Your Business At Stake

Your Business At Stake

by: Daira Winkler

http://www.esvon.com/pg/consulting/c_articles/ads/

(c) by Daria Winkler

We do believe in healthy sense of paranoia. Not the paranoia, which makes us feverishly try to distinguish ourselves from our competitors, but the paranoia, which makes us feel the iron hand of competition and gives us the stimulus to constantly develop and improve.

It is difficult to survive in the media, where everybody claims he is the best and where somebody is indeed better than you. It prompted us the idea of carrying out a kind of analysis of the products offered on the Web, similar to Esvon Classifieds. In no shape of form, we are going to judge or criticize the web applications, listed below.

The search engine has brought us to the following software products:

http://www.interactivetools.com/products/realtymanager/

The first impression is that Realty Manager is quite a professional solution. Scanning the pages, and studying this product more carefully we learn that the script is realized using Perl and text files and its functionality is really worth being paid for. PHP/MySQL and Perl/text files solutions don’t have any distinction in kind when it comes to their functionality. But PHP code is more consistent and modular and it runs faster. The advantage of PHP is also the ubiquity of web server platforms supporting PHP and MySQL. Fact: Over 25% of the internetกs web sites are running PHP and nearly 63% of the internetกs web sites are running the Apache web server, so give it a thought.

Those, who have encountered the problem of a script running slowly, probably know, that the faster grows your database of users, the slower your script works. In the end, it just breaks. (it happens because it is based on text files). Thus, such solution can be used only when the web site you are going to build is simple.

Moreover, with their license you are not allowed to edit scripts; it can be a disaster for you when you want to customize your solution.

The web site itself is very informative; it seems to give the overall description of the application. In general, this software script is enough if your web portal needs don’t go far. Yet, it is quite simple and friendly but has much fewer functions than Esvon Classfieds does.

http://www.mojoscripts.com/products/mojoestate/index.shtml

The web site layout and the product presentation resemble a bit the previous one. The application is Perl/MySQL solution, which however costs less. The price, as we have already indicated, is not a No.1 factor for making decision. But $199 seems nevertheless too little for a powerful script with ขtons of featuresข.

MojoEstate includes a lot of features: internal mailbox system, saved search system, multimedia file gallery, advanced admin and member panels, powerful search facility, detailed whoisonline display, autogenerated thumbnails for uploaded images, etc.

We won’t enumerate all the product features, described at the web site. When a visitor reads the content, it is often enough for him to know what is described. But developers and more competent users know that it’s just a surface. When it comes to the product in action, they might face with the problem of handling extreme amounts of traffic the database queries, which can bring your server down. Some customers just may skip this peculiarity.

The product is also presented in a wellstructured manner and seems to be a good costeffective solution for budgetminded people.

http://www.smartisoft.com/products.php?product=phpBazar

We see that the script manufacturers have preferred PHP code in this case. As we have already mentioned, we also consider it to be better for such kind of applications in view of its open source technology and the fact that it is firmly implanted in the LAMP family (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) of open source web development platform technologies.

The given page describes the product features. It is a long and detailed fivescroll list. The demo is actually well presented, yet has an erotic shadow. If you are looking for a PHP script to build exactly this kind of web portal, then you are all set. But if you are in search for a program, say, for a real estate site, such demo confuses a bit… Driven by common sense you get back and click ขI am not over 18ข. I was a bit taken aback when I was redirected to a disney web site.

http://www.eclassifieds.net/products/index.html

We should surmise that this solution looks professional. The abundant choice of editions is a good prove to it. Still, the researches show, that the bigger the selection is, the more difficult it is to make a decision. And it is really so. Say, you decide that you need one solution and proceed to the following edition to make sure you did not skip the features that are necessary to your online business. And it turns out that you did. You change the decision. While you proceed to the third one, you might discover that it has the features of the second edition, but lacks for the features of the first. You feel frustrated.

Yet, you can see the demo of every edition directly without filling in any web form before it. It contributes to the web site popularity and makes the product more available.

The script is also realized using Perl and text files and the customer support of the manufacturer costs $75 $100 per hour. Maybe this rate is the confirmation that the company really guarantees an irreproachable performance of their product, and you won’t have to refer to them too often; but support is required more often than you might think, since the situations differ.

http://www.esvon.com/products/cl/

Of course, we do pay attention to what the program looks like, but its internal mechanism does play a great role. The Esvon specialists have seen to this. You can’t see it, but you can be sure Esvon Classifieds script runs well and allows you to avoid the typical problems, the web applications owners might encounter.

The well thought out and powerful script, its modularity and flexibility are the best qualities distinguished by our customers. It is difficult, however, to judge ourselves, thus, we will enumerate the features, which were marked by our customers as practically unique in comparison to other similar solutions:

Static HTML pages generation allows you to have the fast web site, indexed in search engines by more keywords and much more accessible to web surfers.

The script allows you to handle much more site traffic/visitors queries, then other existing applications; the fast running PHP code is also marked as an important peculiarity of the program. Just as an example, Esvon Classifieds has unique category tree building engine: it is very fast, with only 2 SQL queries to build an unlimitedlevel category tree with ads amount per category calculation; it will ensure you that your server won’t be brought down by amount of database queries executed!

While we were preparing this article, we received one more email from our customer, where he compares our product with GeoClassifieds (http://geodesicsolutions.com/products/index.htm), and marks the following features as award winning in Esvon Classifieds: template system, Gd or imagemagick thumbnail images, very good support, reviews writing and voting, blocks engine, absolutely custom database fields settings.

http://geodesicsolutions.com/products/index.htm

GeoDesic product features are very attractive. Here it is: the case, when you should go deeper. A typical user can claim that it doesn’t matter, what’s inside; it just should work and do what he expects from it. But the deeper approach reveals, that the script is not able to process properly growing database queries, its templates are not very flexible, it runs slow and it is unable to generate static content.

Using such script you take risk to be very soon removed from the shared web server, since your traffic might exceed the maximum allowed server load limit very quickly.

Thus, be meticulous while choosing the script fro your online business.

We hope, that this analysis has contributed to your knowledge of what you are looking for on the Web. In the end, you decide, we just help you to see deeper; we hope that we do.

About The Author

Daria Winkler is Cofounder and Principal of Esvon LLC (http://www.esvon.com/) information technology company, providing cost effective software development and outsourcing services to our clients and professional classified ads software for website owners.

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 18, 2003

by Daira Winkler

The Merchant Navy and the Internet

The Merchant Navy and the Internet

by: Ieuan Dolby

A web site dedicated to the writings of the sea, ships and all those that sail on them? It sounds strange as who knows what the Merchant Navy is or what those at sea actually do all day, those who work in the Industry that is. Isn’t the Merchant Navy something to do with fishing or fighting? What is interesting about that? ขGet a real jobข, some would say and others would ask ขand so why haven’t you got a sun tanข. So why would anybody be interested in a web site filled with things that nobody is interested in – beats me.

If one would look through the endless Marine and Nautical webs sites available or if one was to go to a bookshop and look at the available literature on the subject this is what you might find. Ten books on the ขTitanicข, dozens of ขhow to sail around the world in a plastic boat with a sailข DIY books and a couple on ขwhen I was shipwrecked or and attacked by piratesข biographies. This is all good stuff and I must admit to do with the sea and ships, but oh so very long ago! The Merchant Navy of today is not about sails and pirates, it is not about sinking ships and unqualified people sailing the world for adventure, it is not about scurvy and cannibals in foreign lands and it is definitely not about fishing and catching the nearest ferry to France!

Merchant Navy really started to be recognized as early as the Fifteenth Century. This was when hard men in little boats, battled the oceans in the name of exploration. กYes, dear, I will be back in ten years or so, be goodข, would be heard throughout the land. From these times the Merchant Fleet grew into the heart of the British Empire, bringing back all that Tea from China, the spices from the Orient, the fruits from Morocco and the gold from everywhere. Sailing ships became the heart of the spider web that connected Britain to its colonies and outlying Islands. Heroic men set forth to bring back to the British people news and exotic goods that had become so much in demand.

Last Century sailing ships became steam ships and steam ships became fuel oil burning ships. Britain became in the middle of the last century the largest shipbuilder in the world with well over 70% of the ships being built in places like Newcastle, on the Clyde, in London and other famous Maritime Ports and Harbors of the UK. Britain also had the largest Maritime Fleet in the world and dominated Trade everywhere with its powerful supply of home built ships and rufty tufty seafarers. Yes, not long ago Britain was dependent on a massive fleet of ships importing and exporting goods and keeping the Empire together. During these times families all knew what the Merchant Navy was either through having family members at sea or through working in the support Industries of Shipbuilding, Insurance, Imports/Exports, Dockyards, Stevedores amongst many other occupations in the Maritime World!

Times change though! Thirty or so years ago the British Merchant Fleet size started to drop and the shipbuilding Industry started to wither away. Countries like Japan and Korea started building ships using cheaper labor and the cost of building a ship in the UK became prohibitive. Shipyards closed and workers were laid off in their thousands and these workers drifted into other occupations if they could or joined the long queues at the unemployment center. The fleet size reduced in their hundreds as companies either moved their ships to other flags (different countries for cheaper tax incentives) or sold off their fleets to foreign companies. The remaining British ships and the foreign ships sold laid off seafarers by the thousands and employed in their place cheaper crews from such places as India and China.

The British Merchant Navy dropped in size at such a rapid pace that it went from world dominance to nothing in a matter of a couple of years. The significance of the Merchant Fleet in the eyes of the public disappeared overnight and became an unknown quantity to the outside world.

Today things are improving. Recent Tax incentives by the British Government have caused a turn around and certain shipping companies have started to increase their fleet size under the British Flag and other companies have switched their ships operate in the UK. London as the center of Maritime Affairs managed to retain the title of ขMarine Capital of the Worldข throughout the troubled times and still to this day stands proud above all that represents the Marine Industry.

London with its hundreds of Marine Insurance Firms, Brokerage Companies, Lawyers, Import/Export Houses and Ship Business and Consultants (amongst many other support arenas) brings in over one billion pounds per annum to the UK economy? That is London alone and does not include all the other companies and offices situated around the Islands. Furthermore, it also makes no recognition for the 60,000 British seafarers that are still out there plying there trade across the many oceans, nor for the Nautical Schools that still operate in Glasgow, Southampton and Newcastle to name only the major ones. It also does not include those fleets that are registered and operated out of British territories, like Gibraltar and it certainly does not take into account those seafarers that work in the Merchant Navy but don’t subscribe to a Union.

In basic terms the Merchant Navy could be described as any commercially operated waterborne vessel. So any vessel that makes money is a part of the Merchant Fleet. This would include for example: Research Vessels, Ferries, Fishing Boats, Oil Tankers, Passenger Ships, Chemical Tankers, Training Vessels, Hospital Ships, Diving Support Vessels, Anchor Handlers and Tugs to name but a few! It could though be said that the Merchant Navy is anything on the water that is not used to fight with. Or anything on the water that does not have a gun! But there is a crossover point and it is easier to use the Commercial explanation above and to include any ‘pleasure craft’ into the statement.

Merchant Vessels go with Imports and Exports. Trade being their primary purpose and 95% of cargoes shipped around the world is by Merchant Vessels. Not, may I say by aircraft which is often a preconception that those ashore seem to have. Cargo planes carry either very small items, or very expensive items that are needed in a hurry. A plane could not carry Oil around the world and it certainly could not carry toxic and dangerous Chemicals. Fruit is carried in ships as are vegetables and grain to name but a few! Ships carry cargo; planes carry valuable items and cost too much for general items to become viable economically. If oranges where brought in by plane they would cost well over five pounds each at a minimum, I leave that subject to rest in peace!

At home in the UK have a look around your house and think about where the items you see come from! That television in the corner, does it have Sony written on it? The Persian Carpet that decorates your sitting room I am sure was not made in the UK. The children’s toys with ขmade in Taiwanข, certainly do not come from a UK factory and the tea you are drinking most likely comes from India! What about the Japanese car in the garage and the rice in the bucket in the kitchen? If you were then to go a bit further and look at the wood supporting your roof you may find that it was shipped in from Finland. The gas that heats your water is shipped in from North Sea Oil Wells or from Africa and the fancy gravel that adorns your path came from Spain or France. And by no means, were any of these goods or items shipped in to Britain by an airplane! Ships brought all of these goods to your supermarket shelves, for you to enjoy in your home!

As seafarers are not fighting (which seems a common misconception) and we don’t play cards all day let us clearly state that the average seafarer suffers from overwork and stress. Stress built up over the time he spends on the ship due to the high volume of work and the responsibility that is placed on his shoulders. I will leave it at that. It would take a whole volume to describe the jobs and routines that seafarers in their respective ranks are responsible for and I suggest that you read alternative literature (if you can find any) or join up! Seafarers in short have too much to do at sea and suffer as a result of it!

The Merchant Navy today is improving in stature and in size in the UK. Slowly and with time it may grow once again to be a recognizable force and understood and respected by the general population. Long gone have the times when a Captain was a respected figure in the community but maybe he will one day be able to lift his head high a not hide under the lie of being ขa travelling salesmanข. One day Marine Engineers will be come respected as extremely qualified experts and not classified on the same level as a car mechanic straight out of school. Maybe one day everybody will realize that being at sea does not mean a ขwife in every portข and that often nowadays seafarers no longer manage to leave the ship in their time onboard. Maybe one day seafarers will be able to go ashore and tell people what they do without having a blank response or a daft reply like ขoh, erm you fish?ข, or ขthat’s good, you do a good job protecting out shoresข.

The reason for setting up a web site for the written word of the sea may now be a bit more logical to the ขlandlubberข. There is in fact a whole world out there that remains unknown to all. An extremely diverse and interesting world filled with cultural shock and intrigue and through the web site it is hoped that all readers will gain massive insight and knowledge into this world. The Merchant Navy and those that sail on the ship deserve far more recognition and respect than they get to date. So maybe through this web site all will change and soon Officers and Crews of the many Vessels that ply their trades will be able to lift their heads high and shout ขwe are in the Merchant Navyข. And all those that hear will understand and respect those persons that are part of what was once the greatest Industry that Britain can lay claim to.

About The Author

Ieuan Dolby, from Scotland is an Engineering Officer in the Merchant Navy. He has been travelling the world for 15yrs on an endless tour of cultural diversification. Currently based in Singapore he writes various articles for magazines and newspapers and is working on a marine glossary.

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 08, 2004

by Ieuan Dolby

SEO #2: Onpage optimization

SEO #2: Onpage optimization

by: Ahmed Omran

Yesterday you should have read the first course out of 6 courses that will help you get a TOP rank in the search engines and get EXPLOSIVE LASER TARGETED TRAFFIC for Free. Today we move on to course #2 and study onpage optimization. Please read todayกs course very carefully and take some time to test what Iกm about to tell you on your own webpage. Alright let’s start!

Onpage optimization

1) Now we have selected the keywords that we want to optimize for. If you remember from yesterday, the keywords we selected were yo mama joke, blonde joke, and joke online prank.

2) The first part of optimizing your website is to pay close attention to the title on your webpage. The title which appears at the top of the internet explorer page is essential to ranking well in search engines. You must choose a title that contains the MAIN keywords that you want to optimize for. Here is a list of possible titles and which one works BEST.

A. Welcome to our website! (This title doesn’t contain any of the main keywords and is the worst thing you can put. DO NOT use this!)

B. yo mama joke blonde joke and joke online prank (Although this title contains the keywords it contains too much words and makes no sense to the visitors. DO NOT use this!)

C. Yo Mama Joke | Blonde Joke Online (As you can see there are less words and I have replaced one of the กandsก with a ก|ก. I have also combined words. This keyword rich and understandable title is what you SHOULD USE!)

3) The second step in onpage optimization is making sure you have metatags on your page. The description part of your metatags are used by google so make sure to include a good description of your website and throw in the MAIN keywords that you want to optimize for. Hereกs an example description:

กA website bringing you lots of jokes including yo mama joke, blonde joke, joke online prank, and more.ก

If you want a free metatag generator then visit:

http://www.htmlbasix.com/meta.shtml

4) The third step is the BODY of your webpage; if your webpage has a good keyword density then you will rank well. Keyword density is the number of times a keyword is used in your page. Letกs say your webpage has 500 words and you use the keyword กyo mama jokeก 25 times then you have a keyword density of 5%. A keyword density of 510% is good. So you should try to throw in your MAIN keyword a few times every now and then BUT make sure it makes sense because people will be visiting your website!

5) Now there are many other factors that will help you to rank well in search engines. These factors are header tags, header tags, Bolding, italicizing, underlining, and image tags. If you include your keyword in a tag then you will tell the search engines that this keyword is important and you will boost the strength of that specific keyword. Using the keyword in tags and bolding, italicizing, etc will also give the keyword strength.

Last tip for the day is that search engines read pages from the top left hand side of the page to the bottom right hand side of the page. So make sure that your MAIN keywords are at the top of the page as well as at the bottom.

Tomorrow I will teach you to Get Listed In Google in Under 24Hours! This will be an exciting day for you I promise!

If you would like to contact me anytime and either complain (why would you!) or give me your testimonial then feel free to do so anytime. Iกm there if you need any more help also.

About The Author

Ahmed Omran is an experienced webmaster and marketer who owns http://www.vdesignonline.com and http://www.homebusinessrevo.com.

This article was posted on August 29

by Ahmed Omran

SEO Success Step Two is Attracting Search Engine

SEO Success Step Two is Attracting Search Engine Attention

by: Chesa Keane

Once the website has been created and published, many new website owners think that the web development project is finished. But in reality, the real work is just beginning. In order to create a moneymaking site, traffic must be generated and driven to the website. There are several effective methods that can be implemented in Tier II of the SEO strategy to create this web traffic. While all methods may not be required to realize successful traffic generation, some combination of most, if not all, will probably be needed to create traffic, maintain traffic and finally, grow traffic to your website with longterm, lasting results. Consider implementing these strategies:

Dynamic content is necessary for search engine recognition, and by updating the website frequently, the search engines see your website as an active, not stagnate, website. How often should changes be made? At the very least, monthly. But the more frequent the changes, the better. There are some tried and true methods you may want to employ:

Monthly newsletter (or weekly)

Tip of the day that rotates to the page using a script from an existing database of information at your site

RSS feed to public news feeds that update hourly or daily at the least

Changes to contact information, staffing, clients, etc.

Checking the links frequently to make sure that they are active and valid, and changing the link text from time to time will register as a change to the page

Simple modification of content from time to time should be done in between these regular maintenance tasks which will update the website

Good links management will result in a stronger weight given by the search engines for search positioning. The algorithms used for weighting one page over another require link popularity assessment for successful traffic to your website. Link popularity is also one of the main considerations for Google and Alexa Page Rank. How do you achieve link popularity? It can be tedious and requires careful attention to the selection of the links, but there are several means that can be employed:

Reciprocal Links Search for relevant and desired web pages with which to trade links

Purchase Page Rankbased links boost your relevance and weight in the eyes of search engines by purchasing links for a period of time, three to six months until you have achieved a better ranking

List with directories paid or unpaid directory listing that are relevant to your website will give your website additional exposure

Anchor text create the links with link text in mind, utilizing relevant keywords where possible

PageRank consideration link only with websites that have decent PageRank (PR); i.e., PR of 3 could be a minimum but a PR of 4 would be a better minimum requirement from those pages who want to exchange links with you

Blogs web logs linked to your site or posting to popular blogs with your links included to point traffic back to your site; a good strategy is to employ pinging with the blog posting

Forums forum participation that allows you to leave your link with the intent of attracting traffic back to your site can get traffic back to your website, however, take care that you actually offer something of value in your posting so you are not accused of spamming

Search engine listings listing with the few free search engines and directories is an essential step, although you won’t see any results for months

Gather optin email addresses utilize an email list subscription function on your website with the intent of sending enewsletters and announcements on a regular basis. This subscription list can be used for several other campaigns, including the sale of advertising space on your newsletter.

Advertise on ezines purchase sponsorship on other email lists where you can promote your product and/or services as well as links to your website in the process.

PayPerClick (PPC) campaigns with Google and Yahoo Search Marketing where you purchase advertising space based on keywords that are popular for your website if you are not in a saturated market. If your business operates in a saturated internet market, seek niche keywords for your PPC advertising. Determine your budget first and from there, you will know how much you can afford for the positioning you desire. Itกs all mathematical:

Price Per Click = monthly budget/number of clicks or

Number of clicks = monthly budget/price per click

Some suitable combination of price and number of clicks based on your own budget will result in a campaign you can monitor and adjust as necessary. The important result to watch for is the conversion rate. How many paid clicks convert into the desired result; i.e., new contract, sale of product, sign up for enewsletter, etc.

Remember that the website is only the first step. Driving traffic to your site is the next important task. Layout a plan of action and followthrough. You are not going to realize success until you spend the time and energy or pay someone else for their time and energy to get the job done.

(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

How To Obtain Free Adversting For Your Onine Busin

How To Obtain Free Adversting For Your Onine Business

by: M. Avedissian

HOW TO FIND FREE ADVERTISING FOR YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS

The beauty of the Internet is that it allows you to run a business with very little money. The secret is knowing which of the available free resources are worth your time! Register with Search Engines Submitting your online business to search engines is one of the easiest, fastest, and least expensive ways to promote your site. Tens of millions of people use the major search engines every day to navigate around the Internet and quickly find what they are looking for. Statistics show that 85% of pages visited on the Internet come from people who have gotten there from a search engine. While you shouldn’t rely on search engines alone to bring you qualified traffic, this is definitely a good way to kick off your marketing efforts.

There are no easy tricks or secret formulas for optimum search engine placement, but the following five tips should help make your job easier and increase your chances of getting high search engine rankings.

1. Do it Yourself. You should avoid using autosubmission services that promise to register your site at hundreds of major search engines for a small fee. There are only a handful of search engines that really count and a number of the majors use the same database. Thus, you can register on one and show up on several of them. The experts in the field agree that you are much better off taking the extra time to learn as much as you can about the major search engines and manually registering your site with each one to ensure you get the best listing possible.

2. Less is More. You may be tempted to think that it is to your advantage to try to get listed on as many sites as possible, but this is simply not the case. The major search engines will drive over 90% of your website traffic if you are listed within the top 3 pages of keyword results. Additionally, don’t try to promote every page of your site. Almost every search engine will crawl through your entire site indexing all of its pages. If you have a large website and promote all of your pages, some engines will consider it spamming and reject your submissions.

3. Get your site linked from other sites. Identify other sites that offer complementary services, which are likely to be of interest to users of your site; link to them and invite them to reciprocate. In particular, do this with popular sites and do it with those sites that appear near the top of searches that use the keyword phrases that you are targeting.

4. Don’t Get Too Comfortable. Granted, a good listing on a top search engine is a pretty exciting thing. But don’t expect it to last forever. The good search engines are constantly reevaluating their lists and crawling the web to ensure their rankings are as current and valid as possible. Also, hundreds of new sites are being submitted daily which could cause yours to get pushed down the list if a better one comes along. You need to keep a constant watch on your listing to make sure it stays at the top of the list.

5. Don’t Expect Too Much Even if you do everything exactly right, thereกs still no guarantee that youกll get a good placement on search engines, or that your intended target audience will find you there. Few people truly understand how they work, and even if you’re lucky enough to figure it out, theyกll change the process on you as soon as you do. To make matters worse, many engines and directories are notoriously slow to add your listing, taking up to 4 weeks or longer to add your URLs to their database. Some directories limit the number of listings, so you may never get listed or you may get bumped after a short period of time. Many search engines prune their lists periodically as well.

The bottom line is that, while registering your site on search engines is a critical first step in promoting your site, the process is seldom enough to generate a significant number of quality visits to your home on the web.

Be sure to supplement your search engine marketing with other online and offline promotional efforts, such as those described in this article. Reciprocal Links and Web Rings. A reciprocal link is represented by two web sites who hyperlink to each other. The best reciprocal links are from sites that share content or interests similar to yours. The reason is that you want to draw as much traffic as possible from the linking site and, likewise, want to provide as much traffic as possible to the linking site. Itกs a winwin situation where both sites experience an increase in traffic. Hereกs how you go about arranging a link. Identify sites that have similar content or interests to yours. For each site, send an email suggesting that both your sites could benefit from a reciprocal link.

Hereกs an example of an effective email:

Dear Webmaster,

I just visited your Web site at www.whatever.com. I have to say that I was very impressed by what I saw. Congratulations on developing an attractive, professional and informative site. I am the webmaster at www.mywebsite.com. We are currently looking to increase the number of links to our site via reciprocal arrangements with other quality sites, such as yours. At present we are getting around 300 hits per day and we are now seriously looking to expand on that. If you think that you might be interested in doing a link or banner exchange please look over our site. If you are interested, you could even go straight to our links page, where we have our own banner, plus some text about ourselves, which you could use if you decided to link to us. Thatกs at: www.mywebsite.com/links.htm. I feel this would be winwin situation for both of us and could potentially increase traffic significantly to both our sites. If you are interested, please reply to this email and include a graphic banner, of standard dimensions and/or some text that you like to have appear on our links page. Also, let us know which URL you would like us to link to. I very much look forward to hearing back from you and hopefully establishing a mutually rewarding link exchange. Thanks for your consideration, Your Name and contact information

Youกll be pleasantly surprised how many people are anxious to increase their traffic and will agree to this type of partnership.

If you do manage to develop a marketing partnership with another site, it is very worthwhile trying to form a web ring. A web ring is really not much more than a group of likeminded and linked sites. Traffic can be hard to win, especially in the early days of your site, and by getting a web ring established you will find that is relatively easy to share what traffic you get amongst the other cooperating sites. It is really quite effective and is now a popular and established way of boosting traffic to your site. Ezines & Email Newsletters

1. Writing for Ezines: Right now thereกs a shortage of good ezine (short for email magazines or newsletters) articles. So, if you write well and you know how to do research on the Internet, thereกs a huge market waiting for you. Pick a topic that you know something about and then go to the Search Engines and find as many Web sites as you can that deal with that subject. Make a note of any URLs that offer resources dealing with the topic of your article. Include those URLs in your article. Keep your article short. One or two pages is fine. Tell readers how to do something that will interest many of them. Keep sentences short, informal, and talk directly to the reader. If you don’t feel comfortable with your writing skills, have a local English teacher or journalism student look over your article for you. At the end of your article, attach a 56 line ‘Resource Boxก that includes your Web site URL and/or your email address. Because you won’t get paid for your article, publishers don’t mind allowing you a personal plug at the end. The article makes you look like an expert in your field. Your contact info at the end urges thousands of impressed readers to contact the expert.

2. Create Your Own EZines: Better yet, consider producing your own company ezine or newsletter. Nothing creates sales like your own Internet community. Email newsletters are a great way to build your Internet community and allow you to position yourself as a knowledgeable and helpful expert in the field. Subscribers come to see you as someone they know and can trust. Email newsletters are easy to produce and cost almost nothing. People on the Internet are usually in a hurry, so keep your ezine short. One or two articles coupled with two or three short ads may be all your ezine needs. Keep lines short enough to fit into an email browser and put a hard return at the end of each line (to keep them from breaking up when emailed). For starters, you can send your ezine out with your favorite email program. Later, when your subscriber list grows, you may want to upgrade to a majordomo provided, most likely, by the same company that provides your web site space. Get subscribers by placing free ads on classified sites, ads in appropriate newsgroups, and announcing your new ezine to firms that specialize in keeping track of various lists of subscribers.

Be sure to mention your new email newsletter in all your print and broadcast advertising and add a place for people to subscribe on your web site. Your subscriber list can easily grow to include a few thousand within a year. An audience that size will be a continuing source of sales, contacts, and insights. Developing a thriving subscriber base means promoting your newsletter prominently on your Web site and elsewhere. A simple, textbased link exhorting visitors to กSign up for our newsletterก will attract only the bare minimum of attention. Instead, consider a graphic or sidebar that speaks to the benefits of the newsletter for example: กGet the latest ebusiness news in your inbox FREE.ก

Forum Networking: There are many discussion forums on the Internet, on every topic you could possibly imagine. Most discussion boards allow posters to attach a กSignatureก with their post containing additional information about themselves, such as their name, URL and sometimes even an advertisement. By visiting a few forums regularly and participating in the discussions, asking and answering questions, you can build up trust with other forum members, whilst at the same time getting free exposure for your website. Just try to make a useful contribution to the forum be sure to read the forum rules and don’t SPAM! Referral Marketing Encourage happy customers to tell their friends about your business.

This is a great way to build your customer base, year after year, through the power of the ‘snowballก effect—a happy customer tells a friend, who tells a friend, etc. Referrals also tend to be easier to convert into paying customers because your product has been ‘endorsedก by someone they know and trust. You can offer incentives such as discounts or a free gift to encourage referrals. Regardless of whether or not the referred party makes a purchase, be sure to thank your customer for the referral—reward his behavior and heกll be more inclined to repeat it.

Banner Advertising: Recent statistics show that 80% of advertisers use banner advertising and 18 of every 25 online ads created by advertisers are banner ads (ISP Cyberstats). Knowing how and where to place banner ads is a key factor in an online advertising campaign. For small businesses that don’t have a large budget to devote to online advertising, a focused and effective approach to getting the most exposure for the least amount of money is essential. A simple search on Google or similar search engine will turn up numerous places where you can purchase banner advertising space. However, if your goal is to uncover free advertising resources, you should consider the following two sources:

1. Banner Exchange Services Perhaps the easiest, and certainly the cheapest, way to utilize banner advertising is by participating in banner exchange networks. These networks, such as http://www.megatraffic.biz, allow smaller sites to leverage the power of the Web by displaying each othersก ads in a cooperative fashion. In addition to providing a nocost linking opportunity, these networks typically generate highly targeted traffic to your site and extend viewership to audiences you may not otherwise be able to reach.

2. Trading Banners with Other Sites: When you visit a site that you think could send you good, qualified traffic, just drop a note to the webmaster and see if he/she/it wants to swap banner advertising. Tell them where you propose to put their banner on your site, and suggest a page on their site that might make for good placement for you. Be very polite and offer a fair trade. Explain something about your site and why you think it would benefit both sites to swap. How to Design Effective Banner Advertising Designers face a number of challenges when creating Internet banner advertisements. You have a very small space usually about 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels high in which to convey your message. That message has to be legible, and it has to catch the readerกs eyes on what is often a very busy page, all while keeping file size to a minimum. Thatกs a lot to ask from such a small graphic! Fortunately, you can follow these five easy guidelines to create ads that are catchy, effective, and easy to make.

1. Use the words กClick Hereก or กEnterก every time you design a banner. You may think that these two words are overused online, but tests have proven that these words are able to increase the effectiveness of a banner ad by 2030% without changing anything else in the banner. They inspire the reader to click on the ad if the headline of the banner interests them.

2. Animate Your Banners. An animated banner will increase your banner ads effectiveness by 3040%. The key in using animation in your banner is keeping it small. The reason that you don’t want big pictures or images that look like live video in your banners is the fact that the banner will load too slowly on peopleกs pages. The visitors just won’t see it.

3. Use an awesome headline in your banner. Don’t think that just having a good looking banner will make people click through. The key to effective banner advertising is having a good headline. A good technique to use is to keep the same headline on your banner ad that you have on your entry page. Then when they click through the banner, they will come to see the same headline that sparked an interest in them in the first place.

4. It is often a good idea to use your web site address or some type of company logo in the banner. Don’t focus your banner on your logo or web site address, but do include it in many cases. Your main benefit headline should be the focus of your banner. Your use of a web address or company logo in a small section of the banner just helps to produce a branding effect on peopleกs minds giving you a few extra hits.

5. Use banner text wisely. Use a simple font in the largest possible size and capitalize the first letter of every word. If your text takes more than two seconds to read, youกve got too many words. Either edit the copy down or consider adding another frame. Too much text overwhelms viewers, and theyกll be less likely to read it.

Traffic Exchanges: One method of getting targeted traffic to your site is through the traffic or hit exchanges. When used properly, they can be a great source of targeted visitors. Put simply, a traffic exchange is a facility that you can use to get hits to your site in exchange for viewing other peopleกs sites. The way traffic exchanges work are very simple. When you first visit a traffic exchange website, you will be asked to register. Usually when you register you receive free credits just for signing up. When you login for the first time, you should add your sites into the exchange. Traffic exchanges work by crediting per the amount of traffic you bring to other sites on the network. This can be through your own surfing, referral traffic, or even by purchasing site visits. Most exchanges offer free and paid memberships, with paid members of course obtaining more perks and potentially more targeted traffic.

The thing with hit exchanges is that youกve got to know how to use them, otherwise your results will be disappointing. But if you apply these four strategies, you may be pleasantly surprised.

1. Create a special page for the traffic exchanges. A common mistake made by many webmasters is to direct visitors to their main page. Instead of doing this, focus on creating a welldesigned ‘teaserก page that will create interest in your product without pushing visitors to purchase anything. The maximum amount of time that your site will be given to load is less than 30 seconds and the last thing you want is a slow loading page. It needs to: load quickly which will mean being very sparing with the graphics and animation. put across the greatest benefit for visiting you site very clearly. have a quick and easy way for surfers to bookmark your page. This is very important. When surfing for hits, you get into a kind of flow, one you don’t really want to interrupt. Having a favorites button will ensure that people who are pushed for time can always come back and view your page later. If you have links to other sites on your special page, itกs best if they open in new windows. That way your visitor doesn’t have to leave the hit exchange. Itกs also a good idea to have some form of email capture facility on your page.

2. Develop a freebie and make visitors sign up to get it. Once you have your visitorกs attention, offer something for free that has intrinsic value. Some common items used by many webmasters are free ebooks, or contests for your products. By providing a free and useful item to your prospect, you attract their attention without forcing them to purchase anything at that moment. You have also obtained that visitorกs email address—after they sign up. Once this is done, send them an automatic response email that lets them know how to obtain their freebie. (One quick warning: On the entry form, let the person know that they are joining a mailing list. Don’t hide this fact, because you could be accused of spamming.)

3. Find good traffic exchange services and start surfing. After designing your page and including the freebie, browse for a few quality traffic exchange services. When searching, take into account the following factors:

Find sites that have good ratios. Sign up for services, such as www.megatraffic..biz, that give you a fair ratio of sites which you visit, to times that your URL is displayed. Any traffic exchange service should have at least a 2:1 ratio. Study their anticheating policies. Any good traffic exchange service will have strict policies that prevent people from earning credits without actually viewing your site, including the use of robot/auto surf software. Additionally, a good traffic exchange service will limit or prohibit the use of popups, popunders, popexit pages or flyins. It should also prohibit sites that promote immoral, illegal or illicit URLs. To review recommended program terms, visit http://megatraffic.biz/agreement.asp

Referring others to the exchange should also benefit you, so be sure your exchange offers a referral program. Take advantage of your referral status. All it takes is one large site in your downline to create a stream of new visitors back to you.

4. Contact your visitors. Once you have collected a good database of visitors who are interested in your product, contact them. In the email, remind them of the freebie or contest that they joined. After that, create a sales message that discusses how your product or service can help fulfill their specific needs. Since this email reaches them when they are not concerned with generating hits for their own site, you have a better chance of making a sale. If you follow these 4 steps and use the resources that are provided, you will see an increase in quality visitors and email subscriptions. Ultimately, you should generate more sales. If you’re ready to get started, we encourage you to visit http://www.megatraffic.biz to learn more about effective traffic exchange programs.

Author: M. Avedissian

http://www.Megatraffic.biz

Copyright 2005

About The Author

M. Avedissian is the owner and operator of Megatraffic.biz a new free traffic exhange. All memberships are free. No cost to join this traffic exchange.

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 27, 2005

by M. Avedissian

How RSS Feeds Help Your Search Engine Rankings

How RSS Feeds Help Your Search Engine Rankings

by: Kim Proulx

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. RSS is an XMLbased format for content distribution. Webmasters create an RSS feed containing headlines and descriptions of specific information. The majority of RSS feeds currently contain news headlines, current articles, breaking information but you can find a feed on just about any subject.

Webmasters can use these RSS feeds to help add relevant content to their webpages and move their site up the search engine ladder. The key to using these feeds is to have it show up in your websites page code so when search engine spiders your site, it will see all kinds of new content and thinks that your site is currently maintained and being updated frequently. Search engines really like to see this and rank these sites highest. Optimum rankings will likely not hold up if the site stays static. RSS feeds are an excellent way to continually freshen website content without having to make periodic content updates manually.

Buried within U.S. Patent Application # 20050071741 (aka The Google Patent) is the following paragraph:

กDocuments for which there is an increase in the rate of change might be scored higher than those documents for which there is a steady rate of change, even if that rate of change is relatively high. The amount of change may also be a factor in this scoring. For example, documents for which there is an increase in the rate of change when that amount of change is greater than some threshold might be scored higher than those documents for which there is a steady rate of change or an amount of change is less than the threshold.ก

Easytoimplement RSS feeds are available for almost any imaginable topic and having one or more feeds on your website will certainly enhance your visitor experience. Your visitors will most likely appreciate this added content with uptodate information. They will be more likely to revisit and stay longer while reading these RSS feeds.

If you are adding RSS to your website for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), there is one important rule that must be followed: DON’T USE JAVASCRIPT! Why not? Because search engines don’t look at JavaScript, so JavaScript feeds are useless for SEO. To make news feeds visible to search engines, their text has to be embedded into your page. If you view the source of your page and you don’t see the actual text of the news feed, then search engines aren’t going to see it either.

RSS is one of the hottest phenomenons in the webmaster community today. RSS that benefits SEO is a topic that’s been very much overlooked. Implementing RSS into websites has become much easier so that even nonprogrammer types can do it. RSS should be viewed as a must for any website that would normally remain very static and should be strongly considered as a part of all SEO projects.

Once you find the right newsfeed for your webpage you will need a program to parse out the content and display it on your site in plain HTML. Originotions.com http://www.originotions.com makes this as easy as putting your RSS feed link in a form. You can customize the size, look and feel of the output. They send you a couple lines of code in PHP, ASP, JSP, ColdFusion and HTML. You just add it in your webpage and presto, you have an RSS feed on your site, all for free.

About The Author

Kim Proulx

Webmaster

Website: http://www.originotions.com

This article was posted on September 10

by Kim Proulx

SEO Success: Step Three is Creating LongTerm Popu

SEO Success: Step Three is Creating LongTerm Popularity

by: Chesa Keane

Finally, after the hardcore efforts that are directly related to generating traffic to your website, you next step is to develop a strategy that creates followon, longterm traffic. Several methods exist for this Tier III strategy:

Taking the large list of ancillary keywords that relate directly or indirectly to your website, begin purchasing keyword related domain names that will be used to create traffic driving websites that point to your money site.

Setup satellite pages using the keyword domain names with the idea of capturing traffic geared toward those specific keywords, developing niche market traffic. As you develop niche markets for those new customers, you are going to be able to capitalize on those customers for the other products and/or services that your company offers when these sites link back to your money site as a result of informing and attracting these new customers through the niche sites.

Create links, backlinks and crosslinks between the satellite pages and your money site, improving your link popularity for all websites, especially your money site.

Display articles or ebooks related to your industry and place these articles on your websites being aware of the best location based on keyword dominance.

For longterm, viral marketing results, create articles or ebooks that you will either sell on your website or offer to public domain websites where your link information must be retained for use by anyone else on the internet; these articles will create links that go back to your money site or your niche sites.

Follow the same steps in Tier I and II for all the niche sites as you did for your original money site; that is, design a SEOoptimized website and follow Tier II strategy to create the necessary link popularity to drive traffic to these sites.

Monitoring

In order to determine if the SEO efforts are successful, you must monitor results of for number and quality of backlinks, PR and web trend statistics. There are many sources for generating this data as well as programs that will assist in these analyses. Whatever method you choose, whether it is using specific programs or setting up a spreadsheet for entry of data, be consistent in tracking the data. There will be fluctuations from daytoday that you should expect. You are looking for general, overall upward trends, not shortterm blips. Upward progress followed by maintenance of a strong position with slow, steady growth would indicate a successful SEO campaign.

This 3Tiered approach to SEO Strategy is very effective when implemented with the patience it takes for longterm results. Shortterm กfixesก and ‘tricksก may have an effect in the shortrun, but as the search engines change and adapt their algorithms as they doing almost monthly what worked today for quick results may actually get you banned tomorrow. This strategy is based on search engine directives: Welldesigned websites, free of bad code, offering information, services or products of interest to the internet community will create their own base of popularity for which you will be rewarded by strong, growing traffic. When you are in it for the long haul, your strategy must utilize longterm efforts.

(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

Link Exchanging Basics

Link Exchanging Basics

by: Mjmls

When it comes to Website promotion, gaining quality links is important. However, many people have a different idea of what defines a Quality link. Here I have listed the link considerations used by Mjmls.com when a suggestion is made to the Directory.

Utilize Foresight, Not Hindsight, When Link Exchanging:

Regardless of the premise behind a link exchange, webmasters are essentially sharing traffic. This is done either directly with physical clicks or indirectly through search engine recognition. While search engine recognition seems to be the major motive of most exchanges, using foresight should prominent.

There are a variety of promotional based information sources the illustrate using the Google toolbar to demonstrate how popular the Website is on the internet. While this is a good idea to get an idea of popularity, it is using hindsight. This rates past efforts the developers have implemented. However, low PR does not mean that Website is unworthy.

The Website may quickly gain recognition. This would make the link exchange valuable or equal in the future. How do use foresight? Mjmls utilizes these standards when considering an addition to the Directory:

1. What is the owner’s Email or IP address? Get the owner or developers Email address and IP address or both. Once this information is obtained, compare it to known spam lists. Why? Mjmls considers Website that use Spam, ขunsolicited advertising,ข as a poor candidate to trade links and not a good place to send people and search engines. There are no excuses for spam. It wastes valuable time of consumers, costs online businesses thousands of dollars, slows down the performance of servers, and creates a poor experience for everyone.

The website is doomed to eventually be closed down, appear in Spam Blacklists, and may decrease the value of linking websites both by search engines and physical users. Basically, this is not the type of person that should be endorsed by an honest developer.

2. Analyze the content of the Website. Is there something unique? A unique website that offers resources to users will be bound to succeed. The website will gain recognition over time because of the resources that are offered. However, keep in mind that Websites change frequently. If a link was made to a Website, and the site changed without notice, delete the link and add the user to a personal ban list. A good marketing campaign will keep accurate records of where the site is being promoted.

In contrast, if it contains plagiarized pages with sponsor ads making up a major portion of the content, or prominently displayed over and above the page copy, the site may be a poor candidate to include in a link exchange. Why? The designer’s motives are clear. They are not attempting to offer anything to users. They simply are trying to create a, ขcash cowข. The content will change, the url will probably become blacklisted and eventually the pages that linked to this website will contain a dead link.

If a change is made to the content of the Website, rendering the site irrelevant to previous promotions, or the URL has changed, the person behind the marketing should immediately notify everyone that needs to update the links or advertisements on their Website. If this is not done, the person marketing the Website simply does not care about you or your Website. Add his or her IP Address, Email Address, and known URLs to your personal Ban List. Unless a formal apology is received in the future, this person should be avoided. A computer makes managing a marketing campaign extremely easy, especially if the computer has a database application such as Microsoft Access. Therefore, the only reason not to notify linking sites is that the necessary time was not taken when developing the marketing campaign, or they are ignorant to you and your visitors.

Check all links at least every quarter (3 months).

3. Does the company or entrepreneur have an active promotional campaign?

Where are links to the Website found? Scout the internet for the Website. Links are sure to appear on irrelevant Webpages with a poor description and anchor text, as anyone can add a link to their site with a custom name and description, but there should be quality links too. How and where the website is advertised will reveal the type of promotional efforts being implemented. Is the Website featured in useful directories with strict listing policies or directories that charge a fee? This would indicate that the developer is active in seeking quality leads rather than herds of traffic that are not interested in his or her Website.

Analyze the description and anchor text (usually a title) that is being suggested. This will indicate how much they truly care about their Website and the traffic that visits. If the description and title are packed with keywords, they are attempting to spam the search engines. Once again, it is suggested to avoid linking with these types of people.

An active and quality linking campaign would require thought. A uniform title and description should be used. This title and description should be concise and to the point. It should not include phrasing such as: the best place on the web, or the number one place in the world, etc… The title and description should contain some keywords, after all, these are words that describe the Website.

Tip: When a request is presented, read the title and description suggested and attempt to envision the site before opening the page in a browser. Then visit the page while keeping the title and description in mind. In the majority of cases, opening the page will not even be necessary. Mjmls declines three out of four free submissions from reading the title and description while considering the category the Website was suggested. However, do not get fooled by a well written title and description. Open the page and surf around. In some cases, the Website is not remotely close to the impression that is provided from the title and description. Regardless of how many visitors will actually see the link, remember they will not be happy clicking on deceptive links with a poor description.

How Well is the Website Maintained

Before referring people and search engines to another website, take a close look at how well the site is monitored. Scan for broken links. A developer only needs to devote a couple hours out of his or her week to look for and remove broken links. Here is a free and resourceful utility that allows anyone to surf any Website while revealing dead or questionable links (double check questionable links): http://www.poisontooth.com/linkcheck/.

If you are finding an abundance of broken and deceptive links, this indicates that there is a lack of maintenance to the Website. The developer has lost interest or simply does not care if his or her visitors are clicking on broken links. Avoid linking to this Website all together.

Summing Up

As most will discover, an active and quality linking campaign is not easy. Allocate a predetermined amount of time to link development. It may take several months to several years to reap the benefits of a linking campaign. Keep in mind, the benefits of a good linking campaign generally surpasses all other promotional efforts. In addition, it is probably the most affordable alternative that offers longterm rewards. By planning, monitoring, and being proactive in a linking campaign, your Website will gain significant recognition. If your suggestions are being declined, don’t get discouraged. Try and figure out why it is being declined so often. Look for typo’s in the text. Read the title and description. Ensure that keywords are not being overly used. Most importantly, read the terms of linking if applicable.

About The Author

Mjmls provides opensource advertising solutions through three unique domains.

Article Forums: http://forums.mjmls.com/

Online Classifieds: http://www.mjmls.com/

Website Directory: http://links.mjmls.com/

About Poison Tooth:

If youกre interested in flora desktop pictures, visit Shades Of Insanity while youกre there, take note that every single graphic request being made is dynamically routed to a different server. This project/product is unreleased and works with Apache/PHP/MySQL to provide low bandwidth hosts a way to publish graphic intensive sites without eating up bandwidth. Images and requests are transfered automatically to remote servers onthefly. The web developer simply develops the program takes care of everything else.

This article was posted on February 26, 2005

by Mjmls

Optimizing for Visitors not Search Engines

Optimizing for Visitors not Search Engines

by: Michael Medeiros

Most people feel that optimizing is to target the search engines alone. In my opinion, this is not the only case. Optimization requires a balance of traffic enhancements and a user friendly atmosphere that provides clear navigation. Most will agree it would be much better to have people accept offerings from a Site, rather than masses of people who do nothing. Here are some general tips and thought to make pages userfriendly.
Focus on the Offerings
Is something being offered? Make it clear for people to see what is being offered. Give an eye catching call to action for your offers. For example, if you’re a Real Estate Agent offering, ขFree CMA’s,ข make it clear for people to see the offer. Use font styles or colors to give the offers prominence over the rest of the text. Give links to offers a focal point on the page. This can be done by centering the offers or putting them on top of menus.
Keep your pages concise. Many search engine optimization programs and professionals suggest keeping your pages under 750 words. In my opinion, this is good for visitor optimization as well. Focus your page on the topic at hand. As in the example above, if someone clicks a link that reads, ขFree CMA,ข the next page should be about free CMA’s. Don’t waste valuable space describing a CMA. Give a concise explanation, and then a call to action.
Keep your pages fast
In addition to pages loading fast, they should be fast at delivering information. Consider why people are surfing the Internet. In my opinion, the internet is used for finding and retrieving information. Because of this, pages need to be concise. If I follow a link that says, ขAvailable widgets,ข that’s what I want to see on the next page, front and center. I want to find the information I am looking for quickly and easily.
Don’t overcrowd the subpages. While your front page is bound to have a variety of topics and links, your subpages should be concise. I often come across pages that focus on several topics. In my opinion this is a bad technique. Make two pages instead of one page with two topics. This helps establish fast information retrieval.
Use Headings for clear navigation
Headings are recognized by the search engines and they provide clear navigation. Using headings will give pages an outline format. This allows people who browse your pages to quickly find the information that is relevant to their needs.
Heading tags in HTML start with H1 and range through H6. In my opinion, you should only have one H1 tag on a page. This tag should describe the overall premise of the entire page. If there are multiple subheadings, use H2 tags. If there are additional subheadings, use the H3 tags and so forth. You can also use text bolding to call attention. Try to scatter your keywords throughout the headings so search engines will know what the page focuses on, but keep it userfriendly.
Using colors
Make it easy for people to read the text on the Webpage. Designers often get the urge to make their websites appear unique. Uniqueness is good, but hard to read text is bad. I strongly urge the use of colors to make different aspects of a page stand out. However, you should ensure that there is enough contrast to make the text standout. Pages that are hard to read or pages that have hidden text, loose credibility. This gives the impression of deception and is overall frustrating. Unless your site uses an overwhelming amount of Audio, make sure people can read the page.
Making your pages user friendly has many significant benefits. Your pages should achieve their goal with a limited amount of traffic. Surfers are more likely to bookmark the site. This will establish a user base and generate a larger audience as time progresses. Most importantly, other webmasters are more likely to put links to your Website.

About The Author

Michael Medeiros is the owner of Mjmls.com. Mjmls offers free advertising for the United States.

[email protected]

This article was posted on June 04, 2004

by Michael Medeiros

Hetman Will Help You Conquer Your Files Quickly an

Hetman Will Help You Conquer Your Files Quickly and Effectively

by: Vladimir Vlasyuk

SoftAge announces the availability of Hetman version 1.0 Early Access Program, a powerful dualpanel file manager for the Windows 98/NT/ME/2000/XP platforms.

Despite the predominant use of Windows Explorer, the demand for an advanced file manager has not declined. On the contrary, many would agree that there is a substantial need for a better file manager.

Hetman was developed to offer new user interface standards and new functionality implementation with focus on detail. A goal was to encourage users to ask themselves whether they are satisfied with the software they use or have they just have gotten used to it?

Hetman has all the useful features of a professional file management system. It offers an intuitive, simple and straightforward user interface.

This program enables you to copy or move your files on local disk and over a Windows network or FTP, compress and uncompress them, edit their content, and more. In other words, Hetman allows you to do most of what you will ever need to do with your files!

Hetman combines rich functionality with a wide range of powerful user interface features. Among them are:

FWYT – ‘find what you type’ – absolutely innovative!

When you type anything in the File Management pane, ขquick searchข is automatically launched. Unlike other file managers, you do not have to press any key. To assist you, a ขsearch templateข is shown near the cursor where it is easy to locate at a glance. Matches are highlighted directly in search results which can be navigated in forward and reverse direction. If you make a mistake entering the file name, Hetman will highlight the error for you. Finally, you can search for any files whose names contain the template and do not necessarily begin with it. Just try it and see how convenient searching can be!

Tabbed interface (browserlike).

Work with several file panes, editors and consoles simultaneously in the same window, switching between tabs with ease.

Easy bookmarks.

Access your favorite folders quickly and easily. You can browse bookmarks using the Drive Selection menu or keyboard shortcuts.

Archives and FTP sites as regular folders.

You can do anything view, edit, launch files as if they were on your local disk.

Quick Edit.

View and edit your text files using a powerful builtin text editor with syntax highlighting and incremental search – presently the most convenient search method available.

Responsive Windows networking.

A slow network is no longer an issue. Hetman allows you to cancel browsing at any time, leaving other managers far behind.

Advanced Console.

Hetman has an advanced console builtin. Do not lose the output of the applications launched! Scrolling and searching through the output will be of great assistance.

Hetman is primarily targeted at power users who spend long hours working on the computer regularly. Hetman makes this time much more productive and pleasant.

SoftAge has anticipated supporting all major operating systems from the very beginning. The Windows version is the first to be released, with Linux, Mac OS X and possibly others to follow.

The development environment and the vast amount of open source libraries available allow SoftAge to respond to users’ feedback and promptly incorporate suggested features into future releases.

Hetman has Open API and was designed to allow adding new features quickly and easily.

A fully functional EAP version 1.0 is available to the public at http://www.myhetman.com. Product registration is only US$19.00 and may be completed on the product’s web site.

SoftAge, based in Kiev, Ukraine, develops software that enhances productivity, offering new user interface standards.

About The Author

Vladimir Vlasyuk, CEO, SoftAge

softage.com.ua

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 24

by Vladimir Vlasyuk

10 Easy Steps to a Useable Website

10 Easy Steps to a Useable Website

by: Nigel Lew

Building a useable website can seem daunting. Here is a quick guideline to help you on your way.

1.It’s all about your content

To get your website listed appropriately the content of your website needs to be nested between the tags. This way it gets read by the search engines. Your content also needs to be unique and get your point across.What is it about your product or service that is better and different from your competitions. This is called your usp or unique selling proposition and should be conveyed clearly and immediately upon hitting the page.

2.Make effective use of your title and description tags

These are your two most important tags when it comes to referencing your page content. Meta keywords rarely have any impact what so ever on your pages listings.

3.Make sure content is well formatted

It is very important to break up your content with italics, bold text, bulleted lists, etc. Well formatted content makes your pages more accessible to visitors but the search engines also. Visitors scan across your page rather than read it so it makes sense to format your page so it can be browsed yet still convey your message.

4.Proper code

Having proper progamming in place is quite simply a must. Web standards have changed substantially over the years and it is important to make sure your pages validate both html and css. Think of it this way. How effective could you get your point across if you were talking swahili. Your code is no different. Why make it difficult for the search bots to index your content.

5.Do not use Front Page, Dreamweaver, or any other WYSIWYG editor.

While accurate, MS Front Page, for example, makes it easy for just about anyone to throw up a web page it doesn’t take W3C compliancy into account Hence the code it outputs is an absolute train wreck. This is terminal for your website as you need a strong code base (foundation) or your site will never stand up to the competitions.

6.Don’t design in Flash

Seemingly technical in nature or ขneatข perhaps flash animation only serves to distract visitors from what they came to your site for in the first place, your product or service. Your services are what visitors are interested in not a blinking, noisy, website. Flash also creates major problems with getting it properly indexed. There is no way for the search engines to extract content from your website as it is all contained with in the swf. If you absolutely must have a flash page it is imparitive to offer an html version as well.

7.Easy on the eyes

Graphical elements play a huge role in a website design as well. You need to make sure you don’t have any extreme contrasts between colors and that you don’t use really bright colors as they are quite hard on the eyes. Your logo or brand should be clearly displayed on the home page and in more than one place.

8.Instill a sense of well being with ease of use

Make sure you have all legal documents in place such as privacy and return policies. It is also important to have all of your contact information pricing etc. displayed in a manner that conveys legitimacy. It should be very easy to contact you for any questions your visitors may have.

9.Include an optin newsletter

A great way to generate return customers is to offer an optin newsletter. This allows for direct marketing to people who you know are already interested in your product or service. What better way is there to keep customers abreast of new products or changes in the services you offer.

10.Use a trademark or tag line

In our case we trademarked the manipulated at symbol with the phrase bringing esolutions to you, thereby effectively increasing the strength of our brand. We are now able to effectively convey who we are but give a good creative idea as to what we do.

About The Author

Nigel is the Owner and ECommerce Project Manager of Ultimatech Computer Consultancy located in Aspen Colorado. You may reprint this article by leaving my name in tact. www.ultimatechcc.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 26, 2004

by Nigel Lew

How To See What Pages Of Your Site Google Has In I

How To See What Pages Of Your Site Google Has In Its Index

by: Tinu AbayomiPaul

There is a lag time between the indexing or updating of your site, and the time it takes to show new results in the database. Depending on your site, where it was linked from, who it was linked from, and who knows what other factors, the amount of time varies.
With the method I teach in my book it seems to take two to four days on average for the Googlebot to stop by initially, and then another two days to one week to appear in search listings for the first listing.
(You can read more about the book here: http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/book )
But even if it takes more than four to seven days for the Googlebot spider to show up at your site, or to return, if ever, there are several ways you can track the results. First, you can use Google itself.
Go to www.google.com and type in site: then your domain name. So for yahoo.com, youd type in site:yahoo.com.
The results will show you which pages of your site are showing up in Google.
If you know you wont have time to check on a daily basis, you can use a site called Google Alert, which you can find at
http://www.googlealert.com .
The great thing about this site is that it will track up to five terms per email address and have them sent to you via email on a daily basis. Using this you can track your ranking for your most important terms, or see how often your competitors site comes up versus yours.
To use this to see when pages of your site come up, create an account , then in the search terms section, type in, as one word, whatever is between www and your sites suffix (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .uk, etc.) and you will start getting emailed results.
The only problem is that the resulting page is sometimes a day behind Googles actual indexing. But for a free automated resource, you really couldnt beat it.
Until now.
Googles new Web Alerts just came out on the 29th of March. You can access it here:
http://www.google.com/webalerts
You can use Googles new Web Alerts service in much the same way. Its currently in Beta development, so make sure you save the information sent to you. Since its so new, youll probably want to sign up to both services and compare the results.
My favorite use for this is finding out when people mention my name or reprint my article at their sites, so that I can link back, or email to thank them. A big advantage Google.coms inhouse version of the web alerts system is that they have a news version that you can subscribe to, which will help you stay on top of your niche in whatever industry youre in.
Currently I use the Google Alerts site for several ongoing searches, and Googles Beta Web Alerts for my most missioncritical, timesensitive news.
Theres yet another way to use Google to track how your site is doing in Google. It will tell you the cached version of your page, which Google stores. Sometimes the date posted next to the listing of the cached page can help give you a good estimate of when Google will be back at your site.
For example, at the moment, I seem to see the spider most predictably every day between midnight and 6 am EST since my home page began to score a PR of 5, then periodically at other points in my site during the day. I figured this out by looking at Googles cache of my home page over a period of one week.
This search will tell you pages that Google considers similar to yours. It will also show sites that it considered linked to you, and show sites that carry your full url, hyperlinked or not. Its not 100% accurate, but it will give you a much better idea than youd get from guessing and its free.
Go back to Googles home page www.google.com and type in info:yoursitenameandsuffix. So if your site was ExactSeek.com youd type info:www.exactseek.com. You can also use site:yoursitenameandsuffix to find out which pages have been indexed by Googles search engine spider.
Curiously, Google used to show different results for info:www.exactseek.com and info:exactseek.com instead of including results for exactseek.com in the www evaluation. I havent seen this much anymore, but if you see one permutation showing up in results for the other, you may want to do both.
Youre going to want to bookmark this page and visit it on a weekly basis. The best day to look would be the one week anniversary of what day Google last cached a page at your site. The date will often be shown next to the word cached on one of your page results. If the cached page date is the same, that means Google hasnt been back to your site.
Marry this information with your study of your web stats to get more ideas on getting the most out of your weekly or daily exercises involving search engines and links from other sites, not just Google.
Copyright 2004 Tinu AbayomiPaul

About The Author

Tinuกs adventureกs with Google began when friends challenged her to กput her traffic where her site isก. She was challenged to raise her brandnew site to top 100,000 status in Alexa and get well ranked in Google in 90 days, spending less than $100. When she won in 34 days, she decided to use the site she built to share her free traffic secrets. For more free traffic secrets, subscribe to her newsletter at [email protected] or visit her site for more free articles like this : http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com

This article was posted on April 08, 2004

by Tinu AbayomiPaul