3 Website Positioning Tactics Guaranteed to Boost

3 Website Positioning Tactics Guaranteed to Boost Your Traffic

by: Michael Turner

There are many tactics you can use to increase traffic to your website. However, three particularly effective suggestions include search engine optimization, keyword articles, and trading links with other web pages. When you incorporate these three strategies into your overall Web site strategy you will be sure to increase your traffic.

Tip #1 Search Engines and Optimization

You need to be sure your web page is listed with as many search engines as possible and that it is optimized to return results. The more web sites that have your information the more visitors you will attract, it is as simple as that. Also, optimizing your website to be returned in the search engines is also very important. You will be able to do this through keywords included on your pages. The more keywords you have that are directly and indirectly related to your content the better because the higher the keyword content the higher ranking you will receive through the search engines. You should be focused on writing short articles that focus on specific keyword phrases for your website. The more keywords you include and variations of keywords mean the more people you will be able to attract to your page.

Tip # 2 Trade Links

Trading links is another great tip for getting people to your web page. What you should do is evaluate your target market, the product you are selling and other related products. Then, for the other related products you do some research to find the best web pages that sell these products. Then, you suggest a link trade. The post a link to your web site and you post a link to theirs. This will not only you’re your web page returned higher in the rankings, but also more visitors because you will have access to the visitors on other web sites as well. However, be sure that the sites you want to trade links with are good quality sites. And in order for them to want to trade with you then your site will also need to be of good quality. Keep this in mind before making any contacts.

Tip #3 Submit to Directories

You should also submit your URL to as many popular directories as possible. However, in order for directories to be willing to list your web site you better have a good site and layout. If you are still working on that then you should hold off on contacting directories until you do. Also, your web pages will have to be completely finished and not works in progress. However, if you get some of the popular directories to list you then your web page will have a heavier ranking than the others, which means you will have more traffic.

About The Author

Michael Turner shows you exactly how to increase web site traffic in his free 7 part miniseries. Grab it today at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 04

by Michael Turner

What Can Lots Of Content Do For Your Site?

What Can Lots Of Content Do For Your Site?

by: Matt Colyer

Today there are so many web sites on the web, but so few of them have good content and there are even fewer web sites that have large amounts of content. Why is the web like this? For one most webmasters are trying to make a quick buck and others don’t know where to begin or are too lazy to do the work.

Content really is king! Why? because visitors will stay longer or will come back more often and they are more likely to buy from your business. Visitors know you are an expert in your siteกs topic because you write informative articles, which leads the visitor to trust your business more. And to your visitors itกs all about trust because if they can’t trust your business, how can they trust the product/service you sale or how can they even know that they will receive the product/service.

Most of the time before an Internet surfer buys a product they will search the web to get more information about it. Sometimes they are just looking to see how it really works or maybe they want to know more about a certain feature. If you write articles about your products, surfers are more likely to find your web site in the search engine and you may even steal a few sales from your competitor, which will result in more sales for you!

Having a site with great and informative information will make another site owners more likely to link to your web site. Think about it! Would you link to a site that just had their products and service web pages? Or would you link to a web site that has great content that will help your visitors? If you are like most webmasters you would chose the 2nd one because this will benefit your web site because it helps the visitors know more about your products.

Search engines such as Google and Yahoo! love themed sites! Having a good themed web site means your ranking is more likely to rank higher than other web sites. Not only does this help out your siteกs theme, but also allows you to target more keywords. Surfers will find these web pages when searching the web and will result in more sales.

About The Author

Matt Colyer is the owner of the Marhen.com Network which includes www.linkexchangeit.com and is a parttime SEO. He also is a php, CGI and ASP developer.

This article was posted on August 10, 2004

by Matt Colyer

Cheap Web Hosting – Choose The Right Company

Cheap Web Hosting – Choose The Right Company

by: Declan Tobin

You have carried out the hard part and that’s creating the web site. The next step is to get it hosted as to allow the public find your site. So why do so many first time web host seekers fall into the trap of a bad web host company? Well there are a number of factors to consider and none bigger than the price. We all want cheap web hosting but unfortunately price is not always what you should go for.

You have to be more aware of the web hosting company that you choose. If you have a budget stick to it, if you see hosting for little or nothing and find yourself thinking ขhow do they make moneyข stay well away, the chances are your web site will be hosted with very little bandwidth resulting in a very slow accessible and unprofessional web site. You may also find that the customer service is little or none.

You need to clearly outline your own requirements to the web hosting company, if you do not do so you are at fault and not in any position to point the finger at others. If you make a list of requirements such as particular files you need etc you can send your requirements to multiple hosting companies and see who comes back with the greater service.

If you have more than one web site to host such as affiliate marketers it is not a good idea to put all your sites with the one web host company server to start with, you need to be 100% confident with the service, so start with one web site first as a test. Remember if you do host all your websites with one host company, all it takes is one problem to bring all your sites down and could result in lose of revenue for you. At least if you have some web sites hosted by another company they will still be online.

Some web host companies offer testimonials on their own web site from valued customers recommending them. Seeing is not believing, call these customers and get a face value recommendation for yourself.

What if I have problems?

Lets be honest, problems can occur and they maybe your fault and sometimes the web host company is to blame. Problems with technology can occur any time but it’s how the hosting company react to the fault that will determine if you stay with them or not. If you find your web site dropping off line or downloading slowly at a regular basis simply change to another web host company. On going problems not fixed is a very bad sign and it shows arrogance towards their customers. Support is vital from a web host company and it should be 24 hour if it’s a large organisation.

Virus Problems and Hackers

It is up to the web host company to ensure that your files are protected from virus and hackers at all times. There has been plenty of companies who have had their web sites hacked only then to find out that the web host company had not got the latest patches and security software applied. First timers to web hosting should always ask how often updates and what software is used to protect web sites.

Tips:

In business your web site can be a large source of revenue or sometimes your only source. Always do your own backup of the web site. If the web host company experience problems and for whatever reason has no backups available your whole business could be on hold. Backups are vital so do it as regular as possible or face the consequences. Some companies have testimonials on their web site from customers, do not be afraid to call these guys for an up to date reference.

If you where taking on an employee you would check all references, this is similar. Always get the full contact details of the web hosting company, many people simple go online and have an email address only as the contact. If their email goes down and you need to contact them you should have their full details at hand. Always shop around for the different web hosting plans and compare, you will find large differences, after you settle with a budget ask the necessary questions before you sign up.

About The Author

Declan Tobin is a successful freelance writer providing advice to consumers on purchasing a variety of Affordable Web Hosting and Cheap web hosting, and more! His numerous articles provide a wonderfully researched resource of interesting and relevant information. http://www.no1inwebhosting.com.

This article was posted on March 30

by Declan Tobin

Web Site Monitoring Is A Global Necessity

Web Site Monitoring Is A Global Necessity

by: David Leonhardt

Bill Huang sits down at his computer. As he connects to the Internet, he glances out at the sun poking its nose above the Hong Kong skyline. It will be another busy day, and he has to order those slippers for his wife before rushing off to a meeting.

He types in his search terms and Google faithfully reports: ‘results 1 100 of about 1,760,000. Search took 0.34 seconds.ก

Bill clicks on a the Big Soft Slipper web site and waits for the page to load. กSite unavailable,ก Bill reads. He hits the กbackก button. Then he clicks on another of the 1,760,000 pages Google offered him.

High above Cleveland, USA, the executives at Big Soft Slipper are clinking their glasses and patting themselves on the back. กWe sure did it,ก the CEO crows. กLook at that beautiful home page. Look at the easy navigation. Look at how fast it loads.ก

Somebody please tell them about Bill Huang.

กVery few people realize how the web site that loads so zippy in their office, flows like molasses on their customersก computers – and may not even be accessible at all,ก says Vadim Mazo, CEO of DotcomMonitor ( http://www.dotcommonitor.com ), a web site monitoring company. กWhile they celebrate, they could be losing customers.ก

Even in the United States, the most developed Internet market in the world, one out of five Internet users still operate on 56K connections. Smart companies have gotten wise, and test their web sites on slow connections – usually 56K. That leaves 13 million Americans with even slower connections – along with hordes of customers in India, China, Australia, Russia, South Africa and elsewhere around the world.

Who is monitoring your web site from Europe and Asia?

กWe just opened up a new web site monitoring station in Hong Kong, because there is a growing demand for monitoring web site performance from Asia,ก Mr. Mazo adds. กWhile nobody can monitor individual connections, we can monitor sever side connection speeds and web site accessibility – both of which are affected by transatlantic transfers.ก

In fact, bottlenecks can develop in several spots along the transatlantic connections – bottlenecks that could slow down or even block a web site completely. If a webmaster is not monitoring the performance of his web site overseas as well as at home, he will not be aware of the bottleneck and unable to contact his provider about it.

The fact is that a web site will load slower on the opposite side of the world, regardless of the type of connection the surfer has. But that is compounded when the transatlantic connections, or other local connections, block up.

Is connection speed a problem worth monitoring?

In May 2001, Zona Research reported that slow loading web sites accounted for $25 billion in lost sales each year ( http://www.marketresearch.com/map/prod/483429.html ) As Internet usage continues to climb around the world, that figure might be closer to $40 billion by now.

Another study, by BizRate.com ( http://www.bizrate.com ) in 2000, revealed that most people abandon purchases on the Internet while already in the shopping cart section – 21 percent due to slowloading pages. In other words, even when the home page and the sales pages operate at a satisfactory speed, customers get frustrated by slow loading or failed shopping carts.

กItกs one thing to know that your web site is accessible. It is another to know that all your forms and your shopping carts are performing to your customersก satisfaction,ก Mr. Mazo says. He adds that web site monitoring avoids the embarrassing moment when the customer lets a company know its site is not accessible. ‘the only thing worse is if nobody lets you know and you just keep losing sales.ก

This suggests there is value in monitoring your web site from overseas and in monitoring the forms and shopping carts and anything other server requests and user transactions

Stella Huang loves her new slippers. They are just perfect. She really does not care where they come from. The executives at Big Soft Slipper were not monitoring their web site performance, so they have no idea that they just lost a customer. And another customer. And another…

About The Author

David Leonhardt is a freelance writer, and an online and offline publicity specialist. Contact him at:

mailto:[email protected]

or visit his website at:

http://www.thehappyguy.com

For website monitoring:

http://www.dotcommonitor.com .

For details about web site monitoring services:

http://www.dotcommonitor.com/websitemonitoring.asp

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 27, 2004

by David Leonhardt

Prophesying Profit in CyberSpace . . .

Prophesying Profit in CyberSpace . . .

by: Philippa Gamse

Business owners can be rushed into creating Web sites, perhaps because ขmy competition has oneข, or because ขit’s the hot thing right nowข.

But, as with any aspect of your business, some preliminary thinking will help to maximize the return on your investment in this key part of your marketing mix.

Here are seven key issues to consider from the outset:

1. Are your markets online?

Who are your customers, and are they currently using the Internet? Try a customer survey if you don’t know the answer to this yet.

Alternatively, there may be new markets that you would like to tap, who are already online.

An excellent Web site for researching Internet demographic information is at: http://www.nua.ie/

2. Where is your geographic focus?

Is your operation confined to a local area, or can it have national or even international appeal?

It is not currently possible to restrict display of Web pages within geographic boundaries (e.g. ขonly Illinoisข). So if your business is only local, or you only serve the U.S., you should state that clearly on the site, otherwise you may receive leads and orders that you can’t fulfill.

3. What are the specific goals of your site?

What outcomes do you want from the visitors to your site? Will you be selling product online, or are you generating leads for a product or service? Do you want visitors to leave their contact details? If so, how will you encourage them to do this? Do you have a newsletter that they can subscribe to, or a competition, or a free offer of some kind?

And don’t forget your existing customers. Will your site also be providing ongoing support and education for these clients?

4. How will you engage your visitors?

Remember that your Web site may be the first and only contact that a prospect has with your business. Make their experience as close as possible to actually speaking with you.

Incorporate the questions that are most frequently asked during the buying process, perhaps in an online survey that can be emailed to you as a lead.

5. Do you want ขhitsข, or qualified leads?

Decide whether you want as much traffic and as many responses as possible from your site, or whether you would prefer only to hear from serious buyers. A nonprofit organization might want many people to see its message, but most businesses have a specific focus.

If you decide to qualify the responses that you get from the site, how will you do this?

6. Do you have a promotion plan and budget?

Even the best designed Web sites need effective online marketing to generate traffic. You will need a strategy to position your site as well as possible in the Internet search engines and directories.

There are also many ways to promote your site กBeyond the Search Enginesก a tipsheet of ideas for doing this can be requested at http://www.CyberSpeaker.com/

Remember that marketing your Web site is an ongoing activity, and allocate time and resources to this.

7. How will you measure your success?

If you have made decisions on all these issues, you will need a way to evaluate the results of your site against the goals and outcomes that you set.

Your traffic analysis reports can provide really valuable information about your visitors. This can be used to improve your Web site, and your marketing (both online and offline).

The reports will tell you how many users come to your site, which search engines and keywords they are using to find you, which pages of your site are the most popular, and which are rarely accessed.

So, think before you leap, and may your business prosper in Cyberspace!

About The Author

Philippa Gamse, CyberSpeaker, is an internationally recognized ebusiness strategist. Check out her free tipsheet กBeyond the Search Enginesก for 17 ideas to promote your Website: http://www.CyberSpeaker.com/tipsheet.html Philippa can be reached at (831) 4650317 or mailto:[email protected].

This article was posted on November 14, 2002

by Philippa Gamse

Jump Start Your Sales In 10 Quick Steps

Jump Start Your Sales In 10 Quick Steps

by: Mohamed Rabea

1. Combine a product and service together in a package deal. It could increase your sales. If you’re selling a book, offer an hour of consulting with it.

2. Out source part of your workload. Youกll save on most employee costs. You could out source your secretarial work, accounting, marketing, etc.

3. Ask people online to review your web site. You can use the comments you get to improve your web site or you may turn the reviewer into a customer.

4. Include emotional words in your advertisements. Use ones like love, security, relief, freedom, happy, satisfaction, fun, etc.

5. Take risks to improve your business. Sometimes businesses don’t want to advertise unless itกs free, sometimes you have to spend money to get results.

6. Model other successful business or people. Iกm not saying out right copy them, but practice some of the same habits that have made them succeed.

7. Remember to take a little time out of your day or week to brainstorm. New ideas are usually the difference between success and failure.

8. Start an auction on your web site. The type of auction could be related to the theme of your site. Youกll draw traffic from auctioneers and bidders.

9. Brand your name and business. You can easily do this by just writing articles and submitting them to ezines or web sites for republishing.

10. Find a strategic business partner. Look for ones that have the same objective. You can trade leads, share marketing info, sell package deals, etc.

About The Author

Mohamed Rabea is the owner of the Internetกs most popular home based business and marketing websites, available from http://www.bizpeak.com & http://www.bizpioneer.com

This article was posted on August 01, 2004

by Mohamed Rabea

Are Web Templates Aimed to Exterminate the ‘Web St

Are Web Templates Aimed to Exterminate the ‘Web Stars’?

by: Maricon Williams

Since the arrival of web templates, there has been an unwritten haunch that plagued the Net. Many businesses and companies have turned to these templates to be aided for a less costly web design. Compared to sums which were then paid to web designers, only a diminutive portion of it is spent. Thus, it entails a great amount of savings. Nevertheless, how sure are these venturers that they are getting the precise and effective web design that they can get?

First things first, web templates are readymade layout or design boxes for your website. Usually, it includes an original PhotoShop design. After that, it is sliced using Fireworks file. Slicing is utilized to separate the graphics from the sole image. The reason for this is to easily combine the graphics with html to produce a website. Web templates generally come in various themes and designs. They are easy to download and edit. It is believed that web templates ensure a smooth ride all along.

Recently, numerous testimonials have invaded the Net. Satisfied customers boost the advantage of choosing web templates over web designers. The ultimate reason is that it is not timeconsuming. You can instantly build your web site in a couple of hours. Plus the fact that it is not exorbitant. It saves time and money. That is really amazing dual advantage! Thus, it is not surprising that many people are rushing over to the new alternative available.

But what if your expected smooth ride turned out to be a bumpy and disastrous trip? It is difficult to staunch the bleeding but it is easy to be cautious and prevent it from occurring. It takes awhile to design a web site because it must complement the company’s identity and the content of the said web site. Visitors and prospective customers are not judging the website on its empty box alone. They are in fact looking at its entirety. Say, you already have your captivating box, nevertheless if it doesn’t blend with the content, functionality of the website and at the same time it’s hard to navigate then it is as useless as a creature without a soul!

In a nutshell, a stunning web template without engrossing content, description meta tags, fast text links and alternate navigation, will remain a stunning web template nothing more. It will not guarantee a boost in sales nor an intensification of the business!

About The Author

Maricon Williams

I love reading. Give me a book and Iกll finish it in one sitting. Reading is the chance to be transported to a different world and so is writing. Iกm more enthusiastic about writing however, since you can relay your ideas to someone else. I can only imagine that feeling when I hear a complete stranger talking about my ideas which read on an article somewhere. To relay my message to as many people is the same as touching people with music. Only mineกs less harmonic. I try to make up for it with the color I bring with words. And most of the time, it’s more than enough.

For additional information about 4 color printing, visit http://www.4colorprintingservices.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 14

by Maricon Williams

13 Techniques That Boosts The Power Of Your Resour

13 Techniques That Boosts The Power Of Your Resource Box!

by: Radhika Venkata

***What is the Resource box?

‘resource boxก is an information box about the author of the article.You will see this resource box at the end of the ezine articles.

***Why it is so important?

Hey…It is giving you free advertising.When somebody reads your article, they will see your name and web site link at the end of the article. More chances of inviting visitors to your web site.

When ever your article is published on other web sites, it amazingly increases your link popularity in search engines.You know how the search engines love the web sites with good link popularity.

***So what are techniques that will work for you:

1.Number one rule: *Try not to sell your products through your article resource boxes.*

Use your resource box to build up your optin list. If you have an ezine or free ecourse always keep a link for subscriptions.

2.You should also put your web site URL in the resource box.Email links to your ezines won’t increase your web site link popularity.

3.Always spell check your name and URL twice before submitting it.Misspelled name with wrong URL…Things won’t work in your way.

4.Try to keep single URL in your resource box.If that URL is going to give the reader something FREE like free ebook, free subscriptions you will get good click thru rate with that URL.

5.Keep your resource box short.Like six to eight lines.

6.Don’t keep your affiliate links in the resource box. Some how people don’t like clicking the affiliate links. Use redirection scripts or services.

7.If you want to keep few lines about your product in your resource box,Always those should be the benefits of your product.People love the benefits not the features of your product.

8.DON’t use hype words like กMillion bucks over night, 50 million visitors…Guaranteedก etc.

9.If you are promoting specific product through your resource box, then link the web page that directly takes the reader to that specific product page.

10.If you want to display the charge for your service, then tell it in the lowest possible value. Instead of ก$25.00 per monthก, you can write it as กLess than 85 cents a Day!!ก

11.Try to put related URL in the resource box.For example if you are writing article on search engine optimization and if you keep a ebook compiler product link, expect low click thru.If you don’t have a related product always you will be having your ezine or any other mailing list links for getting subscriptions.

12.Always highlight one or two words in your resource box with Caps,quotations,* signs etc.

13.Last but not least is DON’t forget to keep your resource box before submitting your article.

About The Author

Radhika Venkata Subscribe to กEbookBiz Magazineก which is completely focused on ebook business and Internet Marketing. Receive FREE Ebooks with Resale rights every month!

http://www.ebooksworld.com/freetosell.shtml

Webmaster Resources: List Your product, ezine or web site free! http://www.webmasterscentral.com/

This article was posted on November 14, 2003

by Radhika Venkata

Is your Website Doomed for Failure Before youกve B

Is your Website Doomed for Failure Before youกve Built it?

by: Suzanne Morrison

One of the things that many people overlook when building a new website is keywords. I have to admit, I did exactly the same thing myself when I started out. You can build the flashiest, most professional looking website, with lots of great content, but if you don’t think about keywords first your website is most likely to be doomed for failure at least as far as search engines are concerned.

Visitors from search engines are the most targeted types of visitor that you could hope for. What you need to do is find out which keywords these people are using when they search in Google, Yahoo or MSN and ensure that your web page(s) are optimized for these keywords.

When researching your keywords you need to make sure that you

1. Choose keywords that people are actually searching for. Don’t optimize your site for keywords that people rarely search on.

2. Choose keywords that are not too highly competitive unless you’re an SEO whiz that is

If you keep these two goals in mind when choosing keywords you will have the best chance possible of rising to the lofty heights of the search engine results pages.

So, whatกs the best way to do keyword research? Iกve tried many different tools, but my favorite by is Wordtracker. You can sign up for a free trial of Wordtracker at http://www.homebizdirect.com/wordtracker.html but if you’re serious about your keyword research consider using the full version as it allows you to select unlimited keywords and includes results from 8 different search engines, 3 different directories and 4 different pay per click engines, compared to 1 search engine and 30 keywords in the trial version.

Once you’re logged into Wordtracker I recommend using the กKeyword Universeก to brainstorm for keywords. You just need to type in any keywords related to your area of interest and then use the built in thesaurus to find related keywords and synonyms. For example if I enter the keywords กinternet marketingก Wordtracker returns 300 related keywords including กweb site marketingก, กpromotionก and กonline marketingก.

Wordtracker then allows me to view a list of all the keyword searches that have included my keyword phrase. If I click on กweb site marketingก Wordtracker returns 118 rows of keywords that include that phrase, for example กweb site marketingก, กweb site marketing strategyก, กweb site online marketingก and more.

If I like the look of these keywords I can just add them to my basket and continue choosing keywords until I have 100s of keywords. For this example Iกll just add the 118 results to my basket and continue on to Wordtracker’s กCompetition Analysisก.

At the competition analysis phase I have a number of search engines, directories and pay per click engines to choose from. I can choose a maximum of two search engines, but for speed I normally tend to just go for Google, since it represents 35% of all searches. I can always go back later and look at other search engines if I have a good set of keywords.

Now the interesting part begins…

Wordtracker returns me a table with the first 100 keywords from my earlier keyword selection. The keywords are displayed in order of กKEIก, which means กKeyword Effectiveness Indexก. This is a measure to allow you to quickly identify which keywords are likely to give you the best results. Keywords with high KEIs are the best targets as these represent keywords with a combination of a high number of searches and a low amount of competing websites.

Other important statistics provided by Wordtracker are:

24 Hours – The predicted amount of traffic for a single day, for this search engine only (Google in this case)

Competing The number of competing websites for this keyword phrase.

Hereกs an example of two of the results returned from my กmarketing web siteก search:

Example 1

กmarketing web site designก

KEI 54.256

Count 46

24Hrs 17

Competing 39

Example 2

กweb site marketingก

KEI 0.256

Count 505

24Hrs 171

Competing 998000

You can see from these examples that the most popular keyword phrase here is กweb site marketingก, with approximately 171 searches in Google every 24 hours. However, this keyword phrase has almost a million competing websites, so if you decided to target this you would have a long hard slog to get on the first page of the search results.

In this example, my preference would be to choose the กMarketing web site designก phrase. Although there are 10 times less searches on Google per day for this keyword phrase, there are only 39 competing websites. So the chances are that I can get onto the first page of search results very quickly. I could also combine this keyword phrase with a few others from my research to build up the number of visitors to my site.

Once you have finished researching and have a good keyword list, ensure that add your keywords to

the page title

the h1 and h2 tags

the image alt tags

the keyword meta tags

the copy itself

Also make sure that you include the keywords in the anchor text when you are linking to your site from another site.

Going through this exercise of choosing keywords each time you set up a new website or create a new webpage will ensure that you have the best chance of getting targeted search engine visitors.

About The Author

Suzanne Morrison is the webmaster of http://www.homebizdirect.com. Visit her site to learn about more ways to promote your website.

This article was posted on August 27

by Suzanne Morrison

My Own Online Business After A Divorce and Almost

My Own Online Business After A Divorce and Almost Bankruptcy

by: Maria Estarellas

When I got divorced, I didn’t know how I was going to be able to cope with my financial responsibilities which included mortgage, car, my kidsกs private school plus all the other expenses related to having a family without a husbandกs salary.

I had recently lost my fulltime job, had managed to find a parttime job, and wasn’t receiving any child support because we had joined custody.

With all this happening at once, I was desperate to find some kind of work that I could do from home so I could pay the bills.

Thatกs when I decided to look on the Internet. I looked for information on how to start an online business, web design, how to find products to sell and everything related to having a home based business. But guess what, most of the free information available talked about getting a product, promoting it and making money but they actually didn’t say how and where to find products, where or how to promote your web site and I was so frustrated that for a moment I thought about forgetting the whole thing and look for a fulltime job somewhere else.

At this point I knew that I only had one last chance at it so I decided to spend one more day looking for stepbystep information on how to set up your own home business. Luckily, I came across a very impressive stepbystep manual that taught me how to start my business online.

If you plan to start your own online business, keep in mind that you have to invest a little money. But hey, the investment is a lot less than starting any other business.

My initial investment (after having spent previously around $250 in information that wasn’t worth a penny) was $296.90. This included the stepbystep manual, autoresponder, domain, web hosting and search engines.

The basic steps to start your own business are:

1. What to look for first?…A Niche Market

Some people think that they should look for a product first and then look for customers but in reality, itกs the other way around.

One of the tools that I use for this is http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ac/index.jhtml and look in the กSearch Term Suggestion Toolก.

All you have to do is type a keyword and it will give you a list of related keywords that people have looked for during the previous month.

You may be asking, how do I know what keywords to type? Well, I recommend you start by writing on a piece of paper the answer to these questions.

What are my hobbies?

What are my interests?

What talents do I have?

Don’t leave anything out. Why things you’re interested in? Because having a home based business is not only about making money but also about having fun in the process. If you’re passionate about what you do, you will suceed.

Once you have your keywords, then you go to Google and start writing each keyword in กsearchก. You will notice numbers underneath the กsearchก box.

Just to give you an example, if you type the word กhome based businessก you will see ‘results 110 of about 13,900,000ก. To see if you found a niche market, all you have to do is do the following calculation.

Supply/Demand = Supply/Demand Ratio

In other words:

Google Results/Overture Count = Supply/Demand Ratio

Letกs say that when you looked for กhome based businessก in Overture the count was 415461 so the result is:

13,900,000/415461 = 33.45681063

The lower the Supply/Demand Ratio number is, the better because it tells you that there is more demand than supply and you will make more money with this niche market.

2. Looking for a Product

Once you identify your niche market, itกs time to look for a product.

In my case, since I don’t want to get involved in shipping products, I look for companies that once I sell the product, they will ship it to the customer allowing me to save on shipping charges and time.

Nowadays, people are looking for information on various topics. Most of internet sales are on info products that the customer can download immediately, once they pay for it with a credit card. It doesn’t involve any shipping charge and the customer doesn’t have to wait 23 weeks to receive it.

There are suppliers that have over 10,000 digital products on every topic and the best thing is that they deliver the products, and pay you commission. They issue checks twice a month.

3. Building a Web Site

Once you have your niche market and products, you need to build a web site. Since I didn’t know any HTML and didn’t have money, I looked for companies that would allow you to build your own web site at a very low price and that included some type of HTML program so all I had to do was type the information and the system would convert it to HTML.

In terms of the design of your web site, make it as simple as possible. Make sure the navigation is easy for your customers and don’t use too many pictures. Less is more. The background should be white with black letters to make it easier to read.

Don’t have too many pages. Don’t give your customer an excuse to leave your web site because it is too long or have too many pages.

Have a กsubscribe formก built in your web site. Itกs very important that you collect as many email addresses as you can because those will be your customers. Provide a free newsletter every month with useful information to your customers.

4. Writing your Sales Letter

When I read about writing a sales letter, I wasn’t sure I could write anything. To tell you the truth, Iกm not a good writer. What I learned was that if your going to write something for your web site, write as if you were writing to a friend of yours.

Be honest, write the proกs and conกs of your products. That way you establish credibility and your customers will be more inclined to buy from you.

5. Choosing a Web Hosting Company

Look for a company that gives you enough bandwidth, email accounts, and support. Look for their reliability because you don’t want to choose one that have frequent problems with their system.

6. Autoresponder

You need to set up an autoresponder because if you’re going to send information to your costumers, you don’t want to spend time writing every month and sending it to them. With an autoresponder, you can type or even copy and paste articles in advance that will be automatically sent to your customers every week or every month.

This may take you 12 hours to do but once you do it, you can forget about it for a whole year.

7. Promote Your Web Site

Iกve found that the most difficult thing to do is this, promoting. Know why? Because there are lots of companies that supposedly กguaranteeก that you’re going to get lots of hits for a fee. Most are scams. I personally don’t spend a cent buying กguaranteed leadsก.

Another thing that doesn’t work for me is กfree adsก. Most of the time, people don’t read them and because they are free, these ads are not sent to anyone.

The only ads that have worked for me are the one in Google Adwords. These are based on a กpayperclickก basis. You have to make sure that if your are going to use this method of advertising, that you set up the parameters. What I mean by this is, establish the amount of money you will spend on a daily basis so you don’t spend more than you can afford to.

During my first month doing business on the Internet, I generated $532.16 working only 2 hours a week.

The feeling of checking my account every day and discovering that I had made money was so great that I decided to look for other ways to make a bigger income.

Iกll be honest with you, it hasn’t been easy and Iกm not going to tell you that I became a millionaire in 6 months because I would be lying, but every day I search for more information and ways to make money and it feels great to be able to pay my bills and still have money to do whatever I want.

Final Thought

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t make it. Believe in yourself.

The advantages of having an online business is that the expenses a very low, you get to have the flexibility of working the hours you want and the days you want, allowing you more time with your family and friends.

One important thing is to keep up to date on everything related to having a home based business. The Internet is changing every day and if you’re serious about having an online business, make sure you read and educate yourself.

About The Author

Maria Estarellas is a former airline manager and mother of two teenage sons. Her website was created with the modern family in mind. She provides a variety of information and fun things to do for the whole family in just one place. Upon request, she also helps people find information when they don’t have time to do it themselves. http://www.meg2.citymaker.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on September 21, 2004

by Maria Estarellas

What is Link Popularity?

What is Link Popularity?

by: F. Terrence Markle

Link popularity is simply the total number of web pages that link to your web page. Link popularity is an extremely important factor that is used by most of the major search engines to rank web pages and web sites. In general, the major search engines consider link popularity a key factor in their algorithms to determine the relevancy of your web page to a particular keyword search query.

Good link popularity is important because it can increase the visitor traffic to your web page. The reputation of your web site (i.e., votes of confidence from other web sites) is a measure of the site’s link popularity. Your web page rank (i.e., the position your web page occupies in a search engine’s results page) to a particular search query can be improved by increasing the number of relevant and quality web sites that have incoming links to your web page.

An incoming link is considered to be relevant if it is meaningful and relates to your web page. If you sell golf clubs online, relevant incoming links could be from: golf club manufacturers, golf apparel sites, competitors, golfrelated directories and so forth. In addition, internal links (links from web pages within your web site) are considered relevant and essential because they help your web page visitor to navigate your web site.

It is not enough to just have web page links coming into your web page (link popularity). The quality of the incoming link is also critical. A search engine will put more emphasis on a high quality web page (ranked high by a particular search engine) than on a low quality web page (ranked low by a particular search engine). It will take many lower quality incoming links to approach the level of a single high quality incoming link.

The major search engines do more than match the content of your web page to the keyword search query to determine if there’s a good match for a particular search. They look at the quality of the links to your web page. The reason is because there are thousands, if not millions, of web pages that contain the search query’s particular keyword or keyword phrase in the web page content. The search engines want to deliver a list of relevant and ordered web pages to meet a user’s query search.

In addition to the link popularity, search engines also look at the anchor text contained in the incoming link to your web page. It will consider your web page more relevant to the keyword query search if the text in the incoming link to your web page contains the queried keywords.

The number and quality of incoming links to your web page can be an excellent source of targeted and consistent visitor traffic to your site. In addition, search engines are more likely to index your web pages on a more frequent basis if you have many incoming relevant and quality links. The search engine spiders have a higher probability of finding you through the external incoming links to your site as your link popularity increases.

Reciprocal linking or link exchanging involves another web page linking to your web page and you linking back to their web page. If you select targeted and relevant web pages to exchange links with then you have a higher probability of gaining increased visitor traffic to your web page. In addition, your web page ranking on a search engine keyword query is also likely to improve as mentioned earlier.

Your overall marketing plan should include a link exchange campaign to help improve your search engine rankings and the visitor traffic to your web page. Spend the necessary time and energy to locate and exchange links with link exchange partners that provide a good match with your web page. Review the potential link partner’s web site theme and content to determine if their link would be relevant to your site. Consider only those web sites as exchange partners with themes or topics that complement or relate to your web page.

It is important that you have a good link exchange strategy in place and a process to manage the reciprocal links. Don’t link to a web page if they are not linking back to your web page. Link exchange campaigns require your attention and monitoring. You can perform the link exchange management manually or you can use a computer program that will do it for you.

There are a number of good programs that perform link exchange management functions. However, there are some programs that do a poor job. For example, some management software programs will perform automated search engine queries to harvest prospects that are not relevant for linking to your web page. Do not use ขlink farmsข in your link exchange campaign. These sites provide hundreds of nonrelevant links with no meaningful content to your site that the search engines can detect and potentially use to ban or penalize your site.

The vast majority web site owners that participate in a link exchange program do not understand the issues and benefits of the exchange. As a result, they do not maximize the potential value to be gained from the link exchange. Learn and implement the proper strategies and your web page will potentially benefit from improved search engine ranking and increased targeted and qualified visitors.

Every web site that provides links to other web pages should have a links page. Your links page will be an excellent resource for the visitors to your web site. Your web site will be more helpful and credible to your visitors if you provide useful and relevant links on your links page. You can start utilizing the power of your links page when it becomes a service to your visitors rather than a tool to obtain higher search engine ranking.

You need to categorize your links if you have a lot of outgoing links. Don’t try to put all your links on one links page where it has the appearance of a link farm (i.e., no valuable content or relevance) to the search engines that want to index the page. Create a useful links page that shows only the link categories with separate links that take your visitor to an individual link page for each category. The intent is to provide a resource for your visitors that is useful and can be easily navigated. Search engines love this type of structure that they can fully index.

The incoming links to your web page and the outgoing links to other web pages should be structured in a clear manner. Provide your link exchange partners with the exact HTML code to be included in the link on their web page. This code should include your URL, your anchor link text with the appropriate keyword or keyword phrase and a concise description that incorporates your web site name and the appropriate keyword or keyword phrase.

Copyright (C) 2004 F. Terrence Markle – All Rights Reserved

Get my F.R.E.E multipart series on generating targeted and quality traffic to your web site.

http://www.QuikSystems.com/WST/TrafficSeries.htm

About The Author

Copyright (C) 2004 – F. Terrence Markle has worked for over 20 years with public and private companies. He has an MBA in marketing and finance. He has been involved with Internetrelated businesses for over 3 years. His primary focus is the marketing of affiliate programs.

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 31, 2004

by F. Terrence Markle