SEO Success: Step One is Good Web Design

SEO Success: Step One is Good Web Design

by: Chesa Keane

Creating a welldesigned website is the first step in your internet marketing strategy. Once the website has been created and optimized, there are further techniques to employ that will drive traffic to your website for successful, longterm results. You wouldn’t consider opening a retail store in a major shopping mall without signage and you shouldn’t consider having a nice looking website designed without expanding your web presence in order to be found on the internet. But unless the website is designed correctly to begin with, followon SEO efforts will have limited results at best. The following strategy overview is designed to bring about productive SEO results:

Create an attractive website that is complementary to your company image and provides your targeted audience with information about you, your company and your products and/or services.

Design a website that has a calltoaction in the form of a purchase or providing you a contact, subscription or other commitment from your visitor.

Create a successful marketing arm for your overall business promotion and marketing campaign to promote your business, products and/or services with the many followon strategies that drive traffic to your website.

Become competitive in your industry and marketplace by meeting or exceeding the industry marketing standards and attracting a qualified audience for your products and/or services based on a strong reputation.

Generate and maintain or grow internet traffic to your website resulting in a conversion of traffic into sales of your products and/or services by evolving as your market demands.

This search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is composed of several processes in three stages: 1) Good web design, 2) Attracting attention from search engines and directories, and 3) Creating longterm popularity on the internet. However, it all starts with good web design. Website design is the foundation and beginning of a successful internet marketing strategy. It is true that there are websites on the internet that are unattractive but somehow seem to work. If there are aspects of these websites that work, imagine how well they could do if they simply followed basic design implementation tactics that resulted in a good image as well as simply pushed information out to the viewer.

These basics are essential for Tier 1 success:

Good web design will complement and enhance the company image and offline marketing campaign products creating a corporate branding if done well.

Easy, logical navigation that leads the viewer deeper and deeper into the web of information provided by the website will keep the visitor on your site longer and give you more time to sell your products or services.

Attractive but quickloading graphics that are pleasing to the eye and meaningful to the website will guide the viewer along the route you decide is important for explaining what you offer.

Keyword usage that is search enginefriendly depends on how the keywords are utilized, the placement of the keywords, the frequency of the most important keywords and their relevance to the website.

Website coding that is lean, clean and without errors will keep the search engines happy and your viewer seeing exactly what you intended to offer.

Relevance of content to the theme of the site is essential. Be concise, to the point and focus on your goals. If you have multiple themes and offerings, consider multiple websites to address the different markets, then tie each website back to the others by linking.

Changing content that changes frequently and stays fresh keeps your viewer returning and prevents the search engines from treating your website as if it were stale news. A stale site will be ranked lower by the search engines.

Content is king itกs all about content, content, content. But how that content is presented is what makes the difference.

(c)2005 TAO Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved.

About The Author

Chesa Keane of TAO Consultants has been involved with the internet for 10 years through internet consulting, web development and search engine optimization. Go to www.computergoddess.com for a free Search Engine Optimization Checklist.

This article was posted on September 14

by Chesa Keane

What Makes Podcasting Different

What Makes Podcasting Different

by: Mahmood Bashaash

When the signs of a new technology for developing web content appeared, nobody was aware about its growth speed. Now, after months, the podcasting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting) is going to be more and more popular and new publishers are developing content, based on this technology. They have found this method intuitive and attractive to clients. But regardless of the fascinating aspects of multimedia content, what other options make the podcasting different than other methods of providing and publishing content? Here, I have listed five major differences. Perhaps, at the time that you read this article, as this technology is going to be more mature day by day, new reasons could be added to my list. I leave it to the readers’ interests to search for new options.

In spite of other known methods of delivering content which are mostly based on Push technology, the podcasting is based on pull technology. In push technology, the content is delivered, directed from the source to the consumer. The consumer has no control over it. For example, when a radio channel starts at a specific time, follows based on a predefined and fixed program and ends at a specific time, the consumer has no chance or permission to alter any part of it. If you lose a part of the program, you won’t be able to relisten to it. You can not rewind it, stop it and think a while about the subject then replay it. This is push technology. But, if you could have control of the flow of the content, it would be pull. The consumer selects the content and controls it. Podcasting is a kind of pull technology. You download selected content and use it based on your own desire and full control over the flow of content.

However there are many notifying and automatic content syndication utilities, but you should always surf different websites for different content. This is your responsibility, as the consumer of the content, to go and visit the source of the content, on a website. But podcasting removes this step. Just one time, for ever, you choose your desire radio channel, news feed, poet channel or else. Then the aggregation software would be responsible to deliver the most recent casts right in your mobile MP3 player. After a while, you would even forget the address of websites and just listening to the downloaded up to date content would be your daily fashion.

Internet connection is not that much easy to be available every time and every where. So, using web contents would be impossible in many cases. When you are driving, climbing, resting and walking in the morning, you would be deprived of having access to web content. No web log, no web surfing, no radio channel and else. But, the downloaded podcasts are available in the MP3 player which could be accessible to you in different occasions and places, making casts ready to use. No laptop and phone line to connect to the Internet is needed. No clean place to sit and use your PC for surfing the web sites is required. Everything is loaded in your tiny MP3 player which is able to play hours without any need to electricity plugged.

The device for using podcasts is a tiny, every time and everywhere available MP3 player. The iPod is a brand which is owned by Apple company. It is why this technology is called Podcasting. The Pod is derived from iPod and cast from Broadcast. The iPod is not the only MP3 device that could be used. There are numerous providers of MP3 player devices that the consumer could use for listening to podcasts. These small devices are mobile. Consume very low energy to work. They are light and small. They are not expensive and are available with different capacities. MP3 players are very popular and you can see many people in the street that have hung them over their neck and are listening to the music. They are now part of the daily life. It makes the penetration ratio of the podcasts deeper than other type of contents that are basically dependant of having a PC, or laptop and Internet connection.

Possibility of developing podcasts is high. It is cheap and easy to develop. From very professional radio channel owners to amateur poets who have little audiences among their school friends would be able to easily develop podcasts. Just a personal computer with very basic multimedia capabilities, like, microphone input, audio output and software to record voice, combine with background music and convert to low quality and small size MP3 format. Then you need just a FTP account for uploading the MP3s. A very basic knowledge about RSS 2.0 standards is also required. For this last option, you can use current available feeds and alter them for your own needs. I just started using this method, as learning RSS 2.0 needs times. I copied an already created RSS file and edited it based on my own needs and it worked without having enough knowledge. To download your podcasts, the consumer should install very basic aggregator software, one like iPodder (http://ipodder.sourceforge.net) which is free. And finally a MP3 player software like iTune (http://www.itune.com) or Microsoft Media Player which is already installed on Windows operating systems.

Podcasting, like web logging, is rapidly growing and every day, new podcasts in different fields, from poetry to technology, from training to radio channels are being created and published on the Internet. There are special directories and websites that index podcasts and podcasting websites. You can start from one of these directories and reach hundreds and thousands available and known podcasts on the Internet. One of these directories is http://www.podcast.net which has categorized podcasts in a directory structure. It could be a good start point for your adventure.

About The Author

Mahmood Bashaash is the owner of SGNetway (http://www.sgnetway.com) company which is focused on developing web sites and web applications. SGNetway is specialized on managing outsourced projects and uses Microsoft .Net platform with C# to develop complicated web applications and web services. Mahmood Bashaash is the author of www.MahmoodB.com and www.appliedmarketingtips.com websites focused on Internet marketing tips and tricks. To access his articles, visit: http://www.mahmoodb.com. His native language is Persian and his web site is totally in Persian language.

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 14

by Mahmood Bashaash

Top 10 Reasons to Use a Blog to Publish Your Ezine

Top 10 Reasons to Use a Blog to Publish Your Ezine

by: Denise Wakeman

Blogs are the hottest thing going these days when it comes to marketing on the Internet. A blog is a delivery medium. Here are 10 reasons why you should deliver your ezine articles via a blog.

1. A blog is web based so you can update and post new articles anywhere, anytime. Itกs a dynamic medium that can be updated on a momentกs notice.

2. Subscribers can subscribe to your RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed and have your content delivered straight to their desktop. This delivery system bypasses spam filters and readers get exactly the content they want.

3. No web site to mess with. Itกs very inexpensive way to set up a web presence for your ezine. There are several sites where you can set up a free blog and others are very reasonably priced for the massive exposure you can get.

4. You can set up links for ads and your affiliate programs in side columns so you don’t have to include them in your ezine format.

5. You can set up a subscription form and send emails to your subscribers when new content is added.

6. Blogs link to other blogs which helps you create a viral marketing system and increases your exposure in search engines. Search engines LOVE text based, fresh content that is highly focused (key word rich).

7. You can use your ezine blog to become a trusted expert for your subscribers, by filtering content for them so they don’t have to visit hundreds of web sites.

8. You have an instant archive of all your articles. When you post an article, a new page and permalink is created. People can share that link with others and be sent directly to the article being referenced.

9. Readers can comment on your articles, which creates rapport and trust between you and your subscriber. Comments also add rich content to your site and again, helps your ranking in the search engines.

10. The bottom line is this: using a blog can help you attract more visitors who become subscribers and then eventually become clients.

For an ezine publisher, a blog compliments and can significantly ease the delivery of your ezine content. Essentially, like any web site, you have to promote it and encourage people to add your site to their RSS feed (thatกs another subject) or subscribe for updates through a subscription form. Thatกs why I put a subscribe form on my site – subscribers and get updates in anyway they want. You still need to submit to search engines and directories to drive traffic. If you already have an ezine subscriber database, my advice would be to post everything on the blog and then send a weekly email, or whatever your normal publishing schedule is, informing your subscribers when new content is posted.

Marketing is done in a conversational way and via the links on your blog. Announcements can be posted on the blog and to oneกs list. I see the blog and ezine database as complimentary…working together to increase your exposure and make it easier for people to get your information and build relationships.

About The Author

Denise Wakeman is Chief Implementor of Next Level Partnership, a company dedicated to partnering with you to take your business to the next level. Denise has nearly 20 years experience in small business administration and management. She has specific experience in leveraging Internet marketing systems to create awareness, build customer loyalty and increase the bottom line. Visit Deniseกs blog at http://www.biztipsblog.com to get tips and tactics for taking your business to the next level.

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 07, 2004

by Denise Wakeman

Easy Content Building For The Lazy Webmaster

Easy Content Building For The Lazy Webmaster

by: JP Lafferty

Free content builder.

Articles are the best way to add free content to your site. Thereกs hundreds if not thousands of article sites out there on the web that can be searched for free information.

The only problem I have with free articles is that you have to add the writers resource box to your site. Now this in itself is not a major problem. You could read several articles and then make your own in your own words.

This works well and is a quick and easy content building strategy that I would recommend to anybody. Also if you write your own content this way you should definitely consider posting a few of your own articles to the free article submission sites. This generates oneway links to your own site and over time can really build traffic to your site.

Just google กfree article submissionก or กarticlesก or anything of that nature to start building a list of article sites. The more you have the better.

Building content with ebooks

Free ebooks are a great source of free content and there is no shortage of them out there. Most free ebook sites have ebooks that were at one point being sold across the web. These are generally an excellent quality source of information.

To really benefit from ebooks you must first read them and take note of the main topics discussed. One way I find that works well is to write up a short report after reading the ebook and then building on that as I go through the ebook a second time. When I find something interesting I add it to the report in my own words. This is great for developing a better understanding of the material.

Of course after all this you may want to write a few articles about what you just read. As always you should share these articles with the rest of the web by submitting them to article sites.

This isn’t as tedious and time consuming as you might think. After your first or second go you will find yourself becoming more confident and this may well lead to you taking a more creative approach to your writing. In time you will be very efficient at writing your own reports and using them to create more articles and content for your websites.

I would advise you save every ounce of work you do. The more you write the more content and personal resources you have to pull from this makes it quicker and easier to create your own material. After a while you may realize you could put all your work into a ebook of your own and sell it:)

What should I write?

In short anything you want. Every human on this planet is a powerhouse of information. Even if your young you still have alot of experience to pull from.

Some people find that coming up with ideas of what to write about is quit easy but actualy writing it is the hard part. Others find the writing the easy part and the brainstorming the hard part.

If you fall into either camp then there is still hope for you, due to the fact that most humans will fall into either camp! Your not any different from me or anybody else out there. The best way to over come either problem is to get comfortable and just start writing. It is not hard!!

Pick something and start writing about it. What did you learn after a tragic event in your life is a great way to get your brain setup in the right direction. Pulling from personal experience realy helps to get you thinking and once that starts you will find it hard to turn your mind off.

Keeping it fresh.

The only way to keep information fresh is to write it in your own words. Add your persona to your material. Play with it before you publish it. Try to write as if you were explaining something to a friend. It comes across more respectful and easier to understand.

Also no matter what your writing about make sure you explain everything down to the letter. You may understand what your talking about but your reader wont always be as interested as you might think.

Always remember no matter where it is you can generaly go back and change it later. For instance if you have published a 5 page report to the web and your not happy with certain aspects of it well then you can take it down later and add in or delete whatever you want.

About The Author

JP Lafferty

To gain a helping hand in building content for your site head to http://imcontent.blogspot.com/

New content added daily. All content free of copyright.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 12

by JP Lafferty

Free Article Use on Your Web Site

Free Article Use on Your Web Site

by: C Brackney

If you are trying to drive traffic to your web site and have researched your options, you have probably reached one conclusion. Content is essential.

They say content is king and that mantra is oftrepeated for a reason. It’s true.

Content is a key component in driving topnotch search engine placement. Content attracts visitors and keeps them longer. Content can help to reinforce your sales message. For those involved in affiliate marketing, content can fill space and increase the perceived legitimacy of a site.

You want traffic and you need content. You have three means of acquiring it. You can author it yourself, purchase it from someone else, or cull and use free articles widely available on the internet.

Selfauthorship offers some appeal. After all, who knows your business the way you do? However, the significant amount of time and energy required to develop the written content you need may very well be disproportionate to its benefit—especially when you remind yourself that you are an entrepreneur, not a writer.

Odds are that you would prefer to leave the monotonous process of authoring articles to someone else while you made better use of your time finetuning the other aspects of your business.

You would prefer to have content authored by a genuine writer—someone who knows how to use the written word to maximum effectiveness.

The decision between purchasing materials and using free content may seem relatively simple. Free articles have many benefits.

They don’t increase your overhead. They are easy to find. They cover topics related to your site and products. There is no delay—you can access them immediately. Free content has some immediately visible advantages.

However, free articles have a significant and oftenoverlooked downside.

Initially, the competitive arena of the internet is populated by thousands like you who are looking for a content edge. Those who may be in direct competition for your traffic are thinking about content and may be reaching for free content, too.

The result? The same free content appears over and over again at site after site.

The reason content is so important is because it gives you an opportunity to attract surfers and keep them at your site. They are attracted to content that provides them with information they cannot readily find elsewhere and materials that are engaging and unique. A chief component of content’s power is diluted by its repetitive use in hundreds of locations.

Additionally, free content is generally advertising in disguise. Unfortunately, it’s not your advertising. Authors of free content are not writing out of love—they are writing for their own profit.

Take for instance, this free article. I am seeking to provide you with information about free materials and their weaknesses. However, I am not performing this function out of a sense of civic duty. I write custom content for web sites. My URL will appear at the bottom of this article. I am seeking to persuade readers to consider purchasing unique content and, of course, to consider using me as their supplier.

All free articles are advertising copy, in a sense. Do you really want to use someone else’s advertising on your site? If your visitors read the content, and the content is wellwritten, it should spur them to at least consider leaving your site to find out more about the author, the ideas the author mentions, or the products and services to which the author alludes.

Content should serve to make your site sticky—keeping surfers on your site. Free content may perform the opposite function by drawing them to other venues.

Third, free articles are not written with you in mind. Free articles may have been written with particular keywords or concepts in mind, but they were not constructed for your site with your specific needs under consideration. Their tone and content are unlikely to be a perfect fit for your needs, further decreasing their effectiveness.

Using a custom content provider allows you to receive all of the benefits of great content while avoiding the pitfalls associated with free materials.

You can hire a professional writer to produce entertaining and informative content that is completely unique to your web site. The result is better search engine placement and a reason for visitors to come back again and again—and to stay longer when they do.

Custom articles also promise a complete commitment to your site and your needs. The author can produce exactly what you need and do so in a way that reinforces your message and your objectives. It can blend seamlessly with your site and help presell your product or service in ways free articles never could.

There are costs, of course. You will need to pay your writer and you will have some period of brief delay before your content is ready. However, if you work with an effective content provider who understands the nature of internet business, costs should be reasonable and turnaround quick.

Free articles seem like a wonderful solution to the content gap from which so many sites suffer. Unfortunately, free articles fail to deliver the full advantage of great content and may actually reduce the effectiveness of your site. The alternative, a professional internet content provider, is the best way to insure your content will do what you need it to do.

About The Author

C. Brackney is an internet content provider. Content One provides unique custom content of all types for web sites.

http://content1.bravehost.com

[email protected]

Copyright 2005 C. Brackney/Content One. All rights reserved.

This article was posted on February 05

by C Brackney

Free Content for Individuals

Free Content for Individuals

by: Ron Tower

Free content added to Web pages using an HTML fragment is usually intended for Web sites. But why can’t individuals also use it? It will be useful for them as well as promoting the Web site of the content provider.

There is a lot of free content available. You can get headlines, weather, search forms, jokes, cartoons, a word or quote of the day, tickers, and much more. For examples of free content available as HTML fragments, see Free Sticky (http://freesticky.com). Webmasters can paste the HTML into a page on their site, but what can an individual without a Web site do?

One approach is to have a simple HTML file on your machine that acts as a container of the free content. For example, see the Free Content Container (http://www.sugarloafsw.com/ia/freecc.html), a simple HTML file that already includes some free content and explains how to add or replace that content with content you like. You can just save it to your computer and then access it from your disk to create your own very simple information aggregator.

Go to http://www.sugarloafsw.com/ia/freecc.html. Click on Modify Me to see how you can modify the file. Save the file to your computer using File Save As from your browser being sure to use the กHTML file onlyก option. Edit the file with a text editor such as notepad and you will see that it is a simple table. HTML from free content Web sites can be simply pasted into the file at the places indicated by the comments.

Once you understand the basics of your container, you can do searches on the Web for กfree contentก and create different HTML files with different content. You can use this yourself or send the HTML file to friends as an email attachment and they can also use what you found from their computer, no need for a Web site.

Another approach is to get an information aggregator that supports HTML fragments. The HTML fragments can be placed on personal portal pages along with other content such as RSS feeds. See http://www.sugarloafsw.com/ia/ia.html for more on the use of information aggregators to allow individuals to use free content.

The final approach is to take the plunge and get your own Web site. There are several free options available, such as GeoCities (http://geocities.yahoo.com). You can add your modified Free Content Container to your site along with your other content.

About The Author

Ron Tower is the President of Sugarloaf Software and is the developer of Personal Watchkeeper, an information aggregator supporting a variety of ways to summarize the Web.

http://www.sugarloafsw.com

This article was posted on December 08, 2004

by Ron Tower

Success Starts with Articles

Success Starts with Articles

by: Jason A. Martin

No one can logically argue against the fact that content is king. Web sites that are nothing more than glorified link farms or ad spiels must work harder and invest more money to gain visitors—almost none of them return. To keep users returning, there must be a reason. Articles can serve two major roles in maintaining a successful website—content and promotion. Just minutes from now you could be on your way to building a more successful business. Article creation and submission is one of the greatest promotional tools ever.

CONTENT

Every web site that wants to succeed at competing for eyeballs must have solid content to offer. Otherwise, the visitor is off in mere seconds—never to return. Make the visitor glad they visited and you have potentially created a loyal user.

Think about some of the more popular web sites on the Internet. Why would you visit them? Why would you return? Let’s look at a popular news site, FoxNews.com. I visit Fox News to read the latest news stories. I go back because I know there will be fresh articles waiting for me. I visit my favorite writing web site because I know there are great articles there and new ones appear often.

Do you see a theme? I am not going to a web site that is about other web sites or is a link farm—I am going to the source of what I desire. These sources not only receive my attention but have a good chance at selling me something. Over time, my trust in these web sites increases and I am more open to what they have to offer. It is important to offer quality content to hook the visitors in and update often to give them reasons to return. Your web site is an extension of you and your company. How visitors perceive your web site is how they will perceive you. This is why it is important that articles be well written. Anything less will compromise your perceived image.

PROMOTION

There is no easier way to establish links and incoming traffic to your web site than writing articles—or having someone write them for you. It could take months or longer for a web site owner to gain a significant amount of relevant links on other web sites. However, it can take days, with no effort, to accomplish the same feat with one well crafted article. The process is extremely simple.

Write the article or have it written for you.

Submit the article to article distribution services.

Start working on the next article or have a writer do it for you.

Once your article is out there it will work itself onto web sites across the Internet, which will end up generating incoming links for your web site. Moreover, this will increase your link popularity, which is very important for great search engine rankings. It would be wise to write articles that pertain in some way to your own web site. The odds of people, who are reading an article on engine rebuilding, being interested in your web site about quilting is rather slim. There are many article submission web sites and groups on the Internet. Some good article submission web sites are: articlefactory.com, ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, and ideamarketers.com. Don’t forget to use the article on your own web site.

The promotion world is waking up to this article creation technique and in time the competition will be fierce. The time to get started is right now. One well crafted article can easily be worth thousands of dollars in promotional efforts. Don’t let not being able to write great articles keep you from getting ahead—visit JasonAMartin.com to have articles written for you. You simply can not put a price on the possible results from article distribution. Just wait until you experience it for yourself.

©2005 Jason Andrew Martin LLC

About The Author

Jason A. Martin has been conducting business on the Internet for 11 years. He is a freelance writer on many topics and is currently working on obtaining a degree in Journalism and Law.

His official blog, which contains more articles you can use for your web site, can be viewed at: Jason A. Martin

jasonamartin.com

This article was posted on February 24

by Jason A. Martin

The Best Advertisement For Your Business

The Best Advertisement For Your Business

by: Mark Daoust

It is no secret among internet marketers that writing articles is a great way to market your website. With all the article distribution services and all the websites looking for free, unique content, writing a quality article can bring you more links to your website in one day than an entire month of working out link exchanges and submitting to directories. The benefits of writing articles have been written about time and time again. Yet in order to enjoy the benefits of article writing, your article must first be accepted by the publishers who receive your submissions. This article will focus on a few key points to help increase your chances of getting your article accepted by the Internet’s top publishers.

Proofread Your Own Writing

Proofreading is very time consuming. If you want your article to be widely accepted, it is your job to make the publisher’s job easier. The first step in making the publisher’s job easier is to check, double check, and triple check your spelling and grammar. If you have someone that can review your article, have them read it over. Tell this person to look for grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and poorly worded sentences. They will be able to point out mistakes that you may never have seen. When you write an article there is a tendency of getting overly familiar with the content and thus you could miss a glaring mistake in your writing. Consider the following exercise by reading aloud what is written:

London

in the

the

spring

x x x

What did you read? If you identified that the word ‘the’ is written twice, than you can consider yourself one of only 5% of people who get this exercise correct. 95% of people who read this exercise only see ขLondon in the spring X X Xข. (If you still do not see it, read it aloud again, but this time point to each word as you read it.)

The point of this exercise is to show you just how easy it is to miss obvious mistakes. Add in the element of familiarity with the writing and you are likely to miss even more mistakes. By asking someone else to read over your work, you greatly reduce the chances of missing a glaring error in your writing.

Rule to Remember: Proofread Your Own Writing, and then Proofread Again

Offer Something of Real Value

Articles are an incredible source of free traffic and free advertising for your business. However, articles are not supposed to be advertisements themselves. There is nothing you can do to get a publisher to delete your article faster than writing an article that is nothing more than a longwinded ad copy.

If you want to get your article published, once again you must get into the publisher’s mind. The publisher is always looking to offer his or her readers with fresh, insightful, and helpful information. Commentaries on industry trends, useful strategies, tutorials, observations and theories all make good articles. As an owner of a business, reviewing one of your products, offering a teaser of the information you sell, or blatantly marketing your products by including your hyperlink throughout the article makes for a horrible article that will likely not be published.

Think back to the time when you first started your online venture (this may not be very long ago) and remember how thirsty you were for good, quality information. When writing your article, remember how valuable this information was to you when you found it. Every author has the right to a resource box which serves as your advertisement; if you prove to the reader that you are an expert in your field and give them information that only you can provide, this will serve as a stronger advertisement than if you spend 2,000 words on a longwinded, selfpromotional article.

Finally, when writing your resource box, it is best to be as concise as possible. Resource boxes that appear to be about as long as the article themselves show that the author has no concern about the content of his or her article. Limit the number of links you put into your resource box to no more than three links and keep the resource box to no more than four or five lines.

Rule to Remember: Write a Good Article, not a Good Advertisement

Be Clear and Concise

Many people fall into the trap of thinking they have to develop an eloquent, graceful writing style in order to be published. What these people seem to forget is that an article is written with one main point: to deliver information. Be concise, be clear, and be direct. When writing your article, you should actually aim to be slightly boring with your writing style. What is slightly boring to you is probably very clear and direct to the reader.

It is important to note that most online publishers have much more to deal with than the writing styles of the authors who submit articles to them. Publishers are more concerned with grammar, spelling, and content than they are with how eloquently a writer can make his or her point. One thing that a publisher will take notice of, however, is a writer who has a confusing and difficult to follow writing style.

Your article should encourage readers to read through the entire article. If a reader gets a few lines into the article, or even a few paragraphs, and finds themselves confused, you can be sure that they will never get to your resource box and thus never visit your website. To keep a reader interested in your article, give them quality information and give it to them directly and clearly. A reader will only continue to read an article if they believe there is a good chance that they will gain something further by finishing the article. Although it may be counterintuitive, boring writing does just that.

Rule to Remember: Being Boring is Better than Being Confusing

Writing good articles is not difficult. When writing your article, think first about what publishers are looking for in an article. Focus on your grammar, spelling, clarity, conciseness, and content. Remember that your article should actually help people beyond just selling your product or service. Offer valuable information to your readers and they will pay you back tenfold. Offer valuable information to a publisher’s readers and they will be certain to publish your article and provide you with the best free advertisement for your business.

Copyright 2004 Mark Daoust

About The Author

Mark Daoust is the owner of http://www.sitereference.com. Discuss this article further at http://forums.sitereference.com/t120/s.html.

This article was posted on November 25, 2004

by Mark Daoust

A Successful Link Exchange

A Successful Link Exchange

by: Michael McLaughlin

Interested in boosting your link popularity, raising your Google PR, and improving the amount and quality of your traffic? Then discover the ancient secrets of a successful link exchange!

The practice of effective link exchanges has nearly been extinguished by the extensive amount of spam email. I plan to help webmasters who are interested in real effective and professional link exchanges reach there goal.

What is going to make you the most amount of sales if you are trying to sell fishing equipment? A link from an outdoor hobby website or a link from a bubble gum corporation? I think the answer is straightforward, the outdoor hobby website. The trick is to know your market and understand your customer. What age group would your customers be, and what other type of website would they look at if they were interested in your product?

Now, put yourself in your customer’s feet, what would you search for if you were interested in your product? Type that search phrase into a search engine now and look at what results come up. Disregard the competition and look at the other websites.

I suggest you rate these websites in your head on the following criteria: relevance, design, content, and navigation. I ordered them by how heavily you should consider them. I already discussed relevancy; because of course you want to bring customers to your website instead of clickhappy people.

You may be asking yourself what a website’s design has to do with a link exchange. Well over the years I have noticed one trend, which is that websites with a very nice design tend to prevail faster than others. Know one wants to visit a website and have to wince to read the text. Content on the other hand is what brings the readers. Content can substantially improve the quality of your website because the internet is about information and if you have what people are looking for they will find you! Not the other way around.

Content is king, how many times has that been said? And it still holds true, content is what get websites links back to them, which in turn raise a websites presence on the internet. So why not have a link from a content website, in opposition to just another website trying to sell something?

And of course a websites navigation must be search engine friendly, because you will prefer to have the location of your link to be indexed by search engines.

Basically you should try to pick your link partners by first eliminating the irrelevant links, and then choose a website that is search engine friendly and has the potential to grow! And remember look for quality websites not high PR websites.

One of the first signs of maturity in a person’s life is to be able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. For example you hit a car in the parking lot and don’t leave insurance information, you later feel bad because you know if that was your car that got hit you would be angry about it. Get the point? Good now apply that to writing emails; put yourself in your reader’s shoes.

Do you want to open another email that is titled ขlink exchangeข or would you perhaps prefer to read something a bit more refreshing and alluring entitled ขour partnershipข or ขlink opportunityข be creative but don’t stick with the old link exchange title that is highly overused.

The content of this email, however you entitled it should be very professional and businesslike. Use proper punctuation and complete sentences, also remember to compliment part of there website that is distinguishable so they identify that you actually visited it instead of simply finding there email address in cyberspace.

Don’t trust what mom says ขit’s what’s on the inside that counts.ข True content does help a website grow, but rarely do I trust a websites content if its design is pitiful. Remember be picky when choosing a link partner, personalize your letter, and be professional. As a final point do not partake in spam email!

About The Author

Written by: Michael McLaughlin at http://www.webmastershed.com – webmaster forum, for more articles by this author please visit: http://www.webmastershed.com/articles

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 27

by Michael McLaughlin

Googleกs New SEO Rules

Googleกs New SEO Rules

by: John Metzler

Google has recently made some pretty significant changes in its ranking algorithm. The latest update, dubbed by Google forum users as กAllegraก, has left some web sites in the dust and catapulted others to top positions. Major updates like this can happen a few times a year at Google, which is why picking the right search engine optimization company can be the difference between online success and failure. However, it becomes an increasingly difficult decision when SEO firms themselves are suffering from the Allegra update.

Overoptimization may have played the biggest part in the dropping of seoguy.com from the top 50 Google results. Filtering out web sites that have had readability sacrificed for optimization is a growing trend at Google. It started with the Sandbox Effect in late 2004, where relatively new sites were not being seen at all in the Google results even with good keyword placement in content and incoming links. Many thought it was a deliberate effort by Google to penalize sites that had SEO work done. Itกs a few months later and we see many of the กsandboxedก web sites finally appearing well for their targeted keywords.

With 44 occurrences of กSEOก on the relatively short home page of seoguy.com, and many of them in close proximity to each other, the content reads like a page designed for search engine robots, not the visitor. This ranking shift should come as no surprise to SEO professionals as people have been saying it for years now: Sites should be designed for visitors, not search engine robots. Alas, some of us don’t listen and this is what happens when search engines finally make their move.

One aspect of search engine optimization that is also affected in a roundabout way is link popularity development. After observing the effects of strictly relevant link exchanges on many of our clientกs sites recently, weกve noticed incredibly fast #1 rankings on Google. It seems Google may be looking out for links pages designed for the sole purpose of raising link popularity and devalues the relevance of the site. After all, if a links page on a real estate site has 100 outgoing links to pharmacy sites, there has to be a lot of content on that page completely unrelated to real estate. Not until now has that been so detrimental to a siteกs overall relevance to search terms. It goes back to the old rule of thumb: Make your visitors the top priority. Create a resources page that actually contains useful links for your site users. If you need to do reciprocal linking then keep it relevant and work those sites in with other good resources.

Keeping up with the online search world can be overwhelming for the average small business owner or corporate marketing department. Constant Google changes, MSN coming on the scene in a big way, and all the hype around the new Become.com shopping search function can make heads spin. But just keep things simple and follow the main rules that have been around for years. Google, as well as other search engines, won’t ever be able to ignore informative, well written content along with good quality votes from other web sites.

About The Author

John Metzler is the cocreator of Abalone Designs, Inc. www.abalone.ca, a Search Engine Optimization company in Vancouver, Canada. He has been involved in web design and web marketing since 1999 and has helped turn Abalone Designs into one of the top SEO companies in the world.

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 28

by John Metzler

Video Game Violence…What Do You Think About It?

Video Game Violence…What Do You Think About It?

by: Daniel Punch

Ever since video game designers were able to put red pixels on their imaginary characters that had recently deceased, there have been people crusading against their subversive ways. The outrage at video games seems to be cyclic, fading very briefly before exploding into the public eye once more with renewed frenzy. The controversy seems to have sparked up again in recent times, with numerous crimes being blamed on the corruptive influence of video games. There have also been various กcontroversiesก surrounding recent video games and their content in the areas of both violence and sexuality.

The first game to receive widespread criticism and media attention was the martial art fighting game กMortal Kombatก. This game included large spurts of blood emitted from attacks and also กFatalitiesก that could be performed on stunned opponents after their defeat. These Fatalities were gruesome animation sequences showing the victorious player killing their defeated opponent in a vast variety of ways. Gamers revelled in this new experience and the controversy surrounding the violence caused mass hype that informed the less informed gamers that the game was out there. Consequently gamers played the new game just to find out what all the talk was about, thereby greatly increasing revenue.

One of the largest sparks of controversy has been the recent กHot Coffeeก modification for กGrand Theft Auto: San Andreas (GTA:SA)ก. This involved unlocking a sexually oriented minigame that had been removed from the game before release, although evidently not from the source code. The creators of the game, Rockstar Entertainment, obviously realised that this particular part of the game was not appropriate for the video gaming public and removed access to it. An enterprising fan of the game found out and modified the original code to give access to the content once again. Lawsuits were brought against Rockstar for including such content in their game, although the validity of the lawsuit has to be questioned. If the game is simply purchased and played as intended by the developers, this admittedly tasteless and inappropriate mini game would never be encountered. It is not until the usermade modification is downloaded and installed that the player is able to access the content.

Regardless of whoกs to blame, กGTA: SAก was rerated in America and banned from sale in Australia. Oddly enough the gratuitous and encouraged violence in the game went largely unnoticed in the wake of the กscandalousก sex scenes involving clothed, cartoonesque people.

When examined objectively almost all games contain a certain amount of violent content. The kidfriendly bright and colourful กMarioก games by Nintendo feature a character stomping on animated creatureกs heads. In fact the majority of games, even childrenกs games, involve the protagonist crusading against an enemy horde of some sort and generally กdisposingก of them in some manner, whether it be striking them with a weapon or body part (feet, hands, possibly a tail depending on the nature of the character). The only real stand out difference is that in a childrenกs game the กbadก characters will generally bounce backwards in a cute manner and explode with a humorous puff sound (or simply disappear) whereas in a game oriented towards older mature players, the characters are more likely to be (somewhat) realistic, spraying a gusher of red upon their demise.

Whenever some young person somewhere commits a violent crime these days it seems to get blamed on a video game, from กDuke Nukemก and กQuakeก being accused for the Columbine High massacre, to a more recent incident involving a group of minors attributing their violent actions to the กMortal Kombatก video games. Without any solid evidence either way itกs hard to say whether or not video game violence actually has much of an influence on players. To really be sure youกd probably have to have a control group of isolated children that have never seen a violent movie or played a bloodthirsty video game. History does however show that brutal crimes were committed long before video games or even movies came into existence.

Children are quite easily influenced by something that they’re excited about and Iกve seen this happen a lot. Playing a wrestling video game with a group of eight year olds often leads to the eight year olds screaming raucously and trying to pin each other down on the ground. Preteens will often punch and kick their way out of a cinema in terrible combat stances after having viewed a martial arts movie. The current content rating system in place is not geared towards consumer restriction; it is largely aimed at simply informing the public about what they are going to experience. Legal restrictions are not actually put in place until the higher, more severe ratings like in xrated films. Parents, guardians, and society in general need to start taking an interest in who is viewing certain types of content. Instead of complaining about the entertainment a child is enjoying, the parent could be there at the beginning looking at the rating that is printed clearly on the packaging of all entertainment. A simple กI don’t think thatกs suitable, how about this game? It has a lizard!ก distracts the child a surprising number of times. In my experience, children genuinely just want people to take an interest in what they’re interested in, not just murmuring indistinctly, กYes dear, thatกs nice.ก as the child installs the newest violent game.

What about the children that are playing the games in the restricted ratings categories? The only way that they can even get the game into their possession is if a parent (or someone of legal age) purchases the game for the child, or if the store disregards the rating guidelines in place and sells it to them regardless. Either way the fact that a gameกs content has fallen into a minorกs hands is not the fault of the game developer.

Iกm not out to defend the integrity of artistic vision presented in video games as many other gamers are. Frankly there seems to me to be little artistic integrity in rendering blood that is ever more liquid in appearance. I do however enjoy playing some games that are quite violent in nature and in many cases the violent nature of the game increases my enjoyment. Video games are escapism, thereกs (arguably) no point in playing a video game that simulates something you can just walk outside and do (and yet sports games somehow consistently sell in large numbers… curious…). Interestingly I have never yet felt the overwhelming desire to break down into a kung fu stance and commit murder. Perhaps more important than simply banning questionable content in video games would be studying why this content is so appealing to todayกs society?

About The Author

Daniel Punch

M6.Net Web Helpers

http://www.m6.net

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 30

by Daniel Punch

How To Run A Money Making Website

How To Run A Money Making Website

by: Ronald Gibson

All Internet business owners want their websites to be profitable.Here are a few tips that could help you make your website a profitable one.

1. Address your targeted audience on your business site. Example: กWelcome Internet Marketersก or กGreetings Fellow Dog Loverก. If you have more than one, address them all.

2. Make sure your content and graphics are relevant to your websiteกs theme. You wouldn’t want to use a bird graphic on a business web site.

3. In order for a website to be profitable, it must have repeat visitors. Offer your visitors incentives to get them to return to your website. You could give them new content, ebooks, software, ezine, etc. Alert visitors by email when you add new content to your web site. This will remind people to revisit your web site.

4. Bend over backwards to answer any questions that your visitors might have. Publish a FAQs for your business, product and web site. It should feature questions about multiple parts of your business. If the FAQ does not answer their question, then you should provide a way for visitors to contact you on each web page. L.ist your email address, fax number and phone number.

5. Give people the option of viewing your web site offline. Offer it either by autoresponder or printer friendly version.

6. Make sure a least 50% of your content is original. Another option is to offer your visitors something else original like software or an online utility.

7. Make sure all links on the navigational bar are clickable. If people can’t get to where they want to go, then they will more than likely leave.

8. Organize you web site in logical and profitable sequence. You don’t want to give your potential customers a freebie before they learn about the product(s) you’re selling.

The above tips should help you to make your website a profitable one for years to come.

Copyright © 2005 Ronald Gibson

About The Author

Ronald Gibson is a Web Designer and Web Marketer. He is the Webmaster of AffiliateUtopia.com, which offers information about some of the best money making opportunities on the Web. For more information, visit: http://www.affiliateutopia.com/ and http://www.affiliateutopia.com/blog/.

This article was posted on August 03

by Ronald Gibson