importance of link-building.

The Internet was built upon links. Sites link to one another to guide users through relevant information. Since these links basically mean, “there’s relevant information on this site,” each link pointing towards your site counts as a “vote” towards it. These votes help improve your natural ranking, especially when coupled with a well-built SEO friendly site. The big question is, of course, how do I go about getting other sites to link mine? Fortunately, the answer is an easy one, because there are many well run search engine friendly directories that would be more than happy to link to your site as part of their directory.

But the most popular directories receive thousands of applications to review. As such, they develop rules and guidelines for your submission. These rules are put in place to ensure that the submission and approval process can flow as smoothly as possible, as well as to help the directory select only the sites that are, in fact, relevant. And so the question returns: how do I ensure that my site gets accepted into the high-quality, top web directories?

It is very easy to adhere to the rules of a web directory with very little effort. In addition, because the editors of any directory are really looking for the same things, the rules from web directory to web directory tend to be very similar.

Count Those Characters:
One of the big rules imposed by directories has to do with the length of your title, description and keywords. If there were no limit, some people would write an essay for descriptions and cram in every possible keyword. Let me assure you that no directory editor wants to review a site application that could be broken up into chapters! Directories impose restrictions that essentially force you to be straight to the point. You might not be able to say everything about your site, so pick the most important points and go with that. Before you start submitting anywhere, sit back and write a few well-formulated descriptions that span 100, 150, 200, and 250 characters. One of those four levels will generally work in any web directory you come across. Once that’s done, most of the hard work is out of the way. Now all you have to do is look for the character requirements, copy and paste your blurb of that length, and you’re all set. The same thing holds true for keywords, so prepare a few different options so that, come submission time, it’s just a matter of picking the right one.

Would You Approve A Spam Filled Site Application?
Do not spam your directory listings. That can’t be more clearly stated, yet for some reason, people still do it. You are never going to get listed in any human reviewed directory when you try this tactic. An example of this would be that if you sell widgets, when you submit your information you repeat the word ‘widgets’ in your title, description, and keywords as many times as possible. Typically comprehension takes a back seat as the focus becomes cramming the word in as many times as possible. Directory editors hate this and it’s a very easy rejection. If you think that even attempting to spam like this is helpful, you might want to think again. If you spend time submitting to web directories with poorly articulated, spam-filled information, you are going to get rejected. You’ve then wasted a lot of your time and gotten absolutely nothing in return.

Choose The Right Category:
Web directories are sorted by topic and editors typically take great pride in ensuring that everything stays well organized. A tiny little bit of effort on your part to choose the right category can vastly improve your chances of being listed without any delay. The reason is simply that if you are an editor and you want to approve a site, you probably only have to click one button. But, if that site chose the wrong category, then you need to edit the application to modify the category (and now the editor has to find the correct category in the hierarchy!), which takes more time. If you are the editor sitting there with thousands of applications to process, it’s much easier to click the ‘reject’ button than it is to start fumbling through categories. So, put yourself in their shoes and do them a favor, because ultimately it’s you and your site that stand to benefit when you are approved.

A successful web directory submission campaign is when you maximize your time so that you get listed in the most directories possible. By following the above tips, you can help ensure you get approved, which goes a long way towards achieving your goal. With everything pre-written and good intentions to play by the rules, you’ll be flying through your submission campaign in no time.

Ontological Text Recognition: The New SEO Reality

The old days of SEO are gone. Just not too long ago, standard SEO practices would place a site in the graces of the major search engines. Let’s examine what these standard techniques are before I venture into the copywriting/ontological part of SEO.

-Clean code and use of a CSS. It is still imperative to write in clean code and avoid proprietary tags or server side extensions such as the ones created/required by certain web design programs. Use a cascading style sheet to reduce attribute clutter.

-Keyword density. The accepted parameters call for keyword presence on each page in order to rank well for the particular term. Too little density and the search engines will not rank the site well and too much will be viewed as spam.

-Unidirectional and reciprocal linking. The more sites linking to one and the better the site will score. Note: reciprocal links are being discounted by Google in particular because of rampant, free for all link exchange abuse. Make sure anchor text reflects the keywords being targeted when conducting a link campaign.

The standard above guidelines are what many SEOs are focusing on to help websites in the top rank arena.

While these are still the basics, we are seeing a a shift in the ranks where sites rank extremely well for a keyword without such term even being present on the page. How is this possible? The only possible explanation is the contextual text relationship or theme of a site.

Google seems to be at the forefront of this technology: the sites that are doing well even for terms that are not present in the text or anchor links are very rich in related content. Also, very important, the site relates to the particular key phrase. Let’s try an example: when searching for “market timing”, a site is in the top 3 in Google. The site has hundreds of pages indexed and deals with market research for stocks, stock buying and investment decision tools. A human being reading through the site found by searching for market timing will find the site extremely informative and pertinent to the search. Then, how is it possible that Google could rank it high if it is just blindly indexing the text to find the exact keyword? The answer is ontological text recognition. By reading the contextual relationship between words and paragraphs, Google is capable of “understanding” that the site, without mentioning a particular keyword, will be relevant when a user searches for it.

What does this mean for you? Simply put, a lot. Copywriting is king. Well written content, informative article writing in conjunction with standard SEO techniques are the new search optimization reality. It means more work but also the advantage of maintaining more solid ranks over time as no competitor site can just easily tweak some code to rank higher. We have been focusing heavily on this new aspect to find the best way to create user friendly and rich content that will be positively received by search engines and searchers alike.

Make you’re Search Stop Here

SEO Delhi the Meta description text is used to display a short description of the web page which is listed in the search result by search engines. The Meta description text should be attractive and meaningful so that it could be give exact information about site services. It is very important from key words inclusion angle as well for the search engine to index it first and perform a key word matching with it. Also bear in mind that this text is displayed along with the site title in the SERPs. Hence it is the first introduction that visitors will read about you. In SEO Delhi with out Meta key words Tag e-fuzion Tag can get top ranking as Meta keywords Tag is less important, as far as search engines now as it has been flagrantly spammed. SEO Delhi Company (e-fuzion) contains Meta Tag key words and key phrases separated by coma are that users may search. Keyword must not be repeated in the Meta keywords Tag more than three times and one must not repeat any key word one after the other. Keywords should be listed in order of importance. Size preferences for Meta key word Tags are not same for all search engines.

SEO Delhi Company (e-fuzion) discusses it by taking suitable examples, MSN, will accept a Meta keyword Tag up to different characters long, while hotbot indicates small number of characters. However, some top-ranking pages of Hotbot’s in various categories used Meta key word Tags which much larger than 75 characters. So SEO Delhi Company (e-fuzion) using large numbers characters which can be used as guideline. The key words and key phrases usage in header Tags is very powerful in SEO. As headlines makes a page easier to read and helps in rapidly finding required information, it saves time.

Which Affiliate Marketing Mentor

Affiliate marketing been in the Internet industry for rather sometime now and it’s one of the most popular tools around employed by several online entrepreneurs nowadays. It’s a capital pick for those who would like to put up an online business quick and inexpensively. Even so, there’s still a large amount of the population who acknowledges a little or still zero about it. And most of the people who have barely discovered this business typically assume that they can well make big money out of it. Well, they are definitely wrong.

To be successful in affiliate marketing business is not an leisurely project and it will never occur overnight. It’s simply like an in progress assignment where you want to check and try several advertising strategies and tactics. This could even call for you to sign-up with various affiliate programs just to find which merchants performs all right.

Some other misconception that expect to gain a lot if they place all but 20 affiliated banners on exactly one niche. Well it won’t actually work the way you believe it would since once your site is overflowing with too several banners, it will appear like a link farm and visitors will not be curious and won’t even bother clicking on any of those banners. So if you actually prefer to promote several affiliate programs in your website, make sure that they swing with the theme and subject from the rest of the articles on your niche. Keep in mind that three to four affiliated links in your site are decent, depending on the size of the web page.

There is as well some who consider that if they add affiliate materials to their site, they can get sales at once. Possibly they simply don’t know that affiliate marketing is totally about advertising. Whenever there’s no traffic hitting your site, how could you expect to acquire any sales? Recall that the to a greater extent you advertise your affiliate link or the site where the affiliate links are placed, the more clickthru’s these links are likely to receive.

If you would like to be involved with or you’ve already joined an affiliate program, but you have the above misconceptions regarding affiliate marketing, then, you might need a mentor to help you work where to start out and what to do ready to succeed.

In the dictionary, the word mentor is defined as a wise and trusted instructor or counselor. Generally, these individuals are experts in the subject area they are into. They can give skillful advice and direction as well as supervision to another individual. So when we say affiliate marketing mentors, they are experienced counselors that have made affiliate marketing their specialty. Affiliate marketing mentors can be those persons that have already been successful in affiliate marketing and are always willing to share their experienced-based knowledge from the viewpoint of both the affiliates and the web merchants. And that’s the reason why we come up with this page. It is aimed to give you the stuffs that affiliate mentors should possess and follow and why do they need these things.

Of course, it’s beneficial for an affiliate marketing mentor to live and utilize many theories and generalities regarding your business but there’s nothing more helpful and effective than telling the client what works today and what are the things that could probably work in the future and if the trend changes. As a mentor, you should be one of the sources of knowledge for your client and the first one to teach them on how to generate more affiliate income. You too, need to be knowledgeable and equipped with the keys to success for affiliate marketers as well as for merchants. And you should guide your clients as they try to do the things that can help boost their profit because once they do well in that business, it can be counted as one of your great achievements. This also makes you a successful mentor.

There are some articles on affiliate marketing that says, in order to be triumphant in affiliate marketing business, you need to encompass and develop these traits: persistence, patience and thirst for knowledge. And as a mentor, it is your job to help your clients take in these traits within themselves. Once they’ve already developed the abovementioned character, it’ll be very easy for you to explain to them that attaining success in affiliate marketing requires sweat, blood and of course, hefty time commitment. These traits will also teach them not to give up.

Furthermore, before you coach your client to be expert in SEO, link exchanges, email marketing, newsletter marketing, reciprocal exchanges and advertising in forums, you should first become expert on these fields. They&ll sure find it hard to learn these things alone and without supervision from the one who knows best. So be sure that you are knowledgeable on these things before you accept any invitation to be a mentor. Yes, being a mentor is way harder than succeeding in affiliate marketing but this task is very rewarding especially if your client become victorious. The failure of your client is your failure too so you must do your very best to be able to bring your client on tour to success. Again, it is never an easy task and there’s nothing you’ll be able to do about it. After all, that’s what affiliate marketing mentors are for.

Ebay Auction Starting And Ending Day Strategies.

It’s usually when auctions are about to end that they get half their bids – sometimes they even get their only bids. If you want your item to sell for a good price, then, it makes no sense to let it finish on a day and time when no-one’s going to be around to care.

Selling to Business.

If you’re selling business equipment and have mostly business customers, you should really aim to have your auctions finishing between 9am and 5pm on weekdays. It is worth, however, trying to avoid mornings and avoiding the ‘lead-in’ and ‘lead-out’ that takes place on Monday and Friday themselves.

Selling to Home.

If most of your sales are to private customers having it shipped to their own home, then you want your auctions to finish when these kind of customers will be around. Unfortunately, these times are the opposite of what they are for the business customers. The ideal time to catch a home customer is on a Sunday evening.

List for Durations.

In order to get your listings to end on a particular day, you can simply change the duration of your auctions depending on what day it is. For example, if you mostly sell to home customers and the day today is Thursday, then your auction needs to run for either 3 or 10 days to hit a Sunday. If you sell more to business and the day today is Friday, then:

a 1 day auction would be bad (finishing on Saturday),
3 days would be alright (Monday),
5 days would be good (Wednesday),
7 days would be good (another Friday),
and 10 days would be alright (Monday again).

You could draw up a little timetable of when you should and shouldn’t be listing depending on the days of the week – make it red, amber and green, traffic light style, and stick it on your wall.

Schedule Listings.

Of course, if that all sounds like too much trouble then there is an easier – if more expensive – way of doing things. Simply use any of the many tools that let you schedule listings (almost all listing programs and sites do) – you can set the start date for any day and time you feel like.

Be aware that you might have to pay a few cents per listing for this if you do it through eBay. With some software, you may also need to leave your computer on all the time, so the software can start the auctions when it’s supposed to. The advantage of this method, however, is that there will be no per-listing fee, since the auctions were scheduled through your computer and not through eBay.

If it’s the home market you’re after, then you might not have realised what one of the most powerful things to sell on eBay is. I’ll give you a clue: it’s not consumer electronics, or media products. It’s what eBay is famous for. Check out the next email for more.

Tips for Selling Collectibles on eBay.

Yes, collectibles! Collectibles are where eBay started, and they’re still one of its biggest areas – however much they might want you to believe they’re not. eBay’s most hardcore and long-time users are almost all collectors of something or other – it is quite common to post what you think is a mundane item, only to have collectors suddenly go to war over it because it is somehow linked to something they collect.

Collectors are the people on eBay who really do pay top-dollar for things that seem like junk to you and I – not to mention to the people you’ll be getting your stock from! That’s why you can make so much profit on collectibles. Here are a few tips.

Go to people’s homes. People’s homes are full of things that someone out there collects – they are the best and cheapest source of collectibles out there. Sure, you might find something if you hang around at enough garage sales, but you’d have competition. Getting invited to people’s homes to look around should be a dream for you, and one you’re doing your best to make a reality.

Buy on other auction sites. You’ll be surprised how much money you can make if you buy the collectibles that people sell on smaller auction sites like Yahoo Auctions, and then list it on eBay. These sellers will often be perfectly knowledgeable about their item, but simply getting a lower price because they serve a smaller marketplace. Sometimes you can almost double your money.

List in non-collectible categories. If your collectible doesn’t have a category of its own under ‘collectibles’, you might prefer to list it in a category that has something to do with the item but nothing to do with collecting. What you will often find is that people browsing a category for their favourite thing will pay more for your collectible than actual collectors would.

Do lots of research. Never list something you think might be valuable without searching and searching to dig up every piece of information you can on it. Everything you find out is likely to be useful when you come to list it.

List every tiny, tiny detail. Remember that collectors really care about the most seemingly insignificant things. An item from one year can be worth thousands while the one from the year before is near-worthless, or an item that is one shade of a colour can be worth far more than one of a subtly different shade. It’s not worth puzzling over and it’s not worth trying to pass your items off as something they’re not – just make sure you put absolutely everything you know in the description.

When you are listing items that require close research and description down to the tiniest detail, however, don’t be tempted to steal someone else’s work! Whatever you do, don’t take another seller’s description and try to pass it off as your own, as this could have all sorts of consequences for you. Our next email gives you a guide to eBay’s policy on ‘description theft’.

How to install and run phpAdsNew

What is phpAdsNew? It is great script written in PHP which can be used to manage different ad campaigns on your website. PhpAdsNew supports banners of any size (including flash banners), pop-ups, text ads and many different types of rich media ads. Using this script you can manage third party ads, e.g. ads from banner exchanges. And the good message is that this script is free.

How to install phpAdsNew?

First, ensure that your web hosting provider offers PHP support (PHP 4.0.4 or higher) and MySQL database (3.23.3 or higher). Then download the zip or tgz package and unzip it to your hard drive. You can use WinZip or Total Commander to do this. Now upload the files to your web host. Change the permissions of the config.inc.php file using “chmod a+w config.inc.php”. Create new MySQL database with any name, e.g. phpadsnew (or use existing database). Now you are able to run the installer. Point your browser to http://www.yourdomain.com/phpadsnew (or another folder where you copied the files). Follow the instruction on the screen and finish the installation process.

Another and easier solution how to install this PHP script is to sign up for a quality web hosting service which offers pre-installed PHP scripts. Then easily go to your control panel, find the section with pre-installed scripts and select phpAdsNew. The installer will do all the job for you. All you need to do is to choose the script you want to install.

How to run phpAdsNew?

Go to admin interface and create at least one zone. Zone is the place on your website where the ads will be displayed (e.g. top banner on the home page can be zone 1, bottom banner on the section page zone 2 etc.). Then create a new client. When you’re done, create new campaign for this client. You can set up the zone(s), limit of banner / text ads / rich media… impressions, when the campaign will start and finish, the frequency at which the ad will be shown and many other options.

Ok, we have some campaigns now and they are sucessfully running. But every advertiser wants to check the results of his campaign. From this reason phpAdsNew has very detailed stats section. Your advertisers (or you if you use this script to manage your own ads) will be able to see how many times was particular ad viewed by the website visitors and click through rate (how many % of visitors clicked the ads). In addition, you can watch weekly and daily stats. Stats can be exported to *.csv file (data from *.csv files can be opened by software like MS Excel on your computer).

I hope you will find these information helpful when you will start using phpAdsNew. If you will need some advanced functions I suggest to open phpAdsNew/misc/documentation folder where are stored three *.pdf files with very detailed description of this script. The first one, administrator-guide.pdf, will help you with the installation process and configuration. Developer-guide.pdf is for advanced users with PHP knowledge. The most important file is user-guide.pdf which will provide you by all the functions. Btw. this file has 109 pages. Good luck!

Search Engine Optimization for Dynamic Websites

What are “Dynamic Websites”?

Dynamic websites are websites whose pages are generated on the fly. Unlike static pages (primarily .htm/.html pages), dynamic pages are generated when an user triggers an action through that particular page.

Here is a sample dynamic URL-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?q=%22dynamic+websites%22&tab=news&go=homepage

As per the above example of www.bbc.co.uk, the dynamic part (i.e. the part) of the URL which changes as per surfer request is the part after the question mark (?)

What are the problems that search engines face in indexing Dynamic URLs?

1. Search engines often consider a dynamic URL as an infinite set of links.

2. Since dynamic URLs find maximum application in online shopping carts, there is a possibility of incorporating a session id to a particular page. As session ids of that particular page change, the search engine spider needs to index an infinite number of copies of the same page, which is a Herculean task for them.

3. Proceeding with the same logic presented in point # 2, indexing the same dynamic page might overload the servers of the search engines and therefore prevent the search engines to present with the most relevant information in the fastest possible time.

Here is what Google says about indexing of dynamic websites -

Reasons your site may not be included: Your pages are dynamically generated. We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index. (Source – http://www.google.com/webmasters/)

What are the options that you have in order to make a search engine spider index your Dynamic URLs?

1. Use of softwares – Exception Digital Enterprise Solutions (http://www.xde.net) offers a software which can change the dynamic URLs to static ones. Named XQASP, it will remove the “?” in the Query String and replace it with “/”, thereby allowing the search engine spiders to index the dynamic content.

Example –
http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190 will change to

http://www.my-online-store.com/books/1190.

The latter being a static URL, it can easily be indexed by the search engine spiders.

2. Use of CGI/Perl scripts – One of the easiest ways to get your dynamic sites indexed by search engines is using CGI/Perl scripts. Path_Info or Script_Name is a variable in a dynamic application that contains the complete URL address (including the query string information). In order to fix this problem, you’ll need to write a script that will pull all the information before the query string and set the rest of the information equal to a variable. You can then use this variable in your URL address.

Example – http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190

When you are using CGI/Perl scripts, the query part of the dynamic URL is assigned a variable.
So, in the above example “?id=1190″ is assigned a variable, say “A”. The dynamuc URL http://www.my-online-store.com/coolpage.asp?id=1190
will change to http://www.my-online-store.com/books/A through CGI/Perl scripts which can easily be indexed by the search engines.

3. Re-configuring your web servers –

(i) Apache Server – Apache has a rewrite module (mod_rewrite) that enables you to turn URLs containing query strings into URLs that search engines can index. This module however, isn’t installed with Apache software by default, so you need to check with your web hosting company for installation.

(ii) ColdFusion – You’ll need to reconfigure ColdFusion on your server so that the “?” in a query string is replaced with a ‘/’ and pass the value to the URL.

4. Creation of a Static Page linked to an array of dynamic Pages –

This approach is very effective, especially if you are the owner of a small online store selling a few products online. Just create a static page linking to all your dynamic pages. Optimize this static page for search engine rankings. Include a link title for all the product categories, place appropriate “alt” tag for the product images along with product description containing highly popular keywords relevant to your business (You can conduct keyword research for your site through http://www.wordtracker.com). Submit this static page along with all the dynamic pages in various search engines, conforming to the search engine submission guidelines.

How Amazon.com, Earth’s Biggest Bookstore, coped with the issue of indexing of dynamic URLs?

A search in Google for internet marketing books, yielded a result that takes you directly to the appropriate dynamic page at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0395683297/103-0475212-8205437.

Since the above URL does not contain any query strings, all search engines can index Amazon.com’s products. Amazon.com uses this method to get its product selections indexed by search engines. This is very important for Amazon, because being an online bookstore, it is very natural for them to adopt dynamic URLs yet it was equally important for them to make their dynamic URLs search engine index friendly.

Conclusion

Even a few years back, most of the major search engines did not index dynamic URLs, thereby often preventing top search engine rankings for the online stores. With Google starting to index dynamic URLs a few months ago, the picture is going to change in the coming days. This is more so because Google’s numero uno position is currently being threatened by Microsoft’s MSN (developing its own search engine) and Yahoo! who recently acquired Overture, the biggest player in the PPC Search Engine industry.

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Google PageRank Toolbar Explained

This article will guide you through the importance of the toolbar, and its accuracy at reporting PageRank. I will also discuss the feature about it that most people, including many SEOs are not aware of. If you have an existing site, use this as a reference to ensure that you are using the toolbar properly. I am going to review the key 5 areas.

The toolbar is not accurate, and it has limitations.
If you visit a page that is not in the index, but Google has a very similar page indexed that is very close to yours, then the toolbar will estimate its PageRank.
Also, Google represents PageRank through the toolbar, but since the nature of
PageRank is linear (a multiplier) and the toolbar is not, there are limitations.
Note: Please read “A few more words on PageRank” in my Google Best SEO
Practices – Part 4 article to find out more about this subject.

The information the toolbar displays is outdated.
There is a big difference between toolbar PageRank and actual PageRank. The data you see in the toolbar is 4 to 6 months old. Google tracks and assigns PageRank in real-time, but does not update the toolbar in the same fashion. There are multiple tools that estimate future PR, but they are just that, estimates. Keep this in mind.

Best SEO features: highlighting and backlinks.
You can highlight all instances of the search term on the page returned from your search. This helps you see how many times your competitors use these keywords on their pages, so you can adjust your SEO campaign accordingly. Also, the backlinks feature displays all the pages that link to yours, which Google counts towards your PageRank. Like I said above, remember this is outdated information.

The toolbar’s most hidden feature: indexing.
Ever wondered how can Google index pages with no links to them? Well, here is how it’s done: if you are browsing the web with the toolbar installed, (I am not saying just visible or enabled), Google is recording every page you visit and simultaneously checking to see if the address to it is in the index or not. So what if its not? It will be indexed on the next schedule. If you don’t want a page to get indexed yet, the make sure you don’t have the toolbar installed in your browser while getting it ready.

Demystifying the “pagerank dependency”.

PageRank is only one of the 100+ algo components of Google, and it is overrated.
Don’t rely solely on the toolbar to determine your link partners. You want links from related pages with high traffic, not high PageRank alone. And my final advice: Make sure you have at least 2 browsers, one with the toolbar (if you need it) and one without (to visit your “not-ready” pages).

By Dedicated SEO Consultant: Jose Nunez

Beginners Guide To Blogging, Get Started Right!

A blog is basically an online journal wherein you can digitally pen down your thoughts, ideas, opinions and practically anything that you want people to read. Blogs come in different styles, formats, and settings, depending on the preference of the user. Many blogging sites, offer built in features such as hyperlink, straight texts, pictures etc. Some blogging sites, even allow you to put video and mp3&s on your blogs.

Instead of writing texts, some bloggers choose to make their blogs more audio friendly, by using spoken word entries. This is called audio blogging.

Basically a blog contains these features:

title- which allows you to label your post
body- this is the content of your post
trackback- other sites can be linked back to your blog
permanent link- every article that you write has a URL
comments- this allow readers to post comments on your blog.

One of the advantages of blogging, is that it is made of only a few templates. Unlike, other websites that is made up of numerous individual pages. This make it easier for blog users to create new pages, because it already has a fix setting that include: slots for title, body of the post, category, etc.

This is especially useful for first time users, since they can start blogging right away. They can chose from a number of templates that blogging websites provide.

Anyone who wants to start a blog can do so by becoming a member of a blogging website of their choice. Once they’ve become members, they automatically become a part of that particular blogging community. They can browse through other bloggers pages, and link them back to their own blogs. They can also make comments on other members& blogs.

Blogging is not just limited to personal usage. There are a lot of blogs that follow a theme such as: sports, politics, philosophy, social commentary, etc. These blogs espouse on their specific themes. This way blogging becomes a medium in which people can share their knowledge and opinions about a variety of themes and topics.

Some bloggers even use their blogs as a means to advertise. Some authors advertise their books on their blogs. While other bloggers, use their blogs to shed light to currents issues, events, news and catastrophes.

Nowadays in education, blogs also play an important part. Professors use blogging to document the lessons that they have discussed and taught. This way, students who who have missed classes, can easily catch up with their assignments.

A lot of entrepreneurs benefit from blogging by promoting their businesses on their blogs, with millions and millions of people logging onto the net everyday, blogging has become a lucrative move. Some bloggers who run online businesses promote their merchandise online. While others profit through advertisement.

But by far, the most popular blog type is the one that takes the form of a personal journal. This is the kind that is usually used by first time bloggers. Individuals who want to document the daily struggle of their everyday lives, poems, rants, opinions, find that blogging offers them a medium in which to express themselves.

Bloggers usually communicate within themselves. This is one of the appeals of blogging. It creates a community of people sharing their ideas, thoughts, and comments with each other.

Blogs varying in topics, themes, and set-ups, can be found in blog directories. First time users who want to get an idea of what the blogging world is all about can browse through a number of blogs using these directories. This way they&d get an idea of what these blogging communities are like.

Blogging is popular all over the world. Blog is short for the term weblog. There are no rules when it comes to blogging. Bloggers have the freedom to express themselves how ever way they want, and the best thing about blogging, is that most blogging sites are free.

There are numerous blogging websites to choose from in the net. This give first time users the option of joining a blogging community that appeals to their interests.

Just search any blogging directory and you&d get a listing of a lot of blogging sites that are available on the net. It’s easy to search a blogging directory, because it is organized according to category. This way you would get exactly what you are after. Blogging is really for everyone. It is fun, simple and easy.

The Newest Features of Google Sitemaps

Google has announced the addition of some truly useful features to make Google Sitemaps an even better tool for the web. They’ve given their site a facelift and made it easier to navigate. They asked for feedback and they listened. Hopefully, the result is something everyone will love.

A feature that many webmasters will be happy to know about is the notification of violations. No longer will they be left in the dark about what is happening. They will know if they have violated the webmaster guidelines and why.

The rules are pretty simple. Create your site that is truly helpful to your users and avoid doing naughty things just to increase your ranking. Linking to bad sites, hidden texts or links, installing viruses, trojans or other “badware” are just a few of the reasons why your URL will not be included in any Google index.

You don’t even need to look far to know if you have a violation. Google notifies you directly on the summary page of your account. They also place a link to webmaster’s guidelines so you can double check that your site is once again in proper form to be included in Google’s index – this is the second new feature.

Google does not want to exclude any sites that are good. It is possible that the violations were unintentional. It may even be that the webmasters truly have overlooked some items on their site. Google says clean it up and get the chance to be re-included.

Re-inclusion is absolutely simple and easy. Once you see the violation notification, check what needs to be fixed. Correct the item that Google felt is a violation of their rules. Now all you need to do is click on the request reinclusion link on your summary page, or the link at the Google Sitemap home page, and fill out the form. Just don’t forget that you don’t need to request reinclusion if you haven’t received a violation.

If you’re a new webmaster and need a helping hand, Google has a help center for webmasters. It has all the information you need to know about Google Sitemaps. If you have questions about Googlebot, crawling, indexing, ranking and the like, this is the place to go. If the answer you’re looking for isn’t there, no worries; the Google Sitemaps community is there to interact with as well.

By the way, not everybody by the way receives a notification of violation. Google has chosen not to notify certain webmasters of their penalty in certain cases. For example, they will not notify a spammer that he’s been caught. Doing so will only alert him that they have caught on to his game and possibly trigger his making even sneakier ways to get in.

On the whole, these improvements are wonderful additions and long overdue. Google really wants to improve their services and the best way is for people to keep using their products and giving feedback. The team behind Google is definitely listening.

How To Post Your First Auction On eBay

It’s very easy and simple to get started posting your first auction on eBay. This article will cover the steps you need to follow to get your first auction up.

The first thing you need to do is set up your eBay seller’s account. If you have already bought things on eBay in the past, then you already have an account. Just log in and click “Sell” on the toolbar at the top of the page and then click “Create a seller’s account”.

If you have never bought or sold on eBay, then you need to create a new account. First click on the “register” link beneath the toolbar, then click “Sell” and “Create a seller’s account”. From there the eBay website will guide you through the process of getting set up. For security reasons, this may involve including providing your card and banking information.

You can register for your eBay account here: eBay.com

Now that you’re registered, you need to decide what you want to sell. It doesn’t really matter what you sell, this is just your chance to get your feet wet. Check your garage and attic, I’m sure you can find something that you’re not attached to and something interesting. Small items like books and CDs are great for your first time.

Once you have your item picked out, it’s time to submit it. Just click “Sell” and you’re on your way. The first thing you need to do is choose the best category for your item. eBay makes this easy, you just type in your item, and eBay suggests the best category for you. It’s usually best to just go with the category that eBay comes up with.

The next step is writing the title and description for your item. You want to make sure to include any keywords that people might use when searching for your item in the title. Include all the rest of the information in the description.

Now you need to set your starting price. In order to draw people to bid on your auction, set a starting price of $0.01. Don’t worry because items almost never end up as such a low price. Next set the duration of the auction. You have the choices of 3, 5, 7 and 10 days. This is really up to you, the longer the auction the more bids you are likely to get. Add a picture to your auction because items with pictures always sell for more.

Great, now you’re ready to select the payment methods you want to accept, and where you will post to. I would just go with PayPal for now, and limit yourself to the country you are in. Just click the “Submit” button and you are done!

Now you can just sit back and let eBay work it’s magic. Potential buyers will search for your item and submit bids on it. Some bidders may email you with various questions about your item. Just do your best to answer the questions as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

Don’t worry if your item doesn’t sell the first time. The great thing about eBay, is that if your item doesn’t sell the first time, you can list it again for free!

Once the auction closes and you have a winning bidder, eBay takes care of all the work. eBay will send your buyer emails guiding them through the process of sending you payment for the item your are selling. Just make sure you have the money in hand before you send the item.

eBay prefers that you use PayPal to send and receive your payments. PayPal is very safe and secure and you will get your money instantly so it’s a good idea to use them. It’s also free to create an account with PayPal.

You can create your free PayPal account here: PayPal.com

As soon as you have received the payment, all you have left to do is pack up the item and send it to your buyer. If you’re not sure of the best way to get this done, just take your item to your local post office and they can help you. Use the buyers address from the confirmation email that eBay sent you and write it on the package. That’s it, you’ve made your first successful sale on eBay!

Your Guide to Top Search Engine Rankings

Does it seem like no matter what you do your website just won’t climb up in the search engine rankings? If so, your web site may not be optimized well enough for the search engines to increase your rankings. There are some very important factors that determine where web sites are ranked. These factors are referred to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques and they can make all the difference in your sites rankings.

Here are some of the most important factors that the search engines use in determining your rankings:

1. Web Site Content

Content on your site is one of the most important factors for successful search engine optimization. Your web site should provide valuable information on specific subjects relevant to your web site. Furthermore, your content should be updated regularly. It’s not enough to just put up a few content pages full of information on your site and then never add to it. This is a continuous process that will help your search engine rankings if done correctly.

It’s also important that you don’t try to trick the search engines by flooding them with multiple versions of the same page, repeating the same content over and over. Doing that will not help your rankings and will eventually lead to your site getting banned from the search engines.

2. Link Popularity

Inbound links are very important for achieving high search engine rankings. Most of the search engines today regard link popularity as one of the most significant determinants of your website’s rankings.

Here are some of the best ways to get inbound links:

* Articles – Writing and submitting articles to website’s and article directories is a very good way to get inbound links.

* Content – Not only will adding quality content help in your rankings by itself, it will also help you with your link popularity. Other webmaster’s will want to link to your site because it is valuable to them and their own visitors.

* Directories – Submitting your site to online directories will help you gain inbound links.

* Blogs – Start a blog that you update frequently with information related to your website’s niche. Then, link to your site from the blog. You can also submit your blog to various blog directories to get even more inbound links.

* Link Exchanges – Simply find other quality sites related to yours and ask them to link to you in exchange for a link back to them. This is not as effective as it used to be but it is still a pretty good way to get inbound links.

When trying to increase your link popularity remember that the more inbound links you get the better, but quality is always better than quantity. Stay away from low quality sites, FFA’s, and sites unrelated to yours.

The next things that should be considered when doing SEO for your web site are the on-site and the off-site elements. Some of the on-site elements are the title tag, Meta tags, heading tags, ALT tags and highlighting of the text using the bold tag. The Link text is an important off-site element.

On-Site Elements:

3. Title Tag and Meta Tags

Meta tags help describe the page where they are placed. Though today the Meta tags are not nearly as important as they once were and are definitely not the only things the search engines look for when indexing your site, they are still somewhat important in deciding the relevancy of the page for a keyword search.

Search engines focus on three primary tags to help them determine the relevance of a website for a particular search phrase. The Title Tag, Meta Keywords and the Meta Description…

Ideally the title tags should contain less than 64 characters with your most important keywords in them and should definitely be relevant to the content on the page. Do not stuff keywords in to the title tag!

The Meta description tag is a summary of the page and its contents. This Meta tag should be 200 characters or less and should contain keywords and phrases you hope to be found for, but it should also read like an introductory lead-in for the page and be appealing to the reader. The description you provide for your page has to convince the visitor that they have found exactly what they were looking for.

Probably the least important Meta tag to search engines is the keyword tag. However, it shouldn’t be ignored. Keyword tags should be less than 1000 characters. This tag should include important keywords and phrases consistent with the body text, title, and content of the page. Be specific and accurate with the keywords and key phrases in this tag. Again, do not stuff keywords here… they should only be those that are actually on the page and do not repeat any word more than 3 times.

4. Heading Tags

The heading tags are given more weight than the ordinary text. The higher the H tag the more weight it carries. You should make use of the heading tags to highlight the important keywords and headings of your page as well as the paragraph headers.

5. Bold Text

Bold text is given a little more weight than ordinary text but not as much as heading tags. Make sure to enclose some of your keywords in bold tags when they appear on the page.

6. Alt Text

The alt tag provides alternative text when images cannot be displayed… This might happen if the users have set the browsers only to download the text and not the graphics, or if the images are too heavy to download for the user’s internet connection. Only include important keywords relevant to your site and the image and do not stuff keywords in them.

Off-site elements:

7. Link Text

This is a very important factor in search engine optimization to gain higher rankings. The link text can be on pages within your site or what other web sites use to link to you. Either way, it is important. If possible the target page’s main search term should be included in the link text instead of just the URL. Do not use identical link text for every link, but do include the target page’s main keywords in the link text. Links carry more weight when the text around them is relevant to the target page’s keywords and phrases.

Following the above SEO information will help tremendously in your search engine rankings. Remember that the search engines are advancing all the time. Don’t try to trick them because they will eventually catch on and that could mean the end of your web site. Stick to the basic techniques above and you will increase your search engine rankings without fear of being banned or dropped.

7 Things Every Webmaster Should Know About Links

Link building in a nutshell, is the process of getting other web sites and web pages to link to your web site. These links will not only drive direct targeted traffic to your pages; but more importantly will increase your overall search engine visibility and rankings. Building a solid incoming linking structure for your site is one of the most effective techniques used by search engine optimization professionals to improve your search engine rankings and boost the overall amount of traffic any given web page receives. However the process of building incoming links to your site can be a daunting and tedious task when just getting started. The purpose of this essay is to outline the importance of building a strong linking profile for your site as well as offer a handful of key strategies that any webmaster regardless of marketing budget can employ to climb to the top of the search engine ladder.

1.) Purchasing Links and Sponsored Reviews

Paying other web masters to place a link on their site back to yours is probably the easiest and most straight forward way to generate links to your site. However the down-side of purchasing or renting links from other web masters is that it can become a very expensive venture, not to mention you need to pick and choose your potential candidates vary carefully. There are many services out there to help connect you with other web masters that are interested in selling links from their web pages, however you will save yourself a lot of time, and money by working directly with other web masters as apposed to paying a middle man to act as a link broker. Unfortunately there is no set standard on determining what any given link is worth: however you should pay careful attention to a few key factors before cracking open your wallet and spending your hard earned money on a paid link. These things include but are not limited to the number of incoming links the candidate site itself has, it’s overall page rank, the age of the site and finally the search engine saturation (number of pages indexed in the major search engines) of the site. When approaching a web master to purchase links from make your goals as clear as day – and ensure that he or she knows you’re interested in purchasing a link for Search Engine Optimization reasons. You need to ensure the link will not be cloaked (hidden from search engine spiders) or nofollowed (marked to inform search engines not to follow the link with the rel=”nofollow” attribute) as either of these conditions will make the link relatively worthless from an SEO stand point.

2.) Comment and Post on Related Blogs and Message Boards

Even a web novice can find a litany of blogs and message boards for any given niche or market to post comments and feed back . I strongly encourage you to register on message boards related to your topic or subject and include links within the signature of your posts and messages. The same goes for blogs and commenting. There are many blogs that will allow you to include a link back to your site either within the content of your message, or make your user name a clickable link back to your site. However there is a fine line between spamming and offering valid comments, posts and responses to community based web sites and blogs. Making obvious spam posts such as “Cool site, check my site out at …” will likely get your IP address banned from the web site or network, and can negatively impact the reputation of your brand or web site. If you don’t have a valuable view point, or comment to offer other readers of the site you’re posting on, you’re better off not commenting at all.

3.) Write User Testimonials and Product Reviews

Writing user reviews or testimonials is an under appreciated technique to create a wealth of back links to your site. Most often when you write a review for a product or service you’ve had success with, the web master will include a link back to your site in the signature of the review. This technique is simple and straight forward; if you’ve purchased a product or service write up a short 100 – 300 word review for the product outlining it’s strengths and your positive experiences and include your full name, and web site address in the signature of the review. Nine out of ten times the web master of the site you’ve written the testimonial for will be more than happy to include and activate the link when they post the review onto their website.

4.) Develop a Free Online Service or Software Application

Most people wouldn’t even consider spending their valuable time developing an application or online utility to give away for free. However the benefits of creating and distributing a free online utility or software application can create several 1,000 back links to your site very quickly. A perfect example of this is creating a small, easy to use Mortgage Calculator with javascript and offer the code to embed the Mortgage Calculator onto other web pages. Include a link back to your site within the coding of the Mortgage Calculator perhaps in a copyright statement at the bottom of the application and require the link as a condition for using your free application.

5.) Write Articles and Distribute Them Online

Assuming this isn’t the first essay you’ve read on improving the amount of links to your web site, you should be well aware that writing articles and submitting your articles to the popular article directories is a fantastic way to generate many back links to your web site. The premise is simple yet effective; Write a handful of articles geared toward your topic and subject matter and distribute them to the many article directories on the Internet. Often times when your article is posted on these article directory sites they will include an authors bio, or resource box. Within the authors bio area you want to include a little information about your company or product(s) as well as a link back to your site. Whenever your article is picked up by other web masters or syndicated across other popular web sites you will receive a free one way link back to your site. Repeat these steps over and over to build several 1,000 links back to your web site. This is an amazing technique as your only investment is a little time to write and submit an article.

6.) Submit Your Site to Directories

Over the past few years links from directories or web indexes has become less and less valuable. However there are still a handful of well trusted and high quality directories that you should consider submitting your site to. This will boost both your linking profile, as well as your page and trust rank. Some of the most notable directories to submit your web site to in no particular order are DMOZ, The Yahoo! Business Directory, JoeAnt, Gimpsy, GoGuides, Linkopedia and Uncoverthenet. Though most of the directories l’ve mentioned here are not free to submit to, the cost of submission is well worth the price as the links you’ll receive from this investment are quality one-way links that carry a good amount of page trust and rank. When submitting your site to any of these directories, pay special attention to the category you are submitting your web address to, make sure that you are submitting your site to the most relevant, and related topic to the subject of your own web site. As this will ensure that you’re submission is not denied, or skipped by the directory editors once it gets reviewed.

7.) Exchange Links and Build Partnerships

Link exchanges or trading links with other web masters is another technique that has lost a little of it’s gusto over the years, however this method of generating back links does still hold a bit of value and should not be overlooked. Many webmasters dedicate a page of their site titled references or resources and use this page to link out to other web pages that have agreed to link back to their site. As mentioned above this technique is not as effective as it once was; however picking and choosing web sites that are well trusted and ranked by the search engines and that are related to the topic and subject mater of your own site promise to be well worth the effort. Finding other web sites that are prime candidates to exchange links with are those that are linking out to other relevant sites in your field or niche. Once you’ve found a web site that you’d be interested in swapping links with, contact the web master via email with your offer. When soliciting another web master for a link you want to write a personal email message and refer to specific content and aspects of his or her web site. Doing so will show the prospective linking partner that you’ve actually taken the time to give their site the once over before sending your solicitation; as a result you will be far more likely to receive a positive reply. As with purchasing paid links you want to ensure that the site you are requesting to exchange links with doesn’t end up cloaking it’s outbound links (hidden from search engine spiders) or nofollowed (marked to inform search engines not to follow the link with the rel=”nofollow” attribute) as either of these conditions will make your link relatively worthless from an SEO stand point.

In this article we’ve discussed 7 of the most effective, and commonly used methods to generate a massive amount of incoming links to your web site. With any luck, after reading this article you should have a handful of ideas and techniques in your tool box that you can employ to kick-start your web site’s model for success. Building links to your web site is by no means a set-it and forget-it facet of web marketing and requires time, dedication and ongoing analysis. You can never have too many quality incoming links to your site and once you’ve had a small taste of success with link building I’m confident you’ll be hungry for more.

Guide To Successful Affiliate Marketing

While studying the achievements of super affiliates that earn handsome money every month, we find that their attitude is fine tuned to get optimum results from their attempts. Apart from the attitude everything is the same. They sell the same products that everyone else sells, they sign up for the same advertising program and employ the same SEO tactics. What makes them different is their willingness to experiment more, think creatively and showing of better understanding of human nature.

1. Dare to Lead

Don’t just be a follower; you can set new standards in affiliate marketing. This statement does not mean you should learn the nice good qualities of successful Internet affiliate marketers. You can take new ideas from the success of successful Internet marketers. But you can think differently and creatively. Creativity is the first thing every successful affiliate marketer possesses. You can creatively design your website, plan a promotional campaign and generally play your cards correct. Set standards and be a leader, let others follow.

2. Learn the Basics

Learn the basics of closing a sale. Learn from the innumerable websites in the Internet that sell products and services. Be a constant learner of marketing. This way you will know what sells and what does not. Goal setting, planning and implementing of the plans correctly make you a successful Internet marketer. Set daily, weekly and monthly targets, then lay down the plan and follow up with the implementation of the plans.

3. Set Priorities

Everything you plan to do to promote your new affiliate product may or may not be necessary or fruitful. Separate the tasks as immediately essential, moderately lesser and unessential. Cutting down on unessential tasks saves your efforts and gives you more energy to concentrate on highly essential tasks.

4. Learn the art of Giving Before Receiving

You can’t bind horse before the cart. To receive something you need to give something. Here what you give before you take is information, tips and strategies to maximize the use of products you sell. For example if you sell photography items, provide in your website useful information about the care of different photographic products and continuously update the information with whatever you learn. Thus you learn to give before you receive.

5. Network

Network with fellow affiliate marketers. Help someone if needed. Don’t shy away asking help if needed. Affiliate marketing is not a ‘I Win, You Lose game’. Everyone can benefit from combined strengths.

6. Widen your Horizon

Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket. Diversify your efforts. This advice is not a license to dilute your focus. If you are the affiliate of a company that sells digital camera, you will have a good idea about digital cameras, its components etc. Instead of setting your focus solely on digital camera for a specific company, become an affiliate of different companies that sell digital cameras. Also sell digital camera components like memory sticks, batteries, flash units … You simply give yourself more exposure to a variety of opportunities.

7. Never Quit

Last but not least. This one tip you need to bind to your heart. Early setbacks and losses are only natural. In such occasions, heartlessly dump the products or services that bring you low or no returns. Cut down costs. But never ever give up your career. You can find profitable products to sell that will give you profits. If you really want to become a successful affiliate marketer, you must see such setbacks as essential natural learning points.

How to Get Listed on DMOZ

How does one obtain listed on the dmoz or the Open Directory Project? The dmoz is an eventuated blessed directory that lists sites and links to explicit websites on the World Wide Web. This list, which is called dmoz to define its artistic field name, directory.mozilla.org, is owned by Netscape and is maintained by a set of editors who have volunteered their services. The dmoz ODP is and called the largest human-directory on the web.

A consubstantial list was launched by AT&T and was called the Anywho directory. The Anywho directory is a telephone directory that can be commence online and is linked with the Yellow Pages of the according to company. The Anywho directory is a searchable telephone build and superscription database past the dmoz is a current slanting of sites according to category. Both directories are searchable, but that is where the similarities end. Getting listed on both directories, the Anywho directory and the dmoz, requires overly mismatched guidelines and requirements now they are two fully contradistinctive directories.

Getting listed on the Anywho directory is as homely as having a telephone craft with AT&T. These telephone interject listings are intent from the company’s records and are updated every three months on the online Anywho directory. While the counsel on the Anywho directory of AT&T lists phone numbers of registered individuals and businesses, practiced are options for humans who get not yearning their encircle to be shown in the Anywho Directory. Logging in on the Anywho directory station and organism asset of their privacy oblique process consign help those who yearning their phone incorporate to outlast hermetic get done related a status. There is and an choice on the Anywho directory for horde to headway to the brochure if they demand to by using the close privacy indirect commotion to conflicting the removal.

Getting listed on the OPD or the dmoz is a largely unrelated motion as compared to the slanted deed for the Anywho directory. Website owners conclusively have to submit their website details to the editors of the dmoz for try and inclusion to the list. While the Anywho directory gets the network from their burden database, the dmoz OPD gets its report for these residence listings from the whistle stop owners and contrastive sources. Publication and inclusion in the register is matter to the volunteer editors’ perusal and approval. Often, suggesting a corner for inclusion in the inventory and acceptance known may produce a extended look-in depending on the conglomerate of your residence and the backlog that the set may have appurtenant to the unqualified introduce of suggestions.

The simple stirring for site submission for experiment to the list involves four steps. Initially, you have to have information whether a point should certainly be listed and is not today listed on the ODP. Next is great which combination prime describes or fits the website you are suggesting for inclusion. After these prime three steps, you will thus infatuation to fill out the author on the dmoz abode on the party you buy best describes the compass you are suggesting. Approval for inclusion in the record may depend on the editors’ right with the power of final, also depend on the receiving of volunteer editors the spot currently has deal for them.

Natural Perfumes

Natural perfumes are perfumes made from natural extracts from plants, trees, leaves and other. The natural extracts that are turned into essential oils work hand in hand to create a wonderful scent that will make you feel happy, unpredictable, calm, and confident.

When you use natural perfumes, it combines with your body chemistry to make the fragrance compatible to your style. There are several advantages to using natural perfumes.

The natural perfumes do not usually contain a lot of chemicals and synthetic ingredients, as long as the perfume is made with natural essential oils and not synthetic oils. Each essential oil has a special affect on the body.

For example, Lavender is a natural stress reducer and has a calming affect. When you wear lavender you may not feel as stressed and anxious when you go out.

The natural perfumes that you buy have a longer shelf life and do not need harmful chemicals to preserve them. There are over 90 different essential oils and each one has several different ways that it can help the body.

For an example, Lavender not only provides a calming affect but it also help the body in several other ways, including helping the skin recover from burns. When you use natural perfumes you can help your body in several different ways.

You can purchase natural perfumes online or at a health food store. Large chain stores may offer natural perfumes but they may be made with synthetic ingredients to meet the supply and demand.

Signature Fragrances

You may have seen them advertised on television, in a magazine or on a website. These fragrances usually feature a famous person advertising them or creating them. These signature fragrances are great for any mood that you are in.

Fragrances sold in the signature series are usually priced expensive. A signature perfume is one that you wear continuously without changing fragrances.

There are several reasons why someone would choose to wear the same fragrance without trying new ones. Basically it is because they are comfortable in that fragrance.

That specific perfume gives them the confidence they need to get through their day. It makes them feel strong, individual and can allow them to feel proud.

Signature fragrances are great as long as the perfume is being produced. A lot of times, when you find something that you really like, they quit making it. Then you are left searching for another fragrance that may be similar to the signature fragrance.

With signature fragrances, the chance that the scent will go bad decreases the more you use it. So if you have a signature fragrance you are probably going to use it everyday, even if you don’t go out of the house.

Putting on your make up and perfume can make you feel great. To choose a signature fragrance, you will have to do some testing. Go to a store that provides a wide variety of perfumes to choose from. You will be able to choose a fragrance that is right for you.

Selecting A Perfume

There are hundreds of perfumes to choose from and they are priced anywhere from a few dollars to a hundred dollars or more. With so many choices, how do you know which ones are right for you?

There are a few guidelines that can help you choose which perfume is right for you. First you will need to find out which type of perfume will fit you the best.

Look at the ingredients on the bottle before you buy. You need to analyze what type of scent you want to get out of perfume; a light musk, natural scent, loud fragrance, floral scent, warm scent, bright cheerful scent, and more.

Your body chemistry might play a roll in your selection as well. Sometime what smells great on one person may not smell as good on another.

Perfumes that are natural tend smell warm and soft, such as Rose or Lavender. Musk can produce a light fragrance that lingers softly around you. It is not too strong and may be pleasant to smell.

There are stronger scents that you may like and that is fine too. If you don’t like a loud smell but you like the perfume, try using a minimal amount or spray your clothing instead of your body.

The material helps to absorb the fragrance leaving a lighter version to smell. Choosing the right perfume for you may take some time. Stop and smell different fragrances to find the right one for you. Once you find one you like, it will be worth all your time and effort.

Perfumes For Little Girls

Your little girl probably watches you spray on perfume wanting to be just like you. If she likes to try perfumes on, give her a little spray on the wrist.

Depending on the age she is, there are several different perfumes available for young ladies to use. Allowing them to use things such as perfume or makeup can encourage them to take care of themselves.

Watching you can help them establish great personal hygiene and attention to themselves.

Little girl&s skin may be sensitive to different perfumes. The perfume line for little girls uses a lighter formula when creating the perfume. This allows the scent to be weaker and the ingredients to be less potent. Teach her how much perfume she should use at one time instead of letting her spray it all over.

Finding perfumes may be easy to do, depending on what character she likes at the time. Perfumes are made using character perfume bottles to attract your little girl&s attention.

Once you purchase the perfume, allow her to spray it on her wrist only. Make sure she sprays it only on her wrist for at least two to three days. This will give you time to see if she will have an allergic reaction to it. If she don’t than she will be okay with it.

It’s not a good idea to allow them to spray perfume all over their body and find out later that they are allergic to it. The skin is sensitive and it’s better to be cautious.

Buying Perfume Online

Everyone wants to smell great. It makes you feel better about yourself when you can add some perfume on your body before you step out the door.

Perfume is a confidence booster and can make you feel like you can take on the world. There are several ways to purchase perfume; drive to the store, buy online or buy from a private dealer.

When you buy from a private dealer, they may make their own perfumes with a unique combination that goes great with your body chemistry.

Buying from a private dealer may cost more but if they sell the fragrance that you want, you will pay extra for it.

Buying from a store usually means that you re buying perfume that have been created in large amounts in order to distribute it to enough stores.

The store purchases a large quantity of perfume at one time, which can reduce the price per bottle of perfume, giving you a discount on your perfume.

Then you have the option of buying perfume online. When you buy online you can shop from home and your favorite fragrance delivered right to your door.

You can take your time to find the right perfume for you. Buying online has never been easier or better for you.

As with anything, you need to be careful how you purchase your perfume. If you don’t use the perfume often you may want to make sure that it only contains natural essential oils so it will have a longer shelf life.

Keyword Research Guide — How and Why!

Keyword marketing-the importance..

In the Field of SEO-Search engine optimization choosing keywords is one of the most important tasks. You should choose keyword wisely. Choosing keyword is not a guessing Game but it is an art.

Why to choose keywords?

As you probably aware of search engine traffic. Search engine traffic is very very important for success of any website. It is estimated that approximately 65 to 85% of traffic (average) coming from search engine (however is depends on how you promote your website).search engine is only way to create highly targeted traffic. You can improve visitor to sales ratio of your website if you successfully receive traffic from search engine. Or improve your revenue by attracting more visitors.

If you are selling Music CDs online. If your website is on top for key Phrase like “Music CD” on all Major search engines then just think how many people will search for Music CD in a day?? I think lots of. Now. This is the way you are getting visitor searching for Music CDs. However there will be lots of search in a day for term CD like

[1] Software CDs
[2] E-Book CDs
[3] Video CDs
[4] Game CDs etc…

But traffic coming form these terms is Meaningless for you to create sales. So your page should be relevant only for Key phrases like music CDs, audio CDs etc … so it will be better to choose Keywords related to your business rather than selecting randomly or blindly. I hope you will now able to understand importance of choosing better keywords

How to choose keywords?

There are lots of tools for choosing better Keywords like Nichebot, overture keyword suggestion tool, Wordtracker etc…First decide “what is your target market?” and then use these tools. Example you are selling E-books related to website design. Than you should first research how many people every day search for ‘Web Design E-books” go to Nichebot.com for that and simply search Web Design E-books. Nichebot will provide you count of last 60 days for this Key Phrase. We can see that Count for this key phrase is………..Or Go to Wordtracker.com site and search for this keyword Phrase and you will see related information on specific key phrase and you will be able to get information related to this keyword. Phrase.

They will provide you all related keywords

Example: For “Directory submission” you will see following related or nearly related Keywords. (This can also help to receive ONLY targeted traffic…)

Related term-count(average search in two month)
Directory submission-3978
Search engine directory submission-679
Search engine submission software directory-266
directory internet submission-163
directory website submission-159
directory engine search submission-133
directory submission services-129

Follow this Url to know more>> http://www.nichebot.com/kd/?term=directory+submission

you can follow one of the following tool for keyword research.

[1] wordtracker.com
[2] Nichebot.com
[3] inventory.overture.com/

Here is a list of top free Keyword research tools. visit it.>> http://www.seo-resources.inetzeal.com/top-free-seo-tools.htm the list include keyword suggestion tools,keyword analyzer tools,keyword density checker tools and lot more..

Now you have to decide which Keyword is less competitive for your website and you can easily reach on top. Based on that you should place these Keywords on your site..

Where and How to place these Keywords?

You are now familiar with keyword/key phrases. Now Question is ‘where to Put these keywords?” here are some places where you can place these keywords

[1] Meta tags
[2] Title Tags
[3] Through out the Description on the page

Meta tags:-

Meta tags are invisible for Visitor and as you might know search engines like Yahoo, Google, MSN are Not providing weight to them to rank your page. But still you can place your keywords in Meta title, keywords and description section.

Title Tags:-

This is very important place where you should place your keyword for better ranking in search engine. The main Keywords must be here for which you are optimizing your site. Try to include its synonyms Key phrases / keywords also to receive traffic of related keywords. Example you can create your title like this way
Buy Music CDs online: The shop for buying audio CDs online
You are including your two targeted keywords here.

Description:

After title tags this is also one of the most important section where you can place your keywords. But don’t go over bound .density of keywords/ phrases should be 7-10%. Otherwise search engines will consider it as keyword stuffing and your rank will go down rather than improving

Other places where you can place these keywords:

Images: –

you can choose name of images like music_cds.gif audio_cds.jpg etc rather than 0545.gif and image.jpg! This will improve relevancy of your page for related keyword

Name of domain, Sub directory and sub domain:-

Before you choose any domain name, directory or sub directory you should consider your keywords/ key phrases and also choose them according to your target market.

Example:

Just look at my site. I selected sub domain for my site like http://directory-submission.inetzeal.com/ and http://link-building.inetzeal.com/ for targeting my keywords. Now see source code of Page http://directory-submission.inetzeal.com/ you will find that to improve relevancy of my page related to keywords I also kept name of my logo like this directory_submission_and_link_building.png .then I placed title like Directory submission service. And placed this keyword phrase in whole description.now my page is relevant for keyword phrase “directory submission”, “directory submission service”. Or ‘web directory submission” etc…

I have chosen every sub domain according to this to improve relevancy for specific keywords

I strongly recommend you to choose your sub domain or sub directory wisely. if you are creating just a page then you can select like this …./directory-submission.html because search engines text matching will match this keyword and will rank your site on top with your competitor

So, like this article? It took two days to write. Any feed back good or bad are always appreciated. You can contact me at http://inetzeal.com/contact_us.htm

Avoiding The Carriage Before The Horse

Marketing your practice on search engines is attractive to a lot of coaches. The traffic can be used to grow your subscriber list, sell products and get more clients. It can be a great way to grow your practice.

But it can also be a big disappointing nightmare.

A lot of businesses have pumped a lot of time and money into search engine marketing efforts (SEO) only to find them useless.

One main cause of this is “putting the carriage before the horse.”In other words, you attempt to get high search engine rankings before you have a solid, sound web site.

What often happens?

Your web site can get rejected or even banned from search engines if it is created by a web designer who is not aware of search engine technicalities.
You can waste your money when you try to register with search engines.

Some charge a non-refundable fee for submitting your web site and it does NOT guarantee you will be included. If your site isn’t well done, you get rejected lose your money.

Your pages become invisible. If your site isn’t coded the right way, then a lot of your content won’t get into the search engine for people to find or they are listed on page 1,334,203 … which virtually no one will visit.

On a more content-based level, if your site is not interesting and valuable, others will be hesitant to link to it. Good links are vital to getting good rankings.

If your site isn’t effective at converting traffic, you won’t sell as many products or attract as many clients. You won’t get as many newsletter subscribers.

With all the information and hype out there it can be easy to get wrapped up in the dream of high traffic leading to tons of business. I’ve seen others make this mistake. I’ve blundered myself.

So, how do you saddle-up your horse and oil the buggy to get the most from your search engine marketing?

There is a lot of information on developing a good web site. Be sure to focus special attention on the “marketing”of a good web site. Here are some main points to guide you.

• Make sure your site works “without search engines.”That is, make sure the traffic you are sending to it now, such as people from networking, are doing what you want on your site.
• Make sure your site is “search engine friendly.”This means to make sure that the code was designed to enable search engines to access the information on your site. This means getting a technically savvy search engine expert on hand during the creation of your site.
• Make sure you have a target audience. This is a good idea in general for your business, but it’s also critical that it’s expressed on your web site. Make sure your site is appealing to that target audience.
• Make sure your site answers basic usability questions such as, “What is this site about?”"Where do I begin?”and “Why should I be here and not somewhere else?”Answers to these questions will get your visitors moving through your web site.
• Make sure your site is easy to navigate. Sit down with at least one person who is in your target audience and watch them use your site. Seeing people do everything other than what you intended is often an eye-opening experience … even for the most advanced web designers.
• Make sure your site will capture your target audience in different “buy states.”Some visitors will be ready to buy into subscribing to your newsletter. Some will be ready to buy an ebook. Some will want to buy your one-on-one service.

Search engines are great. They can take your business to higher levels. But without solid horse and buggy combo, you may be in for a bumpy ride.

Search Engine Optimization isn’t rocket science

Introduction
So you have completed your website, great! Now how are you going to attract visitors? If you do not let them know you’re there, your visitors will never find find you. How are you going to sell products when users don’t know that you exist? SEO will make your website noticeable on the internet, and this small guide will help you bring targeted visitors to your website.

Optimize your website
The most important part of your website is quality content. Search engines (such as google) will crawl your content and index it into a database. If your content does not match the product you are selling, you will not attract targeted visitors. It is therefore very important that you choose your (key)words very carefully. For instance, if you sell calculators on the internet, make sure you mention the words calculator, calc, math and more calculator related words on your website. However, be careful not to mention the words too often, or search engines might think your website is spam, which will result in a very low rank (search engine position) within the search results.

Linkbuilding
When more websites link to your site, the more attention you will get from search engines, which results in higher ranking. When you create and receive links from other websites to your website, make sure important keywords are used as anchor keywords in the hyperlink. If you sell calculators online, use a link such as; “buy calculator” instead of “click here”.

Target your audience
Leave your link on website where your potential customers meet, for instance forums or discussion boards related to your website. Do not spam your website as this will be noticed by crawlers and will eventually result in a blacklist entry.

Offline targeting
Be sure to market your website offline as well. Advertise in local newspapers, tell everyone about your website, etc.

Add a sitemap to your website When you want search engines to crawl your entire website, the best thing to do is adding a sitemap to your website.

Make sure searchbots can read your website
Searchbots can only read plain text.websites. No matter how beautiful your flash animation is, searchbots cannot read the content inside that animation. Therefore, try to avoid Flash animations on your website when there is content involved. Same story goes for JavaScript.

Do NOT use frames
Never use frames to design your website! Lots of search engines simply skip webpages with frames since they are a difficult to be seen apart from each other by visitors. For instance, if your framepage would consist of menu.html and content.html and your visitor would land on content.html, he would not have a menu to navigate through your website.

Stay away from bad neighbourhoods and don’t spam!
Do not be tempted into leaving your link on abandonned guestbooks, forums or spam your link on every website you can find. Do not exchange links with spammy websites (such as pharmacy websites) either. The risk exists that google will classify your website as a spamsite and will block your website from any search results.

Looking To Buy Or Sell For Free?

OK, so you want to get into the business of online auctions. Maybe you want to sell, or maybe you are looking to buy. Either way, it doesn’t have to cost you a fortune. Actually, it doesn’t have to cost you anything. That’s right! There are many free auction sites online to choose from.

You’ve heard of eBay (unless of course you’ve been living under a rock for the past several years), but there are alternative free auction sites online to choose from. For example, AuctionFire.com charges no listing fees and allows sellers to link to their auction page straight from their website for free. They have tons of item categories to choose from, whether you are a seller or a buyer, and claim to be open to new category suggestions. Similar in its item categories is Bid-Alot.com where buying and selling is free, though they require sellers who sign up for free account to provide credit card information. They also offer a how-to-trade guide for their beginners. Baymore.com offers pictures of their home page featured items as well as message boards for both buyers and sellers.

Other free auction sites include BuySellTrades.com which offers free listings, classifieds and trading, secure shopping and bidding, free store setup, community forums for buyers and sellers and even a chat community. BidMonkey.com also offers communities and even ChatMonkey IM. Users have the opportunity to earn Monkey Bucks and purchase items without paying anything but shipping. Also, sellers have the chance to be featured on the main page—a guarantee that everyone who logs in will see your name!

Whether you want to buy or sell, there are free auction sites out there for you with extra bonuses such as free store setups and community forums and chats to help you along your way.

SEO Guide to Choosing a Good Website Host

There are many factors we look at when choosing a host. There are literally thousands of providers in the World and there are many, many considerations to take into account. I like to take a systematic approach and narrow down my field of possible hosting provider candidates before I even look at prices. I write down a list of criteria that I must place on choosing an appropriate website host and these form my requirements base.

1. I look at the required target audience and their geographic location – where does you target market live? And I seek to answer the question; do I want to rank more highly in a regional index rather than an International Index? For example, let’s say you sell blue widgets and you are based in Melbourne, Australia. Through your website you only ship to addresses within Australia. In this situation you would ideally want to be listed more prominently in the Australian regional search indexes – like google.com.au

Why do we need to consider this? The reason is simple, the search engines will rank you more highly in a regional index if you use a hosting provider based in region or country in question. So, this is our first factor

2. Dedicated IP Addresses or Shared. When it comes to search engine optimization this can have an impact so I like to mention it as early as possible in choosing candidates for website hosting provider. Some SEO professionals believe that not having a dedicated IP can have a detrimental affect in Google rankings but from my experience it sometimes does and it sometimes doesn’t. I have had some sites come in with high PR rankings on shared IP’s and others when I shifted to a new IP the PR of the site jumped, so this is still a bit of a mystery when it comes to Google rankings. My advice from a logical SEO perspective is that you never know with whom you are sharing an IP address; they could be running a porn site or a warez site, so logic says get the dedicated IP if you can.

3. Requirements of the coding and database for my website. As an example you might be using a Joomla website and with this comes certain requirements – we need PHP, a MySQL database, a web server (HTTP), sendmail (if you want to get/end email), and some kind of file transfer access (FTP or SFTP). These might seem like fairly common requirements but there are additional items you might want to consider in this segment like the operating system of the host, Linux or windows or what other services they have running on the server, Perl CGI-BIN access, SSI, .htaccess, telnet or SSH crontabs. This item covers all dependencies your website has on services and software to make it perform correctly on the web server.

4. Reliability, Speed and Uptime Guarantee. There is nothing that can hurt your business more than your website visitors coming to your web site only to find that it’s inaccessible. You lose a lot of credibility and possibly even sales through your website being down. You should consider removing a candidate web host if they do not provide you with at least 99.9% uptime. Many web hosts will provide guarantees like this and you should seek to find them. Many web hosts have redundant back-up systems for Internet access that are used when the main connection fails for some reason. Do your research and find out how many redundant connections they have to ensure less chance of the website being unavailable. Website “Redundancy” means if any of the normal Internet connections are interrupted then an alternate Internet connection will be used.

5. Customer Support. One of the most frequent complaints that people make about website hosts is the lack of customer and technical support. From my experience it does not matter if you are an expert or a novice in web hosting, you still need a web host with a good customer support system. Many web hosts offer email, online chat and phone support while others are available only via email. In most cases, email support is adequate, but you should be cautious if a potential web host has no phone number available in case of an emergency.

Response times to support questions can vary greatly. Some web hosts may take only a few minutes to get back to you while others take days or even longer. It’s important to find out what support any web host candidate provides. Searching on the Internet for references can often be of assistance in this regard.

6. Data Transfer – Traffic/Bandwidth. This is often referred to as “bandwidth”, which is the amount of data that can be transferred from or to your website. Basically look for a service which provides a good amount of traffic when compared to other services available. Also when choosing your website host you should ensure that the plan you are on can be expanded so that any foreseen increases in traffic can be accommodated accordingly.

7. Disk space. Again, take into consideration other hosting providers and find a service which provides a good amount of storage space in comparison. You might want to take into account any foreseen increases in storage space required also and factor the ability to be able to change the plan to accommodate these needs.

8. Price. This is always a huge consideration after all you could get a dedicated server for about $200 per month but for the most part this is not required for a new business website. The normal business website is not going to have 5000 visitors per day when it first starts up. Of course there are exceptions and if you are expecting this much traffic then you should get the dedicated server straight away. If however you are like most normal businesses and looking to gain a web presence then I would advise you to get a shared server with a dedicated IP. For something like this the prices can vary from $5 per month to $100 per month. Often you get what you pay for, so you should look at what services they provide for the money and weigh these up against the benefits. Often there are extra’s that are suitable for your particular needs, like Joomla support or content input or specialized hosting services.

Tips To Keyword Efficiency

Internet marketing is fast becoming the advertising method of choice of small businesses. They get maximum exposure and internet traffic from prospective purchasers and customers. In fact, according to ISP Interland, small home businesses and medium scale companies (SMBs) are getting returns that are significantly higher because of their online marketing strategy. Also, more than half of business owners are saying that the increase in their monthly revenues are due to online purchases. Aside from this, most of their offline sales are due to the influence of their websites and online marketing.

However, it is surprising that not all are using search engine optimization when in recent years, search engines are essential tools for buyers. Instead of companies and businesses looking for clients online, it is the buyers that are looking for worthy purchases on the internet. Studies and surveys show that over two-thirds of SMBs’ online and offline sales are fueled by online researches. It is therefore crucial for SMBs’ products, services, and company names to appear in these searches. Visibility in search engines is part of a good and efficient internet marketing plan, but merely appearing on these searches. What these SMBs need are effective keywords that draw customers in and not just visitors.

Visibility in search engines is effectively linked to credibility and brand awareness. Sally Falkow, an online marketing specialist suggests that optimizing press releases gives SMBs excellent visibility and keep them on the consumers’ radar. Falkow provides another useful tip: giving these releases “news” appeal gives them credibility. Aside from these general tips from a specialist, there are other guides that SMBs rely on in internet marketing.

Researching and testing keywords is an effective way to find the most popular combinations. Sites like WordTracker and Overture help in selecting keywords. Internet marketing optimization benefits from the use of phrases rather than a single word as keyword. Jill Whalen, search consultant for High Rankings, says that more specific keywords draw and attract real customers and not just people who are browsing around. It is also important to mix general terms and specific words as keywords; this way, SMBs draw in all prospective clients. It is also a good idea to include the company name and title tags as part of the keywords. The use of jargon is also a good idea especially if the SMBs’ products are industry-specific. Linking keyworded articles to other articles or sites is also an effective strategy. Lastly, it is vital that SMBs be honest about the service and product that they offer to avoid disappointed buyers. It is one thing to advertise a product and a completely different thing to exaggerate about its features.