20 Things You Need to Know Before Optimizing a Web Site

By Kalena Jordan

One of the most important aspects of a search engine optimization project is also one of the most overlooked – preparation! There are some important steps to take in advance of optimizing your site that will make sure your SEO is successful.

Before You Start

Before you start any search engine optimization campaign, whether it's for your own site or that belonging to a client, you need to answer the following questions:

1) What is the overall motivation for optimizing this site? What do I/they hope to achieve? e.g. more sales, more subscribers, more traffic, more publicity etc.

2) What is the time-frame for this project?

3) What is the budget for this project?

4) Who will be responsible for this project? Will it be a joint or solo effort? Will it be run entirely in-house or outsourced?

Answering these questions will help you to build a framework for your SEO project and establish limitations for the size and scope of the campaign.

Ready: How Search Engine-Compatible is the Site Currently?

Something I find very useful before quoting on any SEO project is to produce what I call a Search Engine Compatibility Review. This is where I carry out a detailed overview and analysis of a site's search engine compatibility in terms of HTML design, page extensions, link popularity, title and META tags, body text, target keywords, ALT IMG tags, page load time and other design elements that can impact search engine indexing.

I then provide a detailed report to potential clients with recommendations based on my findings. It just helps sort out in my mind what design elements need tweaking to make the site as search engine-friendly as possible. It also helps marketing staff prove to an often stubborn programming department (or vice versa!) that SEO is necessary. You might consider preparing something similar for your own site or clients.

Steady: Requirements Gathering

Next, you need to establish the project requirements, so you can tailor the SEO campaign to you or your client's exact needs. For those of you servicing clients, this information is often required before you are able to quote accurately.

To determine your project requirements, you need to have the following questions answered:

1) What technology was used to build the site? (i.e. Flash, PHP, frames, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, Flat HTML etc)

2) What are the file extensions of the pages? (i.e. .htm, .php, .cfm etc)

3) Does the site contain database driven content? If so, will the URLs contain query strings? e.g. www.site.com/longpagename?source=123444fgge3212, (containing "?" symbols), or does the site use parameter workarounds to remove the query strings? (the latter is more search engine friendly).

4) Are there at least 250 words of text on the home page and other pages to be optimized?

5) How does the navigation work? Does it use text links or graphical links or JavaScript drop-down menus?

6) Approximately how many pages does the site contain? How many of these will be optimized?

7) Does the site have a site map or will it require one? Does the site have an XML sitemap submitted to Google Sitemaps ?

8) What is the current link popularity of the site?

9) What is the approximate Google PageRank of the site? Would it benefit from link building?

10) Do I have the ability to edit the source code directly? Or will I need to hand-over the optimized code to programmers for integration?

11) Do I have permission to alter the visible content of the site?

12) What are the products/services that the site promotes? (e.g. widgets, mobile phones, hire cars etc.)

13) What are the site's geographical target markets? Are they global? Country specific? State specific? Town specific?

14) What are the site's demographic target markets? (e.g. young urban females, working mothers, single parents etc.)

15) What are 20 search keywords or phrases that I think my/my client's target markets will use to find the site in the search engines?

16) Who are my/my client's major competitors online? What are their URLs? What keywords are they targeting?

17) Who are the stake-holders of this site? How will I report to them?

18) Do I have access to site traffic logs or statistics to enable me to track visitor activity during the campaign? Specifically, what visitor activity will I be tracking?

19) How do I plan on tracking my or my client's conversion trends and increased rankings in the search engines?

20) What are my/my client's expectations for the optimization project? Are they realistic?

Answers to the first 10 questions above will determine the complexity of optimization required. For example, if the site pages currently have little text on them, you know you'll need to integrate more text to make the site compatible with search engines and include adequate target keywords. If the site currently uses frames, you will need to rebuild the pages without frames or create special No-Frames tags to make sure the site can be indexed, and so on.

This initial analysis will help you to scope the time and costs involved in advance. For those of you optimizing client sites, obtaining accurate answers to these questions BEFORE quoting is absolutely crucial. Otherwise you can find yourself in the middle of a project that you have severely under-quoted for.

The remainder of questions are to establish in advance the who, what, where, when, why and how of the optimization project. This will help you determine the most logical keywords and phrases to target, as well as which search engines to submit the site to.

For those of you optimizing web sites for a living, you might consider developing a questionnaire that you can give clients to complete to ensure you tailor the web site optimization to their exact needs.

Go!

So now you are clear about your motivations for optimizing the site, you know more about the target markets, you know how compatible the existing site is with search engines and how much work is involved in the search engine optimization process. You're ready to tackle the job.

About The Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

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Free Publicity Tips To Unlock Google's Top Search Ranking Secrecy

By CR Ransom

The biggest grief from many companies is their Google search engine ranking. Learn how using free publicity can land any company at the top of Google's radar. Making it on Google's front search page results is like kicking it with the cool kids when you were in school. Remember it was even harder to stay and appear to be cool; the same rules still apply with Google. It is hard work to get in and even harder to stay at the top.

Here is what to do until, when, and make Google find you all using free publicity.

Until Google Finds You:

The first thing to do until Google finds you is to fake it to you make it. Act like Google already found you; boost and brag about being the top dog in your business industry. Toot your own horn by telling everyone you know and tell them to tell everyone they know about your business. This allows you to receive free publicity and enlist support of others by helping you spread the word.

Bonus Tips: Give free seminars, offer referral bonuses, start a monthly tips newsletter. This will allow you to continue to receive even more free publicity and make you appear to be an expert.

When Google Finds You:

When Google finds you be ready to produce and make sure that you can deliver while handling increased productions. When you land on Google's main page celebrate, take the time to do a press or media release announcing your rank and how many other sites are listed in the search category. This again will be free publicity for your business because the media highly respect Google's search results and making it to the top can make a really good story.

Bonus Tips: Prepare an online press media kit, answer questions in blogs, write promotional articles giving how to advice. Make sure that you continue to promote your expertise and website to keep your ranking on Google.

Make Google Find You:

Claim your greatest reward by making Google find you. PR is the ultimate solution to make Google find your website on the Internet. Write media and press releases that cover news about your business relating to topics such as announcements, breakthroughs, research, new products, etc. Once the releases are picked up by media sources you will start receiving free publicity. The more media sources pickup your releases the more often times your releases will be posted on their website; helping to make Google find you.

Bonus Tips: Pitch story ideas about your business to the media, stay in the news at all times, join social network websites, start a blog, etc. All of these resources will increase your chances of receiving free publicity and help make Google find your website.

Following these easy steps will help keep you high on Google's radar and bring in tons of website traffic from your hard work and efforts. Get ready, set, go Google.

About The Author
"CR" Cataunya Ransom is the Co-founder of Mosnar Communications, INC. She developed a niche for Luxury PR & Global Marketing. Guiding clients on how to brand, market, and promote luxury products, events, and services. Highly respected as a luxury public relations expert! "CR" consults clients and speaks to audiences about luxury public relations and global marketing practices. http://www.mosnarcommunications.com.

Having Trouble Improving Your Google Ranking?

by Jim Pretin

Google is by far the most important search engine on the net. To rise to the top of their search engine, you need to improve your link popularity and you need to understand how they measure your link popularity (over 50% of all search engine traffic comes from Google, and if you can rise to the top, you will likely rise to the top of all the other search engines as well).

Link popularity is defined as the number of sites that are linking to your site. Some websites have thousands or even millions of sites linking to them, while others might have only a few. The search engines use the number of inbound links your site has as a measure of how important your site is, which translates into your search engine ranking.

The actual number of links to your site is not the only variable used to calculate your link popularity. The search engines also examine the relevance of the links to the subject matter of your site. For example, if a website that sells vitamins has 4,000 inbound links, but the source of most of the links are websites that have nothing to do with vitamins, then the algorithm that search engines use to determine link popularity will take that into account, and the link popularity score will not be very good.

It is possible for a website with a relatively small number of quality inbound links to be ranked higher than a site with a bunch of irrelevant or insignificant links. If I have a website that offers quotes for auto insurance, and I have 800 quality inbound links, then I might receive a much higher search engine ranking than another mortgage site that has 3,000 links that stem from link farms or Free For All (FFA) pages.

If you try to acquire inbound by using link farms or FFA pages, not only will it hurt your search engine ranking, but you might get permanently removed from the search engine listings. Links farms are sites where you can instantly exchange links with all the sites listed in that directory. FFA pages are pointless link directories. The search engines usually discount any links that come from either of these sources.

Now that we understand what link popularity is and how it works, we need to look specifically at how Google measures it. They use a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.

One factor that Google uses in their algorithm, obviously, is the total number of sites linking to you. The more links you have, the higher your score will be. However, their algorithm is a little more complicated than that, and it is possible for a website with fewer links to be ranked higher than a website that has more links.

The reason for this is because Google also measures the quality of your links. If your website is about vitamins, and the site linking to you is a video game site, then that is not considered a quality link. The link still helps your score, but the link would help your score much more if it were from a website whose subject matter is the same as yours.

Also, Google gives a higher score to a link if it comes from a page that has actual content that relates to your keywords. For example, if your site is about jewelry, and another jewelry website has posted a link to your site on their links page, that link is not as valuable as a link to your site coming from a blog or a message board where a lot of information about jewelry is being written or discussed.

Also, they give an even higher score to a link if it contains anchor text that matches one of the keywords that describes your site. For example, if I have a site that sells lawnmowers, and a blog about lawnmowers has posted a link to my site, it helps my score even more if the link text (also known as anchor text) is LAWNMOWERS. To learn more about anchor text, go to a search engine and look up ANCHOR TEXT and you will be able to learn about it.

Another factor used by Google to score your link popularity is the diversity of keywords contained on sites linking to you. For example, if you have a site that sells handbags, and all the links to your site are from other sites that contain nothing but the keyword HANDBAGS, Google considers that to be abnormal. To get a higher score, you need to have links coming from sites that contain a variety of keywords related to handbags, such as BUY HANDBAGS, LEATHER HANDBAGS, etc.

It is difficult to increase your link popularity, but now that you understand how your score is calculated, you can devise a plan to improve your score. You might want to consider posting to forums and blogs that contain information that is related to your site, and when you post, include a link to your site.

About the Author
Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com/, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form.

An Epic Tale Of Google SEO And The Inbound Link

By Matt Jasckon

An Introduction To Google (For Those That Might Need It)

Google is the behemoth of search engines, the plateau we aspire to, and the chagrin of many a Webmaster and marketer. If they love your website, you will in turn grow to love the masses of traffic they send your way. In contrast, if they deem your site to be of little or no value then you'll struggle to fill the aching void in your Internet marketing. OK, so th at might be a little over the top but to the battle hardened SEO a lot of it will probably ring true and they are certainly the biggest and most popular of the current search engines.

The Torrid Tale Of The Ever Changing Google Algorithm

Optimizing any site to promote it within Google search engine results pages can prove to be an ongoing saga. After countless months of optimizing, tweaking, linking, and improving you might be lucky enough to find your site listed at the top of the results page. If you do then we all hail you and you have the unarguable right to give yourself a firm pat on the back. Problems can arise, though, when Google perform another of their seemingly uncountable algorithm updates. Boom, your site suddenly drops from top spot to page 53 of the results. After a week of crying, shouting, and screaming the results begin to settle and your site once again finds itself heading towards the dizzy heights of page one.

Again, this is a slight over-exaggeration in most cases. Google do update their algorithms because they attempt to prevent the unethical few that we have all come to know and love as black hat SEOs from gaining that coveted top spot. In fairness to Google, this can't be an easy battle. They make a change, the black hat SEOs change their methods to match. Google again make some changes in a bid to counteract these new methods and, what do you know, the black hat SEOs pop up again with some new, equally cunning ploy to steal the top positions from the rest of us Google abiding promoters. And so, the algorithms change once again.

An Introduction To Our Hero - The Inbound Link

However, since time immemorial Google has loved the inbound link in an almost incestuous fashion. A quick browse through most result pages will throw up results that you might find to be a freak or just completely wrong. Those sites contain little or no mention of the keyword, or search phrase, in question and yet they're appearing above your impeccably optimized page. Looking beyond the search results and toward a link popularity tool you will inevitably find that the site in question has an excellent link profile.

Why Use A Link Building Service To Fight Your Battles?

Google deem an inbound link as a tick, a gold star, and a big bag of brownie points for your page. If that inbound link also contains the aforementioned keywords as anchor text then you should expect great things in the future. If you're looking for the single most important Google SEO factor then inbound links are what you are looking for. The size of the tick or the amount of brownie points that are found in your special bag are determined by just how beneficial an inbound link is.

It's Not The Size Of Your Links...

Quality is, on the whole, much more important than quantity. Reciprocal links were once the weapon of the Webmaster looking for Google acceptance, but they now place less weight on a reciprocal link as they do on a one-way link. Google want to promote a natural or organic Internet network. They don't want to see links that have been traded, in any way, and instead want to see sites gifted a link because of the value that they offer to visitors.

Google Battling Techniques

In reality, of course, gaining organic links is not a simple process. You need to have traffic before you have any hope of gaining organic links and so it's necessary to look elsewhere. The technique that I, as a Google battler, prefer is the use of article submissions. This can be a submission to article directories in the hope that every man and his site will pick it up, or submission to individual high quality websites. It isn't important. What is important is the degree of control that article submission offers.

Commanding A Regiment Of Inbound Links

Submitting an article makes me the boss, or General if you prefer, of my links to an excellent extent and the search engines certainly don't seem to have a problem with it (yet). I can control the page content, the anchor text, and in the case of individual submissions I can control the quality (dare I say it - PageRank) of the site or page that links to me.

Fighting On An Even Battlefield

Page content is important. Gaining a link from a page that is based on a topic irrelevant to your own is near useless. Even ensuring that the text immediately surrounding your link and the anchor text are relevant does not offer what I look for in a linking page. I want complete (or as near as possible to complete) relevancy.

Don't Camouflage Your Links

Control over anchor text is vital. The anchor text of a link is the visual element that readers can see, it's the section of the HTML that is viewed and clicked by readers, and it is the section of a link that many inexperienced promoters get completely wrong. When you start a link building or a rticle submission campaign it is important to determine the keywords you will be targeting and include these keywords in the hypertext of the link and preferably at least once or twice in the article itself. Most article directories allow for two links so use them both for different keywords, preferably pointing to different pages of your site.

Always Be Planning Your Next Inbound Link Campaign

The final factor regarding linking that is vitally important is that you keep going. Even when you reach the top spots for your most competitive keywords you have to keep plugging away. The second you let it drop you can guarantee that another site with another eager Webmaster at the helm is chomping at the bit ready to take over the mantle of Google number one.

Only Fools Rush In

New websites should always take care not to build too many links too quickly. Google do see this as meaning you employ an underhand method of link building because new sites typically cannot muster up thousands of links in their first few days. Take your time, submit one article to several directories, and then wait to be indexed. Using this technique you will get indexed relatively quickly and after a couple of weeks you can start to post articles with a little more regularity.

Conclusion And A Little Ambush Prevention

Inbound linking is potentially (I use that word only to try and prevent the ambush of criticism from others) the most important aspect of Google SEO. A good link profile with a reasonable number of inbound links from high quality, and relevant websites can make up for under optimized or even un-optimized website content. What it can't make up for is the use of other black hat SEO techniques. Do everything above board and it is less likely that you will become one of the anti-Google druids; those that spend the rest of their online life frequenting message boards and blogs relaying the tired tale of how they were once an online millionaire before Google destroyed them.

About the Author
Matt Jackson is the website content copywriter for WebWiseWords. As well as providing insightful tales of epic optimization battles he also offers his unique link building service to anyone that is even remotely interested and several who aren't.

Creativity Boost: Be More Creative - How To Give Your Creativity Permission To Be Amazing

Creativity is abundant in each of us. The problem is not that we're not capable of being creative. The problem is so often we don't ALLOW ourselves to be creative.

Let's say you're a sports car enthusiast. On your front drive is the most gorgeous Ferrari you could imagine. And it's all yours. But because it's been so long since you even sat in it, let alone took it for a spin, you barely notice it's there anymore.

Every day you walk past your beautiful automobile with its V12 engine waiting to purr into life and its shiny red paintwork glimmering in the sun. But it might as well be a rusting old wreck there, the amount you use it.

Then you go around all day gazing longingly and enviously at other beautiful cars driving around, wishing you had such a fabulous machine to drive. Even though there's one right there on your front drive!

It's a similar story with our creative talents. If it's been a long time since we used our creativity regularly, then however creative we're capable of being, we simply overlook it, and "forget" all the creative potential and abilities that lies within us.

So what can you do to realise the creativity in you once again and start putting it to use?

Back to the Ferrari for a moment. If you look on your kitchen counter where you keep all your keys, you'll realise there's a Ferrari keyring, with a Ferrari key. It's been there all along waiting for you to take it out to the Ferrari, put it in the ignition and go for that blast on the open road you've been longing to take for years.

What's the equivalent "key" to your creativity? It's all about giving yourself permission to be creative, allowing that creative talent within you to come out to play and show you what it can do.

So how do you give yourself this permission to be creative? How do you turn the key in your ignition?

There are many ways. Here are 3 of the most important ones:

1. Create Everyday. When you creativity knows it has a regular time slot in which to come out, it becomes far more willing to reveal its talents. It knows that the same time each day is put aside for creative work, rather than being like a kid after the heavy first snowfall of the winter sitting inside wrapped up in coat, scarf, gloves and boots but not being allowed out to play until his mother says it's OK to go and make a snowman.

2. A place to create. If each time you want to create you have nowhere to go, or your desk or creative space is cluttered up with all sorts of other stuff that gets in the way of you creating easily, you're not going to be very creative. Dedicate at least the corner of a room to your creative projects and have it set up and ready for creating with everything you need close to hand.

3. Capture your ideas. A lack of ideas is a serious creativity killer. But the problem is not that you don't have enough ideas, it's that you don't capture them when you do have them. By capturing ideas as soon as they come to you in a sketchbook or on a voice recorder, you keep a supply ready to explore. This sends the message to your creativity to produce more ideas, because it knows you're going to make use of them. Again, you've given it permission.

These are 3 ways you can start using today to give your creativity the permission it needs to come out and play and show you just how amazing it can be.

So grab the keys, hop in your Ferrari and head out for the open road!

Google PageRank: Webmaster's Paranoid Hell!

by Titus Hoskins

Recently Google did a major PageRank update where a lot of sites were downgraded. Many experts believe this PageRank update was Google's response to link selling - sites which sell links lost points in their PageRank.

Google measures all web pages on a scale of importance from 0 to 10, which is shown in a small green pixel bar on browsers carrying the Google Toolbar. PageRank is "supposedly" measured by the number of backlinks to your site.

Online democracy in action, a link is a vote for your site. The more votes you have the higher your site is ranked. At least that's how it was supposed to work until a lot of high PR sites started selling links and put a monkey wrench into the whole system.

The latest update may be a smart move on Google's part to curtail this practice; who's going to buy a link from a PR2 or even a PR4 site? Besides this could be more than a warning that your site will go down even further if you continue to sell links.

Now this is more of a cosmetic change in PageRank than a real change in your true rankings in Google. Just because your PR goes down doesn't mean your keyword rankings or traffíc from Google also goes down.

I saw some of my sites go up, some stayed the same, but my major site took a big hit - falling from PR6 to PR4. This was more of a devastating blow than I expected mainly for psychological reasons than actual consequences. After years of building the best content you can muster and constantly getting quality one-way links, to see that PageRank drop was very disappointing and hits to the core of your online work.

I have been around for a while so I have experienced many Google Updates - anyone remember the Florida Update? I also keep my ears peeled to discussions of the latest updates in Webmasterworld and Stompernet, and I even read Matt Cutts when I get real nervous... so I knew not to panic just because of the sudden drop in PageRank.

I also knew what most of the SEO experts were saying was true because my major keywords stayed the same and my Google traffíc actually went up. But that's little comfort when you're talking about Google; you immediately go into overdrive and try to figure out where you went wrong. What caused the drop - because whether PageRank is meaningless or not, you're still going in the wrong direction.

I saw many of my competitors drop too, but many stayed the same and a few even increased in PageRank. What are they doing right; what am I doing wrong? I don't sell links but does Google think I am selling links was my main concern? I even moved one external link from my main page to another part of my site, just in case Google is mistaking that as a paid link.

Welcome To Webmaster's Paranoid Hell!

For SEO reasons I have very few external links on my main page. Can't see why Google downgraded my main site. I have been at PR6 for years.

Herein lies my main beef - with Google you don't really know where you stand; you are constantly walking on eggshells. No matter how good your content or your site is - one misstep and you could be in the doghouse. All your hard work can be taken away in a heartbeat.

It wouldn't matter so much if it was one of the other two major search engines downgrading your site but this is Google.

Free organic traffíc from Google is vital to any online site or business. I would take traffíc from Google over any other source of traffíc on the web, except for traffíc coming from my articles on other sites, and even that traffíc probably originated from a search in Google.

Google and Google PageRank have always been important to me - that's one of the reasons a sudden large drop causes so much concern. There's another important reason Google PageRank is important to me.

Most SEO experts mistakenly believe PageRank is meaningless because Google is not giving us the true ranking of any site or revealing all the backlinks, which is supposedly one of the major factors in how Google ranks sites. While this fact is obviously true, it has caused many to jump to another conclusion.

Because Google is not giving us the real ranking, many webmasters have dismissed PageRank as a vital element in their sites. Don't make the same mistake.

Google PageRank is extremely important if you're doing business on the web. The higher PR you have, the better. But it has nothing to do with keyword rankings or first page SERPs.

What many SEO experts fail to realize (not really their business) is the whole "perceived" value of PageRank.

Google, hate it or love it, has become the most respected company on the web in the eyes of the majority of the web's users. It carries enormous weíght and prestige. The "perceived" value of a high PR7 or PR8 is extremely valuable.

We are not talking about link selling; we are talking about how a perspective business partner or customer will treat your site or business.

Say you have two identical sites you want to do business with online and you discover one is a Google PR2 site and the other is a Google PR8 site - which one would you choose to do business with? Honestly?

From first-hand experience, I know any online company or marketer will get more business offers and be offered more partnerships/joint ventures if you have a high Google PR site than a low one. It will make a difference to your bottom line.

PageRank is important. PageRank has meaning. Even if it has little bearing on your SERPs rankings or Google traffíc, PageRank can greatly influence the success of your online site or venture. Don't ignore or dismiss PageRank as a meaningless relic that didn't quite work out as Google had planned for it in the first place.

High PageRank Will Always Be Valuable

The day Google gives its own site a PageRank of PR1 or PR2 instead of the current PR10 - that's the day you can dismiss PageRank as truly meaningless.


About The Author
The author is a full-time online marketer. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools or why not try these: Free Marketing Courses. Copyright © 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Internet 'Street Smarts' Traffic Secret - Audience versus Target Market

Before you jump in and build a website, start by developing a marketing plan that targets an audience rather than just a market.

Let's say your plan is to sell to young mothers, so your AUDIENCE is 'young moms', but within this audience are many small NICHE target markets.

* NOTE: Niche marketing means marketing to a highly targeted market sector versus marketing to a large general audience.

Look at some of the many niche markets for 'young moms':

Young moms that are overweight - are a target market for diet products.

Young moms that are divorced - are a target market for dating sites.

Young moms that want a divorce - are a target market for divorce attorneys.

Young moms that have children with learning disorders - are a target market for special training sites.

Young moms that worry about what their kid's eat - are a target market for a cookbook site.

Young moms that worry about a college education for their kid's - are a target market for an investment advice site.

Young moms with a growing family - are a target market for a mortgage information site.

Young moms with a growing family - are a target market for a home improvement site.

Young moms with a growing family - are a target market for a real estate site.

Young moms with a growing family - are a target market for life insurance.

If you take the approach of concentrating on an AUDIENCE, then you can target the many small NICHE markets that exist within your target audience.

Imagine, in this example for 'young moms', if you have a series of websites each targeted at one of the niche market examples mentioned above. As your email list grows, for each site, you can start to use your email marketing campaigns to cross promote all of your websites because your have a common AUDIENCE.

Example: If one of the 'young moms', that joins your list for say a home improvement site, just happens to want to lose some weight then, you already have a potential customer because you also have a weight loss or diet site.

This works because domain names and hosting are downright cheap.

You can easily setup multiple sites because domain names and hosting are very inexpensive. The cost of owning one website - called a domain name - is less than $10.

To put that domain name on the Internet requires a hosting company. This is a company that will rent you space on a server [a special type of computer] where you store the files that make up your website. Hosting companies have direct connections to the Internet. When people type your website name into their web browser they are sent to your hosting company where your websites files are located.

Another Internet 'Street Smarts' lesson: Create a family of sites.

If you do your homework, you will find hosting companies that will let you host a whole bunch of websites for one low monthly price. That's right, you do not have to pay a separate hosting fee for each site you own if you use the right hosting company.

Since purchasing a website name and hosting a website is very inexpensive make sure and design your marketing plan to take advantage of these benefits. Rather than build just one site, plan on building a family of sites all targeted at the same audience, but with each of your individual websites targeted at a small special niche within your target audience.

Put up one simple niche site a month and you'll have 12 separate moneymakers by the end of the year.

About this author
Here's another Internet "Street Smarts" lesson: Everyday thousands of people search the Internet looking for this one thing. Do you know what this one thing is? Read the real life online adventure about a maverick young mom that has decided to say goodbye to working 50-60 hour weeks and stay at home for more Internet "Street Smarts" lessons. Go here ==> http://www.bathrobemillionairesclub.com/20/

SEO Campaign:Why Keywords Are Vital?

by Omaro Ailoch

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the optimization of a web page in order that it ranks higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) for specific keywords or keyword phrases. The pages that rank higher typically gain the greater amount of search engine traffic compared to pages ranked lower for the same keyword.

The majority of web users click on one of the top 5 results on the first page when they complete a search. As such, the ultimate goal of any SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) is to gain one of these coveted top spots, with the number one ranking being the primary objective.

Targeting Keywords

However, a top position for any keyword won't suffice. In order to increase your ROI, it is vital to ensure that you target the most appropriate keywords for your pages, and for your business. While generic, or very general topic keywords, may have the highest number of searches conducted in a month they are also the most competitive and typically least productive.

Competitive Keywords

The more competitive a keyword the more pages that you need to compete with in order to benefit from an SEO campaign. Many of the pages that appear at the top of the list will also be well optimized and have a powerful link profile, making it difficult to rank highly.

Improved Conversions With Targeted Keywords

General topic based keywords have also proven to have lower conversion rates compared to more specific keywords. Targeted keywords generate targeted visitors, and targeted visitors are much more likely to be active while on the pages of your website.

How Keyword Research Helps

Keyword research helps you to identify keywords that are relevant, targeted, and preferably less competitive. By finding the right blend of these factors you can minimize the time it takes to rank well, actually increase the number of visitors, and improve your conversion rates. Targeted keyword research leads to better profit opportunities and improved ROI.

Tailoring Your Keyword Research To Your Needs

Every page of a website needs to be treated as an individual project, especially in terms of marketing. Each page will usually attract different visitors in different stages of the purchasing process. Deep product pages will often catch visitors while they are at their most profitable - when they're ready to buy. General pages and even product category pages can be used to attract more general terms, but they should still be properly researched and targeted very precisely to your target market.

Niche Keywords

Niche keywords are often talked about as being the ideal variety of keywords for a page. A niche keyword is a highly targeted, very specific keyword. It is geared towards a corner of the market in which you operate and typically has very few competing pages. Niche keywords don't usually create much in the way of traffic but the traffic that they do create is highly targeted and very active. It attracts excellent conversion rates ensuring that you get a good return on your marketing investment.

Long Tail Keywords

Many web pages will gain visitors from natural keywords within the text. These long tail search terms again produce highly targeted visitors and while each individual term will not produce more than one or possibly two visitors over the space of the month, they do all add up. It is virtually impossible to research long tail keywords because of their infrequency, but by using popular keywords you heighten the chances of seeing more on your website.

Why Keyword Research Is Important

Keyword research is an important aspect of SEO because it helps to identify the terms that surfers use to access sites similar to yours. This, in turn, enables you to optimize the pages of your site and your link profile in order to attract those visitors. By doing so, you may also improve the number of long tail searches that lead to your site, and these product highly targeted visitors for little optimization effort.

About the Author
Omaro Ailoch is a senior software engineer, an entrepreneur and the founder of OC IT Services a highly skilled California based web development, design, and search engine optimization firm.

Creativity Boost: When an Idea is Knocking at Your Door

By Kristina Julin-stringer

It happens to all of us. Suddenly, out of the blue, we get an idea of the type of business we would like to do. Those who are serious about starting a business and running their own company will do something about it immediately. They at least write it down. The most eager people might even search on the Internet to find out about the competition, the potential market size, and the likes and dislikes of the customers.

Then there are the 'let me see' people. They have to think about it and sleep over night before they do anything about it. Last are the people who doubt the functionality of the idea and wait for a better one to come.

Which category do you think you belong in?

Opportunity knocks only once. Is this true? Do we only get one opportunity in our lifetime, and if we miss that then we lose our chances to become an entrepreneur?

Opportunities pass but they do not pause.

Some people do not see the opportunity when it first knocks at their door. But the second time their circumstances might have changed and they might actually be looking for a business opportunity. March to the beat of your own drum and pay attention to your idea. If you feel like you cannot take action now, change what you must so that you can take action now. If you do not want to start a business on your own, find a partner.

At the end of the day, it pays to do something with your idea. It is simply easier to correct your actions later on, but if you decide to do nothing when an idea shows up at your doorstep, you cannot help yourself later on, because out of nothing comes nothing. So take action when an idea shows up. No matter how small it might look, it is ten times better than doing nothing.

Question 1: How do you catch your ideas when they arrive?

Question 2: Do you do some research on your ideas?

Question 3: If so, what kind of research? If not, why not?

Being an entrepreneur is a journey inside myself to find out how far I can go and particularly what I can achieve in my life. To me it is really a dream coming true and I would like to share my experience with other people who are perhaps thinking of starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur. I am particularly interested in giving a helping hand by showing how ideas can become good ideas.

Article Source
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kristina_Julin-stringer
Kristina Julin-Stringer http://www.howtocomeupwithabusinessidea.com

Key Marketing Methods For 2008

by Sam Law and Julian Stone

Isn't online marketing by definition, expensive? Not necessarily. Online businesses are coming to the realization that in an organic environment like the Internet, organic marketing is required; paying for traditional or static marketing only gets you so far before it becomes ineffective. The consumer now controls your marketing.

What is wrong with the old methods?

Old marketing methods are failing because users are beginning to wise up (Rise Up) against the old brute force advertising that tries to win users over through sheer volume, using abrasive web-page banners, unrelated Adwords displayed on the page, or repeated newsletters (most being restricted by anti-spam laws).

The old methods no longer work effectively for two key reasons. One is the fact that they are a "flash in the pan", directing users to websites only so long as you continue to pay for the campaign, the second reason is consumers are now at the stage where they either ignore them or go out of their way to block them (with plug-in based browser or email filtering).
Let's quickly run through some of the "traditional" ways to market on the web, and their failings.

Paid Campaigns - (These only work while active) Paid campaigns may lure people to your site, but they are regularly not your target market and after arriving they promptly leave (High "bounce" rate).

Banner Ads - People hate banner ads. Most of the ads on the Internet are loathed because they aren't relevant. Seeing a banner for a better insurance rate when on a gaming site is a massive disconnect for the audience and a significant portion of banner ads are plain abrasive to users. Filling one third of your page with banner ads will not increase the likelihood anyone will care.

Adwords - Adwords (PPC, Pay Per Click) have the same problem as banner ads, though to a lesser extent. Adwords work by displaying "sponsored results," in search engine results. Adword results are separated from normal search results so not many people select them and the unknown quality in the users eye causes distrust (how do I know that a sponsored result is better than an organic result). Competition is fierce, with prices spiraling upwards, and returns staying constant. For more information see our article about Google marketing pitfalls.

Newsletters - One word: Spam. Because of the spam epidemic, users are becoming ever more wary signing up to receive mail from any online source. Legislation and the ever increasing ability of spam filters mean a continually shrinking audience (Restricting the ability to send newsletters, and filtering them before they reach your audience).

The "Old World" marketing relied on one or two large marketing sources to drive traffic with big budgets and marketing firms. You have to get people to create the "news" then you pay other people to distribute the "news", so you are pulling people into your "store" to show them what you have (whether they want it or not).

New methods for marketing

These days having other create and distribute your content for you is in vogue, this can mean syndicating your articles for other users to repost, paying users to review or rate your services, guiding users directly on forums or having users sign up to receive exclusive information. In every case, the handiwork of distribution is left to others.

Lets quickly run through some of the new "web 2.0" ways to market on the web, and the reason you should try them:

Blogs - Blogs are a goldmine to both the reader and the writer. Blogging is less time consuming and considerably cheaper than traditional marketing. Blogs give you the ability to convey your personal thoughts on happenings in your industry and your personal and corporate life, letting you really connect with your audience. Another positive is the viral marketing component where you are referenced through various social media websites, search engines and other blogs, increasing both your credibility and searchability, making it easier for consumers to find and trust you.

Forums - Forums give you an insight into what people are talking about, letting you get directly into the heads of potential customers. An easy way to find an appropriate forum is by asking existing customers what forums they frequent. Join in conversations, threads, contribute to the community and become a trusted member, then you can give your professional advice and mention what you do for a living. You should approach this as a way to get insight into what people are talking about, with the side-effect of possibly generating leads. If you approach this as direct marketing the community will quickly tell and either ban you, or develop a healthy disdain of you.

Articles - Articles are a great way to show you are connected to the issues in your industry and the wider world around you. You can either submit your articles through a syndication service, or post it on your blog, even better is a combination of the two: Choose a topic you enjoy talking about and write an article (like this one!) with your personal opinion or some helpful advice. If it is well-written and educates readers, you will already have an edge on your competition.

The theme of the new marketing methods is tailoring your content to the audience. The intent is to create something reader want to read. Marketing is not about trickery or insincerity, it's about communicating your ideas with honesty and authenticity. If it is worthwhile to your users, then they will happily talk about the content and spread it around, you have to communicate authentically with your customers and it simply doesn't happen using "traditional" online marketing.

A word of caution: if you try any of the above methods but approach them traditionally (as a direct marketing channel) then not only will you annoy a great deal of users, you can also damage your company image. Again I stress the above point, make the content something people want to read, not just marketing material.

Old marketing methods that are now approached differently
Benjamin Franklin said insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." This is increasingly true for some of the more traditional forms of online marketing. It's not so much what people are doing, but more a case of how they are being done.

Let's take a look at how we should be approaching some of the old marketing methods today.

Press Releases - Before we start, I'm sorry to tell you, but unless you are in the 5% of the market that people pay attention to, no-one reads your press releases - at least no potential customers do. A high percentage of companies marketing on the web use traditional methods of delivery, either in print or on a section of their website. Consider changing your press release to positively present your company then send it through a syndication service for papers and online news sources to pick up and republish.

Search Engines - Previously you had to specifically tailor your site to search engine specifications to ensure you had a high pagerank and were located at the top of search results. To put it simply, the important factor was how your site was presented to the user. These days although page display has an impact, it is far more important to have the right content on the site. Search engines now care more about content. Structure your pages logically and efficiently with appropriate content for each page, and be sure to link to those pages wherever possible, especially if you are engaging in blog or forum marketing.

Mailing Lists and Newsletters - With new anti-spam laws coming into effect, coupled with users increasingly annoyed at anything email based, mailing lists and newsletters are becoming far less effective. Ensure all the users on your mailing lists and newsletters have agreed to receive them. You don't need to re-ask permission from your existing list, but be sure to let users op-out, and put an optional op-in form link in your communications.

Old-world communication can still be effective but you need to ensure it is not your only approach.

The Conclusion?

Reevaluation is the key to a healthy online presence. You need to be constantly measuring and reevaluating your marketing methods to ensure you are not wasting money, and can take advantage of effective new methods.

About this author
Sam Law and Julian Stone - Project, Task & Time Management specialists for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com

When Google's Paid Search vs.Organic Results

by Scott Buresh
"Chinese Wall - The ethical (not physical) barrier between different divisions of a financial (or other) institution to avoid conflict of interest..."
Investopedia.com

"While Google nevër sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results."
Google's Webmaster Help Center FAQ

"NO pay for inclusion, and a complete separation of the search index part from the money part."
Google Chief Engineer Craig Neville-Manning, Search Engine Strategies 2004

The good people at Google have long maintained that there is a Chinese Wall between paid search results and organic results – that is, the department responsible for advertising is completely separate from the department responsible for organic search engine placement. The company insists that Google Adwords is a completely separate entity than the Google search engine, and nevër the twain shall meet. This all sounds very good, in theory. But do they live up to this ideal in practice?

You don't hear Google talking much about Chinese Walls these days. This is certainly in part because they have had great difficulty gaining traction in the literal and very competitive Chinese market (headlines such as "Google Hits Chinese Wall" or even "Google Advance Halted at Great Wall of China" were commonplace). But might there be other, more nefarious reasons? Is there a reason why we hear less and less from Google about the virtual wall that separates paid search results from organic search engine placement?

What Is Google Really Doing for Its Big Spenders?

It has long been rumored that Google will provide technical assistance in achieving better organic search engine placement to those who spend more for paid search results. I know for certain that these rumors are true in at least two instances. In fact, I actually have the minutes from one of these technical assistance meetings after the company met with Google engineers. While the identity of these two companies is irrelevant, suffice to say that they are companies that you have almost certainly heard of and that they spend millíons of dollars on paid search words each year.

To be fair, based on the meeting minutes I have, the advice that the engineers gave to the company does not include anything groundbreaking. It is mostly common sense advice that a good search engine optimization firm already knows about organic search engine placement and other issues, and much of it is already covered in the publicly-available Google Webmaster Guidelines. This, however, is beside the point. Google has obviously decided that it must provide perks to its big paid search spenders to keep them happy (or rather, happy enough to not pull their advertising). Clearly, one of these perks is access to Google engineers and the ability to glean information about organic search engine placement, a luxury that smaller advertisers do not enjoy.

Organic Search Engine Placement for Sale – The New Google Reality?

From a business perspective, this makes perfect sense, of course. Big-dollar advertisers make up the bulk of Google's revenue for paid search, and any intelligent business will take whatever steps they deem necessary to hold on to their most valuable customers. This is why larger advertisers already have a designated account representative from Google. I am willing to bet that this perk was not Google's idea. Rather, it almost certainly stemmed from the sense of entitlement that those spending large sums on paid search felt and the fact that technical help with their organic search engine placement is what they demanded.

Unfortunately, this reality leaves an advertiser with a small budget for paid search at a disadvantage. If Google is willing to provide this secret perk to larger advertisers now, what might they do in the future? Provide price breaks to larger paid search spenders? Raise the minimum monthly spend to squeeze out smaller companies and please the larger ones? It certainly has the potential to become a slippery slope, and I am interested to see where it goes next.

One final point – since Google is willing to give advice about organic search engine placement to companies that spend a great deal of monëy on Google advertising, is the phrase "While Google nevër sells better ranking in our search results..." truly accurate? I suppose this is open for interpretation. It may be technically true, but offering advice regarding organic search engine placement straight from the horse's mouth in exchange for millíons of dollars in monëy for paid search results isn't far from selling rankings, in my opinion.

Conclusion

Please don't get me wrong – I still believe that Google is the best search engine out there, I greatly admire the way that they are continually reinventing themselves, and I think they are still the target for those seeking the most benefit from organic search engine placement. They have the folks in Redmond constantly guessing and always three steps behind, and I love how they have started from humble beginnings to take on one of the biggest corporations in the world (and consistently win). I simply believe that they have played the underdog, anti-corporate card for too long, and that even if it has not outlived its usefulness, it has outlived its truthfulness. Google is now a huge multinational corporation that answers to its shareholders. To pretend anything otherwise is silly, but it seems that, for now at least, the charade will continue.

Google's overriding principle, one that they have been happy to espouse to the media, has long been "Don't Be Evil." Whether they still adhere to this principle since they have become a public company is another question that is open for interpretation. If you are a smaller advertiser and feel that Google's favoritism toward larger paid search customers regarding organic search engine placement is evil, it probably seems as though the "Don't Be Evil" principle no longer applies. You may conclude that the principles of "Don't Be Evil" and "Keep Shareholders Happy" are mutually incompatible, and that the latter has gained the upper hand.


About The Author
Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, Organic Rankings, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Download Medium Blue's latest exclusive whitepaper, "Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix," for more insight

Search Engine Optimization Company Owns by Google

If you own or work with a search engine optimization company, or even if you're just hoping to better your search engine placement, then you are probably aware of the recent acquisition frenzy that took hold among the major search engines.

Google paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, Microsoft paid $6 billion for Aquantive, and Yahoo paid $680 million for the 80 percent of Right Media that it did not already own and another $300 million for BlueLithium. The companies purchased are all intended to help widen the advertising range of each of the engines in question, and to take advantage of increasingly sophisticated behavioral-based ad-serving technologies that the acquired companies owned.

What many people failed to realize was that when Google purchased DoubleClick, it now was also the owner of a very large search engine optimization company called Performics, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of DoubleClick.

This fact is of course raising some eyebrows in the industry. Google has consistently maintained that there is no way that people can pay for better search engine placement in the organic index, a stance that the company still claims applies despite this recent purchase. In fact, a portion of Google's published guidelines about SEO says, "While Google doesn't have relationships with any SEOs and doesn't offer recommendations..." In another portion, Google says "While Google nevër sells better ranking in our search results..." However, anyone who hires search engine optimization company Performics is of course now paying Google for better search engine placement. It seems like a pretty black and white issue, but Google would obviously prefer that it was kept delightfully blurry.

A Serious Conflict of Interest

One would think that Google, aware of the controversy that would come from the fact that it now owned a search engine optimization company, would be eager to spin Performics off quickly in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety and of selling search engine placement. Not so, says the official Google/ Doubleclick acquisition FAQ:

Q. What will Google do with Performics?
A. Performics is part of DoubleClick, and we are acquiring it as part of the transaction. We have no plans to dispose of it at this time.

All right, so Google owns a search egine optimization company and seems prepared to hold onto it for a little while at least. Yes, there seems to be a huge conflict of interest. Yes, there appears to be a large double standard. Yes, Google appears to have abandoned its long-standing principles regarding organic search engine placement in the interests of profít. But surely, the search engine optimization company that it bought will quickly be forced to follow the guidelines that Google has published for companies that are looking for a search engine optimization company. Right? Well, no.

Here is a verbatim quote from the guidelines that Google provides to people thinking about hiring a search engine optimization company:

* Make sure you're protected legally. For your öwn safety, you should insist
on a full and unconditional money-back guarantëe. Don't be afraid to request a
refund if you're unsatisfied for any reason...

On the surface, this advice seems solid enough, but as an owner of a search engine optimization company, I can tell you how impractical it is. What would prevent a company that achieved fantastic search engine placement using my service from asking for its monëy back, claiming that it is unsatisfied? "For any reason" is a very slippery slope, and apparently Google agrees – Performics does not provide a guarantëe of any kind. How do I know? Simple -- one of my employees called and asked. We also have it in writing from an email we received from one of their sales reps.

What Are Google's Options?

Let's be charitable and assume that in the heat of the acquisition Google has forgotten to update the page of advice that it has created for website owners. This leaves only four things that can happen:

1. Status Quo: Google keeps this advice up on the page and Performics continues to provide no guarantëe regarding search engine placement. We'll call this the "hypocritical" scenario.

2. Performics gets in line: Google leaves the advice up as is and forces Performics to provide an unconditional money-back guarantëe. We'll call this the "free SEO from Performics" scenario.

3. Guidelines change: Performics maintains zero guarantees for search engine placement but Google modifies the advice to remove the inconsistencies pointed out in this article from its advice section. We'll call this the "shareholder's delight moneygrubber special" scenario.

4. Google spins off Performics and removes itself from the search engine optimization industry. We'll call this the "sanity over dollars" scenario.

I'm not betting on which of these scenarios is most likely. Some time back I would have picked #4, but as I pointed out in a recent article, Google has already crossed an invisible line by offering free advice about organic search engine placement to its biggest pay-per-click spenders.
Google owning a search engine optimization company -- a slippery slope, indeed. What does this mean for those hiring other companies and looking for great search engine placement? We will just have to wait and see.

References:

What will Google do with Performics

Google Webmaster Help Center


About The Author
Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, Organic Rankings, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Download Medium Blue's latest exclusive whitepaper, "Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix," for more insight.

Creativity Boost: Let's Get Creative

Why is it that some people seem to have a flow of creative genius and others are lacking? Well, in reality we all have the ability to be creative. It's just some people don't realize that they can acquire it just like any other skill. Hopefully through this article I can give you some insight to get your creative genius going.

So how can you get your creative juices flowing? First of all, read everything you can get your hands on. You want to take in as much knowledge and learning as you can. Throughout this process be sure to keep an open mind. You may find a few new facts you didn't know about that will interest you.

Next, try to draw something every day. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, just start out doodling. Yes this will seem like it's too much effort at first. But think of it this way, every time you try something new it is an effort. Yes it will seem impossible at times. But the longer you keep at it the easier it will become. Just like every thing new you try in your life.

Speaking of new things, when was the last time you were out of your comport zone? Going to different Places often help broaden perspectives. Try going to a new neighborhood or even going to a museum for the first time. But don't stop with these examples. Keep trying new things, think outside the box. Staying inside the box only limits the creative process.

Another creative thing you can try is photography. Get your camera out and start shooting. These don't need to be anything spectacular. Don't worry about capturing an award winning photo, yet. Just experiment and see what you can come up with. Start out small and work your way up.

Finally, just try to open up and talk to people you meet at the store or some other event. You can learn all kinds of interesting things by talking to people. Keep a journal of what you learn from each person. They may have an interesting story to tell. Then with all your journal entries, who knows, you could write your first book! Get Creative!

Ten Ways To Be Better At Dealing With Difficult People

By Martin Haworth

There are some key points to make when you are dealing with people who, for one reason or another, seem to be difficult, so get ready - it's you that has to change your own behaviors. So, here are a few clues to move you 95% of the way!

Build Relationships

Just talk to people. Listen to people. Spend time with them and show that you truly care.

Focus on Outcomes

Bottom line - you have a business to run - you have goals and visions for your business. Whilst you are working towards these you are able to take really objective positions. Working in tandem with a 'difficult person' is challenging, but focus on where you are going, not the personal issues you face.

See Value

Recognising the potential of 'difficult people' is half the battle. They are a value and flicking the switch that truly turns them on is a worthwhile challenge.

Meet Regularly

For an ongoing issue, make sure that you show and keep your commitments to them. This builds trust and that, in turn, makes resolution a whole lot easier.

Be Honest and Open

It is no good trying to resolve issues when Dealing with Difficult People, if you are going to either renege on your agreements or fall down on your business targets. Now is the time to be frank and honest and get a stake in the ground.

These people have been lied to enough. Be really clear on your expectations and stick to them. Change their view on authority forever!

Deliver

If you can go some way to help them resolve the cause of their anger, and it fits with everything you and your business stands for, then do it - and do it fast. Whatever you promise, deliver on. Liaise with them in good time.

Overdeliver on pace and issues, where you can. You will be amazed at what a difference this makes. Wanna become a hero? This works!

Respect Them

These people are real human beings. They hurt just like you do. They are, it's true, showing some tricky behaviours - so help them with them. Make a difference to that person - you could be changing their life in a way you would never have thought possible. Have some fun even. Share a laugh maybe?

Find a Win-Win

Solutions when Dealing with Difficult People are not cop-outs on either side. A compromise means that someone is losing here. Find a common position and seek to meet half way without losing site of what is the most important to each of you.

There is usually a win-win out there. If not, it's time to find a solution that removes them from your business.

Stick to the Point

Be clear where you are going with your challenges. It is vital to have everything in place with the most difficult of 'difficult people'. It is also of great value to have a majority on your side, albeit subtly to avoid an apparent 'ganging up'. Play this game from a position of strength

Focus on Behaviours

There are often ways of highlighting a 'difficult persons' qualities. Usually when Dealing with Difficult People you'll find they do have them! In many ways these people stick around because they like bits of the role, but not others, so you can play on their capabilities and leverage them.

Treat them not as a difficult employee, more as a misunderstood and valuable person and work on their behaviours. Remember though, that you have to work on your own first!


About The Author
Martin Haworth is a Business and Management Coach. For a free e-course contact cbts01@aweber.com. More? There are hundreds of hints, tips and ideas at his website, http://www.Coaching-Businesses-To-Success.com

Improve Your conversion Rate With An Online Sales Silo

You're probably wondering what an online sales silo is and why you need to create one. In the past, sales and marketing experts told us to create a sales or marketing funnel. You dump all of your prospects into a wide funnel and a few would drop out of the bottom of the funnel that may turn into customers. Using the power of the search engines, you drop highly targeted prospects into a silo instead of a funnel. Once they are in the silo, you lead them directly to the product or service they were searching for and sell it to them.

Why does the online sales silo work so well? In today's society we all have the same problems, lack of time and too much to do. We're unfocused and our attention spans are now measured in seconds. For example, recent studies show that when we visit a new website we decide within 3 seconds if we're going to stay. If the graphics load too slowly, we don't like the colors or fonts, or if we don't find what we're looking for in 3 seconds we abandon that website and move on to the next. We're a society that thrives on instant gratification because our time is precious and we have a million other things on our mind.

When you do a Google search you're looking to solve a problem or you're looking for some form of pleasure or entertainment. When your prospect has a problem they want an answer immediately. They type in a keyword phrase and they land on your webpage where they find your product or service that solves their problem. They complete their purchase and it's a win-win for both of you.

Sounds simple doesn't it? Then why doesn't it always work that way? Because when they type a keyword phrase they're expecting to land on a webpage that contains those keywords and a solution to their problem. If they type "lower back pain" in Google, they want to land on a webpage that offers a solution to their lower back pain. If they land on a chiropractor's home page with beautiful colors, holistic music playing in the background and a picture of him holding a model spine, they get frustrated and click away.

When someone searches for "lower back pain" their back hurts and they want to land on a webpage that tells them how they get rid of their "lower back pain". They don't care what's causing it and how qualified the chiropractor is. They want their "lower back pain" to disappear now!

When you create an online sales silo you create a process that will take them by the hand and lead them directly to what they're looking for. Imagine walking into WalMart and the greeter asks you what you're looking for. You say you're looking for a new pair of running shoes and he takes you by the hand and takes you right to the running shoes. He doesn't' take you near the shoe section. He doesn't take you to the dress shoes or the casual shoes. He takes you right to the running shoes. No distractions. No confusion. Instant gratification.

Turning your website into an online sales silo is a simple process. Using this process will improve your conversion rate, increase user satisfaction, increase your repeat visitor rate and improve your bottom line.

Step 1: Identify what action you want the prospect to take. Do you want to collect their contact information so you can contact them? Do you want to sell them a product on the spot? Determine if your goal is going to be lead generation or to complete an ecommerce transaction.

Step 2: Identify the keywords and keyword phrases that best describe your product or service. Imagine your prospect searching Google and you want them to land on your website. What keywords would they type to find you? You can use keyword research tools like Wordtracker (freekeywords.wordtracker.com) and Google's keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal)

Step 3: Create separate landing pages on your website for each keyword phrase. This webpage should contain only information about that particular keyword phrase. If the keyword phrase is "lower back pain" the webpage should only contain information about solving lower back pain. Keep the reader focused on lower back pain and don't distract them with other services you provide.

The landing page should have a compelling headline that contains the keyword phrase like "7 Ways to Eliminate Lower Back Pain Instantly". The search engines like headlines with keyword phrases. Your content should also contain the keyword phrase to keep the reader focused on what they're looking for.

Stay focused on one keyword phrase or topic per webpage. If you also talk about how you can solve foot pain on the same page, they'll get distracted and forget about their lower back pain. Remember to take them by the hand and lead them directly to the solution their looking for.

Step 4: Make it easy for them to complete the transaction. If you're collecting leads then make the contact form short and easy to complete. Give them a free report, free consultation or some other compelling reason for them to you their contact information. If you're selling them something, make the Buy Now button very clear and visible. Also make the checkout process very easy to complete.

Step 5: Give them an easy way to contact you if they have questions or difficulty on the website. Add your telephone number and an email address to the landing page so they can easily contact you.

Step 6: Add a privacy policy and terms of service agreement to your website. This adds credibility to your website and shows the visitor that you are a real company providing quality products and services.

Step 7: Follow up the transaction with a series of emails. The first email should be a "thank you" email with the details of the transaction. Thank them for signing up for your newsletter and tell them how to download their free report. If they purchased a product, thank them for their purchase and give them some tips how they can best use the product. Follow up with an email every other day for a week giving them more information about your products and services, and always direct them to your website for more information.

That's how to create your online sales silo. Remember to keep the website visitor focused on one topic and only one topic and you'll see your conversion rate soar!

How To Setup A Successful Online Business In 7 Easy Steps

Do you want your own online business? No more than ever it is possible to start a business quickly and inexpensively. Below are seven steps you can follow that will help you start off in the right direction every time.

1. Find a product to sell. You can create the product yourself. You can sell an affiliate product on a commission basis, or you can find a private label rights product that allows you to edit and resell as your own product. The product can be an ebook in a pdf format, or audio format. Video or software could be the product as well. If you are enthusiastic about the product and believe in it, you will have an easier time selling it.

2. Register a domain name that fits your product. If at all possible, include the key words that relate to the product in the domain name. Since domain names are not very expensive these days register several similar names. The content would be basically the same in each one.

3. Find a web host that is reliable and affordable. Make sure the web host has an easy to use control panel so you can upload your web pages yourself. Many of the most popular hosts use CPanel which is very easy for you to master quickly.

4. Create a small website or have someone create it for you. Some websites are only one page long, although it's a very long one page. Others are only three or four pages of content. There are free website sales page templates you can search for and use in your site. When writing the content for the sales page stress the attributes of your product. Make sure your headline grabs the visitors attention and pulls them into the copy. If you include endorsements or testimonials make sure they are from real people. Ask for the sale more than once and include a link to the order page.

5. Set up a payment processor. PayPal is quick, free and easy to set up. There is a fee to process the transactions. This fee is taken right out of each sale so you do not need to keep records. Tell your visitors they do not have to have a PayPal account to use PayPal, they can use their credit card. You have access to your money and can withdraw the money nearly immediately. Clickbank is another alternative. Clickbank takes longer to get your account approved and there is a fee to set up the account. Like Paypal, there is a fee per transaction and a percentage based on the price of the product sold through Clickbank.

6. Be sure to set up product delivery as instant and automatic. Doing this serves your best interest as you do not waste a lot of time emailing the product or download link to the customer after they have paid. And it serves your customer's best interest since they do not have to wait to download their product.

7. Drive targeted traffic to your website. You can use search engine optimization and keywords research. One fantastic approach is article placement in ezine directories. You can participate in discussion forums. And one of the newer marketing methods is social bookmarking.

True these seven steps do not go into any great technical, this is because to much detail would only slow you down in the beginning. There will be plenty of time later to learn the technical side of everything. For now, just get started.

Increasing conversion by SitePal's Talking Characters

Most website visitors leave a site within a few seconds after landing on it. If you can't make them stay a little longer, you will lose them. What's worse is they'll leave your site for your competitors'. Make your web visitors stay a little longer, and increase your chance of generating leads.

Many people believe they need more website visitors to increase leads. But, if you have a steady stream of visitors, you won't need more website visitors to close your sales or generate leads online. According to a study, less than 4% of website visitors actually buy your products or invest in your services. This is called the conversion rate. Most website conversion rates are actually somewhere between 0% to 4%. If you have less than 1.5% it is wiser to spend more time improving your conversion rate than trying to increase number of visitors.

A Study showed that a SitePal-integrated site performs better.

SitePal is an Internet-based subscription service that allows you to create a wide-array of animated speaking characters, which can be added to your website for a variety of professional and personal applications. According to Dr. Ralph F. Wilson's article Engaging Site Visitors with SitePal Animated Speaking Characters, a SitePal-integrated website increases the website visitors' average time on the site by 33%. The article also shows that website visitors for a SitePal-integrated website views 17% more of a page than a non-SitePal-integrated website.

What can SitePal do?
A SitePal avatar can deliver your message. Unlike other web streaming audio you can deliver your message in a friendlier way since SitePal is a human-like talking character. It moves its eyes as you move your mouse on a website as if somebody on the page is watching you. The avatar can also answer visitor's questions by speaking, or it can introduce benefits of some of your best selling products. A live voice is friendlier and more powerful than text on a webpage.

Some SitePal integrated websites.

Think Big Real Estate
In a very competitive marketplace, Think Big Real Estate.com needed to stand above the rest of the competition. With statistics showing that over 75% of homebuyers search for a new property by using the Internet, Think Big executives wanted to be sure to grab the attention of every potential client that visited their website.

Goldfish Software, LLC
Goldfish Software implemented SitePal to provide customers with more consultative information about its products. As a result, the company has experienced an increase in conversion at a rate of 33% since the launch of the SitePal character.

How to integrate SitePal to your website

You first design the avatar's appearance such as gender, hair style, accessories and so on. You can do this through SitePal's web-based admin page. Then record audio file. (There are several ways to do this) Then you will get a few lines of Javascript code which you need to put into your web page's code.

Having a SitePal character in your website will certainly help you stand out among your competition's websites.

Grab now SitePal for your site!.

Have you been to one of those websites that has an animated talking avatar? There is no doubt, the Sitepal buddies are all the rage now and they are COOL! They will soon be all over MySpace I am sure.

Welcoming someone to your site with just text and pictures is a trick few websites master. That's where the Sitepal buddies come in. These talking animated avatars are there to serve as anything you want them to. You might use them to greet your customers, tell them about special deals, tell them what your site is about, explain your companies return policies, ....anything you can dream of. These little animated buddies aren't as good as real salesmen, but they sure give your site a cool vibe.

There are no downloads and any site owner should be able to use Sitepal quite easily as very little technical skill is required to get you up and running. You can personalize your character by choosing through hairstyles, face models, facial hair, shirts, and accessories. You can also choose between background settings or use your own.

The Sitepal buddies are available in 14 languages now and over 60 voices. The truly fun part is their text to speech option where the avatar speaks whatever you type in. It is IMPOSSIBLE to not play around with that for at least a couple of minutes!

All sorts of people are starting to use this technology now including MySpace subsribers, Ebay auctions, and tons of online businesses. This is the wave of the future as I see it and if you haven't stumbled into a site using the Sitepal buddies yet you soon will!!

6 Steps To Improve Customer Loyalty From Site Visitors

by Omaro Ailoch

Online shopping has quickly outstretched high street shopping for popularity and overall spend. One of the big advantages that consumers gain is the ability to comparison shop for a better deal. However, for the e-store owner or service provider, this can make it difficult to survive without offering the lowest prices and the greatest deals. Decreasing prices has an obvious effect on your revenue and profit so it is vital that you aim for the right target market and attempt to build customer loyalty.

Customer loyalty means repeat business and repeat customers offer the lowest marketing spend requirements. As such, improving customer loyalty can vastly reduce your spend and increase your ROI. Many of the methods of retaining customers for your website are developed from tried and trusted methods used by large organizations and businesses offline.

Know Your Target Markets

By really getting to know and understand your target markets you will have a much greater understanding what it is that they're after. By learning this kind of information you will be better placed to send out relevant after-sales communication and entice your buyers to buy more.

Know Your Competitors

Knowing what your competitors are selling and for how much will help you determine the best prices for your own products. If you have a good customer retention rate it is often possible to increase the amount you pay for a new customer or reduce your prices without affecting your overall profit too much.

Customer Service

Perhaps the first aspect that many of us consider when looking at customer retention rates is customer service. You must supply a high level of customer service. If you go the extra mile for your customer, they will go the extra mile to come back to your site. Being polite in all communications is only a very small part of good customer service. Everything from your website content to complaint responses need to be well thought out and geared towards retaining customers.

Branding

The more synonymous your website becomes with the products or services you sell, the more likely that people will return to your site. Make sure that all of your web pages, emails, newsletters, invoices, and other forms of communication include your web address at the very least. Make it memorable and don't chop and change designs and logos unless a re-branding is deemed absolutely necessary.

After-Sales Communication

There is an art to after sales communication, and it is an art that you need to learn to master. So, your website operates online, but that doesn't mean that the whole of your business has to. If you sell digital products that are downloaded then ensure that emails and all online communication includes your branding. If you sell physical products, then your paper invoices, and everything down to your packing labels should also be branded.

Get Your Visitors Involved

Involving your site visitors will help to bring them back to your site time and time again. Web 2.0 applications provide a plethora of ways to involve site visitors. Blogs, forums, and any interactive tool will help to make your site bookmarkable. Even for visitors that don't take action while on your site, you will attract them back more frequently, and the more exposure a visitor has to your website, the more likely they become to make a purchase.

Why Customer Loyalty Is Important To Your Business Website

Return visitors or return customers are one of your greatest assets. You've already done a lot of the hard work with your preliminary marketing campaigns. Ensure that everything from your website to your email newsletter to your packing slips are effectively branded with your website details and always uphold the highest level of customer service and communication. If you can get your site visitors more involved in your site then you stand to profit even more from customer loyalty.

About the Author
Omaro Ailoch is a senior software engineer, an entrepreneur and the founder of OC IT Services a highly skilled California based web development, design, and search engine optimization firm.

Promoting Your Products with Search Engine Marketing

by Michael Fleischner

Do you have a new product or an existing product that you'd like to promote? Search engine marketing can be an effective technique if you know how to optimize your online campaigns and manage your marketing spends effectively.

Most major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN offer pay-per-click advertising. Additionally, you can find search engine marketing opportunities that are associated with an annual fee such as ExactSeek.

You can expect less traffic from second tier search engines like ExactSeek simply because these engines reach a much smaller audience. None-the-less, using second tier search engines can be a great value depending on how competitive the keywords are that can be associated with your product.

Search engine marketing is largely focused on using pay-per-click advertising to promote and sell your product. There are generally two approaches that you can take to best utilize this marketing method. The first approach is to use common keywords associated with your product or service. The second method is to use long-tail keywords or keyword phrases.

Search engines like Google make it very easy to find appropriate keywords to promote your website. Once you set up a Google Adwords account, you can have Google spider your site and propose relevant search terms. When evaluating the list, look for those search terms that are frequently searched for but face little competition. This results in a list of targeted keywords that you can promote.

You can also use the Overture keyword search tool which is available online. Simply enter the common search term or phrases associated with your website and evaluate search traffic results. The only downside to using this method is that you will only know how popular the search terms are but not the competitiveness of the terms.

Long tail keywords involve searching for common search phrases that have little traffic but also very little competition. Again, you can use Google or other tools to find these long-tail keywords. Taken in isolation, a few long-tail keywords won't generate significant clicks or revenue for you. However, when bidding on dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of these long-tail keywords, you may find that you can generate significant traffic and conversions.

One of the key aspects of search engine marketing, regardless of which search engine you choose, is measuring the effectiveness of your keyword campaigns. With the help of Google tracking, this is easier than ever. By placing a small block of code on your payment confirmation (thank you) page, Google conversion tracking can tie the sale back to the specific text link or display ad that generated the sale.

Evaluate this information on a regular basis and fine tune your online search marketing campaigns. You should also set daily spending caps for your keyword related efforts.

Depending on the keywords you choose, the quantity of those keywords, and so on, your costs can be significant. Daily caps protect you by setting a maximum spend for your campaign.

Search engine marketing is a great way to promote a new or existing product or service if you carefully select your keyword phrases, place caps on your daily spend, and track conversions. When using this form of online marketing, pay attention to your successes and failures and reinvest where returns are positive.

About the Author
Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert with more than 12 years of marketing experience. To discover how to improve search engine rankings on Google and other major search engines visit http://www.webmastersbookofsecrets.com/ and the Marketing Blog.

Content is Dead.Now Community is King!

By Stoney DeGeyter

I can hardly bring myself to say the old cliche about content being... well, you know. I think it's one of the original cliche's in the SEO industry. And as redundant as it has become, for whatever reason we keep hearing it over and over again. And every now and then a new study pops up seemingly proving, once again, that content is... uh, good.

But much like a TV producer suggesting "video is king" or a radio advertiser demanding that "audio is king", so goes the SEO demanding the same about content. Content has its role--and an important one at that, but it's not the be-all, end-all of online marketing. Not even close.

But the roots of the "content is" movement are important for our industry. The mantra was first heard in the early days of the search engine optimization industry when SEOs were doing nothing more than throwing a bunch of keywords on a page and hoping they ranked well. Little or no thought or consideration was given to the readability of the web page. After all, it's only rankings that matter, right? But those of us who learned to game search engines slowly began to learn something that those in the marketing industry have known for years. Words sell. Or turn people off, depending on what's written and how it's written.

So the movement to developing good content--real content--was an important one for our industry. But to get there we had to have the content mantra beat into our head over and over (and over). We got it. We know.

The King is Losing His Grip on the Kingdom

But like any worthy cause, we've reached a point where the mantra has been used and abused to the point where we use whatever we can find to prove once again that content is... y'know, that. Take a recent study by OPA and Nielsen/ NetRatings that shows that Internet users are spending more time than ever on content based websites.

Share of Time Spent Online

Commerce: 13.8%
Communications: 32.0%
Content: 49.6%
Search: 4.5%

That seems to confirm what many have been saying for years. Content is... uh, great for web marketing. And I've seen a few posts around the blogosphere and forums using this data to make that connection. The problem is, it's not really there.

With the rise in popularity of blogs and social media sites it's no wonder that more people spend their time reading online than anything else. While time reading and gathering information online has increased, time spent shopping has actually decreased, down over 2% from a year before. But does that tell us anything about marketing online? No, not really.

We know people like information and we know they like to communicate. We also know people like to shop and online shopping has continued to íncrease year over year. All this study suggests is what we spend most of our time doing on the web. Well, true enough, I don't spend most of my time shopping.

Since when is it the goal of ecommerce sites to get people to spend a long time on their site? Isn't it more important to drive shoppers to the sale and get the conversion? Step 1: Get traffíc. Step 2: Keep visitors engaged. Step 3: Close the sale. That's not necessarily a process that necessitates long periods of time spent on a site.

In no way do I want to diminish the importance of content on ecommerce websites. Having a database of information that helps visitors make their decision, helpful tutorials, etc. can improve your visitor's overall experience and keep them coming back to your site. But the goal of all of that is to lead people to the sale.

Community Killed Content and Stole the Throne

If I were to interpret this data I wouldn't necessarily come away thinking content is... so very important. What I would conclude, however is that we need to build websites that meet a number of users needs. Adding more content to your ecommerce site is not the magic bullet. What is, however, is creating a great user experience and providing just the right amount of information and customer engagement that shoppers need to get to the conversion goal. That can be done through a number of means.

Many online stores are already paving the way by opening the door to ratings and reviews. Others are doing that by creating blogs to disseminate important and relevant industry information along with tips and tutorials. Still others do that by creating an information database that can visitors frequent to gain additional insights.

I might suggest that the best ecommerce websites are not those that build content around their products but build a community around the product interest. By creating a place where shoppers can come and gain information, learn more about the products and discuss or share information with others and then make purchases as well, will do more for sales than simply creating a shopping website.

By building a community you not only sell more products but you build brand recognition and customer loyalty. And both of those are worth far more than a single one-off sell. So while content may not be dead (not by a long shot, really), there is a new king in the online marketing industry. Long live community. Long live the (new) king.


About The Author
Stoney deGeyter leads a spectacular team of seasoned marketing experts at Pole Position Marketing. Stoney started PPM in 1998 by finding the brightest minds in the industry and nurturing within them an intense desire to become leaders in their respective fields. With this team of professionals, he has built a wildly successful website marketing company that succeeds through both personal and professional integrity.

3 Biggest Law Of Attraction Mistakes

By Dwayne Gilbert

There are a few mistakes that most people make when working with the law of attraction, and most people make them right from the start. Knowing about these mistakes can help you avoid getting little to no results with the law of attraction. Here are the biggest mistakes people make.

1. Testing the water. Many people are skeptical about the law of attraction, and there are plenty of skeptics out there that tell them it doesn't work or that it's fake. Many people just want to try it and see if it works, and of course, for those people it won't.

You must be willing to actually commit to really giving it an effort if you ever wish to get results with it. You can't just want to try it out and hope that you will get everything you want. You can't just half heartedly attempt to use the law of attraction and test the waters. You either do or you don't, no in between.

Besides all of that, what do you really have to lose? Worst case scenario, you begin to be happier and more joyful by practicing to feel good more often than not. If that's the worst that can happen, then why not give it everything you have and really try it out and see what happens.

2. Not writing down what you want and immersing yourself in those things. Most people simply do not write down what they want, and they do not take the time to experience those things as much as possible. I can't stress enough how important it is to write down what you want on a piece of paper, cut out some pictures of those things and hang them up, and visualize having those things on a regular basis.

This is so important that I can't stress it enough. WRITE IT DOWN! It's a wonderful process not to mention an essential step in the law of attraction. I don't know if most people think that they don't have to write it down because they have it in their head or what is going on, but it's essential that you write it down.

This gives you a place to reference those things you want and actually read it over. It begins to move those things you want into the physical world. Seriously, take the time to think about what you want and write them down. It is a great journey of discovery and dreaming.

3. Not learning to speak about what they want properly. Most people talk about what they want "when" they get it. This is a huge mistake. Always, always, always talk about what you want in the present tense.

Some people will feel awkward talking about what they want in the present tense if they don't already have it. Well, get over it. People may look at you strange, but they won't when you actually hold what you want in your hand. It's a small price to pay for the life of your dreams.

There are a few other things you can do in order to speak about those things you want in the present tense. Say that you are grateful to have, or that you love having. You can say having a million dollars in my reality is an amazing experience. Find ways to talk about what you want as though it's already yours.

These are just a few mistakes that people make. Overcoming these obstacles allows you to really move forward and start attracting what you want. Work toward overcoming these mistakes and anything, and everything you want is within your grasp.


About The Author
Dwayne Gilbert is the founder of http://www.wealthylifesecrets.com/ and the Wealthy Life Secrets Program. He has been helping people to Unleash Their Potential for over 10 years. He has helped people from all walks of life to get on a better path and to create the life of their dreams. To learn more about the law of attraction and how to create the life of your dreams, visit http://www.wealthylifesecrets.com/

What the Top Internet Search Engines Are Doing?

by Scott Buresh

The future of search is unclear – what is clear is that change is rapidly happening for all of the top Internet search engines. Google as always is the frontrunner for many of these search trends, but even little guys like Ask.com are making waves. In this article, I will attempt to cover some of the more interesting search trends that are occurring today with the top Internet search engines – but I am by no means being comprehensive about the subject. Things are changing on a weekly, or sometimes even daily, basis, and future articles will cover additional developments in depth.

Universal Search

In May 2007, Google – the leader among top Internet search engines -- got people talking (again) when it rolled out its latest search concept, Universal Search. Universal Search was Google's attempt to create a single page of search results, rather than separate pages for types of results, such as videos, images, maps, and websites. When it was first introduced, many search engine optimization firms raced around exclaiming that this was one of those search trends that would change everything and that new optimization rules should be created and followed immediately.

I published an article in early 2007 in which I noted, "The problem with Universal Search is that it can muddy the results, and it can also introduce irrelevant results that a searcher cannot use."[1] I also wrote, "Clearly, Universal Search will change how an SEO campaign is run if it catches on. But this is a real if - users' search habits are hard to change overnight, even if you are Google and you essentially define what searching is and how it works."[2]

And in fact, Universal Search didn't quite take off the way Google had hoped. A post on MediaPost's Search Insider by Mark Simon boldly states, "Universal Search will probably not be viewed as the greatest Google fiasco since Google Video, but it's clear that it's failed to deliver on the vaunted promises made by Marissa Mayer back in May."[3] So will we see more of Universal Search, or will it be quietly put to the side? Will other top Internet search engines want to use it for themselves? Only time will tell, but it seems like Google needs to do a lot more work before users really warm up to it.

Personalization and Personalized Search

Personalization on the other hand seems to be one of the search trends working very well for Google and many of the other top Internet search engines. In an article I wrote a few months ago, I said "The basic principle behind personalized search is simple. When you go to Google and type in a search query, Google stores the data. As you return to the engine, a profile of your search habits is built up over time. With this information, Google can understand more about your interests and serve up more relevant search results."[4]

As it works right now, if you use a Google product (Gmail, Google toolbar, AdWords, etc.), Google is keeping track of what you search for and what websites you visit, and it's then tailoring your results appropriately. Search for "bass," and Google will know whether you mean the fish or the instrument. As I pointed out, though, there are major issues with search trends like personalization:

Privacy issues that arise from personalized search are also a big question. The EU recently announced that it is probing into how long Google stores user information (this probe was subsequently extended to include all search engines). AOL recently committed a serious blunder when it released search data from 500,000 of its users, and it was discovered that it was fairly easy to identify many people by the search terms that they use... [5]
Yet if nobody makes a fuss about this, then it's very likely Google – and the other top Internet search engines - will start tracking everyone behind the scenes, whether they use a Google product or not.

It's actually already starting – right now, the cookie Google places on your machine (did you even know they did that?) will expire in two years – but they won't really expire at all. According to the official Google blog:

In the coming months, Google will start issuing our users cookies that will be set to auto-expire after 2 years, while auto-renewing the cookies of active users during this time period. In other words, users who do not return to Google will have their cookies auto-expire after 2 years. Regular Google users will have their cookies auto-renew, so that their preferences are not lost. And, as always, all users will still be able to control their cookies at any time via their browsers.[6]

Seems it won't be long before Google knows what you're searching for before you do.
Expanding "Sneak Peeks"

Ask, one of the smaller of the top Internet search engines, has been using sneak peeks to entice searchers for a while now. Searchers who use Ask.com can mouse over an icon next to many results and see a screen shot of the website. No clicking needed. Google, always watching for search trends, seems to have noticed, because they've filed a patent for expanding their own snippets.[7] Soon searchers on Google may be able to read expanded summaries of pages, or longer clips of page text. This tactic appeals to searchers who are now demanding more and more information faster and faster from the top Internet search engines, and who don't want to waste precious seconds clicking on a link and then on the back button to find just the right site for their needs.

Syntax Queries

When Ask was Ask Jeeves, the butler was supposed to listen to your search queries in the form of questíons and then get answers for you. The problem was, this just didn't work exactly the way it was supposed to. Instead of answering the question based on syntax, the engine still responded to searches in the same way others did, by analyzing the words and returning a líst. Jeeves was retired with a bit of fanfare, and the engine handles queries in the more traditional manner for now. But all of the top Internet search engines have continued to work on this concept, with Google again leading the way since it has the manpower and brainpower to do so. I expect that within the next year, this will be one of the search trends that the engines will want to focus on with a greater push toward answering questíons rather than just returning related results.

Speech Recognition and the Mobile Market

Speech recognition is really going to be one of the huge search trends in the coming months and years for the top Internet search engines. In an interview from this past summer, Peter Norvig, director of Google Research, noted, "[Google] wanted speech technology that could serve as an interface for phones and also index audio text. After looking at the existing technology, we decided to build our own. We thought that, having the data and computational resources that we do, we could help advance the field."[8] With speech recognition in place, one could go to Google (or another of the top Internet search engines) and use a microphone to ask a question aloud, or just say some keyphrases, and get a líst back immediately.

And speech recognition has the biggest benefit for top Internet search engines when it comes to users of mobile devices. Let's face it, as advanced as those keyboards may have gotten, they're still a pain to use and it's time-consuming to type in more than a few sentences. (That's y txt msgs r lk ths, u c?). Norvig is on top of that too, noting, "In general, it looks like things are moving more toward the mobile market, and we thought it was important to deal with the market where you might not have access to a keyboard or might not want to type in search queries."[9]

More to Come

As I noted in the beginning, this is just a small sampling of the search trends for the top Internet search engines today. Google, Yahoo, and even Ask are all working tirelessly to get your business and to make search easier, faster, and more accurate. Keep checking back for future articles covering some of the other trends and following up on the ones I've already discussed.

References

1. http://www.mediumblue.com/newsletters/universal-search.html
2. Ibid
3. http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=637
4. http://www.mediumblue.com/newsletters/personalized-search.html
5. Ibid
6. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/cookies-expiring-sooner-to-improve.html
7. SEMClhttp://www.semclubhouse.com/on-researching-patents-and-a-new-google-patent-filing-on-expanded-snippets.htmlubhouse.com
8. http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/19050/?a=f
9. Ibid


About The Author
Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, Organic Rankings, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Download Medium Blue's latest exclusive whitepaper, "Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix," for more insight.

Warning Signs Of Investment Frauds

By Dwayne Gilbert

If you want to know how you can protect your invested money, then you must learn to identify the signs of fraud. A potential investment fraud has certain signs and characteristics. If you can check them out, you will definitely save your hard earned money. There are thousands of frauds who use your email or call you on the phone countless times to convince you of the various schemes they have.

The first prominent sign or characteristic of an investment fraudulent act is that the offer will sound too good to be true. You will be promised even what Bill Gates would hesitate to do. Then be sure that you are dealing with a bunch of frauds.

The second warning sign of such offer is the emphasis for 'on spot' acceptance. You will be told that the offer is limited and meant for limited, privileged number of people only. The third sign of warning is that the company would always try to hide their real identity and avoid making serious disclosures about themselves.

You may be approached for investment by anybody. It maybe a broker, a stranger, or any person who is into any investment business. They may fish cleverly for details such as your social security number, credit card number or confidential things. The government has circulated pamphlets and federal documents that you should go through before you invest in securities or stock markets.

There are materials on fraudulent activities that you can ask for from SEC, Federal Trade Commission, or from your State's Securities Regulators. These materials will bring to light the various kinds of investment frauds prevalent in the country and their methods of approachability. If you are approached for any investment by a company, then you will find the offers suitable to your need. You must do the following for a safe investment.

Contact the State Securities Regulators (SSR). You must not stop with the facts from SEC. Instead, you should check the SSR to have more information on the company that has approached you. To access the SSR, you can log on to the website of North American Securities Administrators Association. The local SSR will provide you with all the information from Central Registration Depository (CRD). To know about the brokers, this is all that you need to do.

You can also check in the website of Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to know more about the firm concerned. The authority has all information about the broker and the firm. If you want to make investment based on the offers over phone or email, here are certain tips to do them wisely.

You must read the facts and offer thoroughly.

Try to understand what every line means.

Never accept an offer that you don't understand.

Never invest in companies that don't report with SEC, as they usually indulge in investment fraud. Verify all claims of the new contracts. It is also essential to see whether the people of the company have ever made money for investors beforehand. With these tips for a little homework, you can save your huge amounts from being wasted.


About The Author:
Gavin Keller owns and operates http://www.investment-fraud-info.com/. Know more about Investment Fraud and scams, and how you can protect yourself against them.

History of the Search Engine - What Came Before Google?

Although we credit Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines for giving us the system we use to find the information we seek, the concept of hypertext came to life in 1945 when Vannaver Bush urged scientist to work together to help build a body of knowledge for all man kind. He then proposed the idea of a virtually limitless, fast, reliable, extensible, associative memory storage and retrieval system. He named this device a memex.

But there is a long list of great minds that have given us the information system we now use today. This article illustrates some of them. Here is the History of the Search Engine:

Ted Nelson
Ted Nelson created Project Xanadu in 1960 and coined the term hypertext in 1963. His goal with Project Xanadu was to create a computer network with a simple user interface that solved many social problems like attribution. While Ted's project Xanadu, for reasons unknown, never really took off, much of the inspiration to create the WWW came from Ted's work.

George Salton
George Salton was the father of modern search technology. He died in August of 1995. His teams at Harvard and Cornell developed the Saltons Magic Automatic Retriever of Text, otherwise known as the SMART informational retrieval system. It included important concepts like the vector space model, Inverse Document Frequency (IDF), Term Frequency (TF), term discrimination values, and relevancy feedback mechanisms. His book A theory of indexing explains many of his tests. Search today is still based on much of his theories. History of the search engine uses some of the same techniques even today.

Alan Emtage
In 1990 a student at McGill University in Montreal, by the name of Alan Emtage created Archie; the first search engine. It was invented to index FTP archives, allowing people to quickly access specific files. Archie users could utilize Archie's services through a variety of methods including e-mail queries, telneting directly to a server, and eventually through the World Wide Web interfaces. Archie only indexed computer files. With Archie, Alan Emtage helped to solve the data scatter problem. Originally, it was to be named archives but was changed to Archie for short.

Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill
Archie gained such popularity that in 1991 Paul Linder and Mark P. McCahill created a text based information browsing system that uses a menu-driven interface to pull information from across the globe to the user's computer. Named for the Golden Gophers mascot at the University of Minnesota, the name is fitting, because Gopher tunnels through other Gophers located in computers around the world, arranging data in a hierarchical series of menus, which users can search for specific topics.

Tim Berners-Lee
Up until 1991 until there was no World Wide Web. The main method of sharing information was via FTP. Tim Berners-Lee wanted to join hypertext with the internet. He used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire (a prototype created with help from Robert Cailliau) to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first web browser and editor, called WorldWideWeb, and developed on NeXTSTEP. He then created the first Web server called httpd, short for HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon.

The first Web site built was at: http://info.cern.ch/ and was first put online on August 6, 1991. Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994. Tim also created the Virtual Web library which is the oldest catalogue of the web. The history of the search engine is a fascinating story.

About the Author
Jeff Casmer is an internet marketing consultant and work at home business owner. For more information on search engines optimization please visit his "Top Ranked" Improve Search Engine Rankings Directory gives you all the information you need to Work at Home in the 21st century.

Business Success Tips

Lose is a terrible thing. Losing a loved one is terrible, getting terminated- distasteful, both in one year; horrific! Such events plunge people into the quicksand of depression. What about lose of your desire, lose of your purpose, or meaning? Several years ago I did lose my mother in law, three jobs and almost my family in one year. My purpose and my mission were abandoned.

If you find yourself aimless and seek to find your mission, then you can find ways to align the stars. Rather than question, "Why me"? Perhaps it is time to ask "Why not me"?

Here are some thoughts to assist your mission, align the stars and live the remainder of your life with a purpose.

1. Stop manifesting in self-doubt. We tend to wallow too much in despair. What you focus on you become. Become great by focusing on the positive!

2. Listen. Stop and smell the roses. By this I mean listen to all around you, friends, colleagues, peers, the Lord. Professional Speaking did not enter my mind until someone suggested teaching.
3. Stop looking for the perfection. Success comes from not using the elevator of life but one step at a time. If you love what you do the money will come to you. Refrain from trying to make your world perfect... it doen't exist.

4. Build a brand or message that emotionally and intelligently involves the client. Too much competition today confuses clients, seek differentiation and illustrate value.

5. Ironically, 63% of us go at least 10 mph or more over the speed limit. We drive 70 mph on a dark and slick road. 81% drink at a social gathering and drive home. We choose not to take risk because we believe we are not ready. Fact, you will never be ready! Risk is about confidence, risk is about self worth. If you are confident, you will take the risk. If you are passionate, you will take the risk and if you have self worth, you will take the risk.

6. Passion comes from the Greek word entheos which means to be filled with God. When you are filled in spirit you are instantly filled with energy and inspiration. Find something you are passionate about and you will make money at it.

7. Confidence is the attitude of 80-year-old women that attends college to get her bachelor's degree or Thomas Edison that tried 10,000 times to get it right! If you are confident in your abilities you can achieve anything you set your mind to!

8. Competence. People seek you and your services because of your expertise. Illustrated your expertise with speaking, consulting, writing articles or anything else that attracts people to you. Your expertise will be sought only if you show it.

Confidence plus passion, plus, market need plus competence begets success. Success is easy if you know where to look. You do not have to point true north or west, simply at yourself. Success begins with you. As Loa Tzu once stated the journey of 1,000 miles begins with the first step. You must make a move. Live each day in acquisition, live each day in passion, live each day knowing that your success lies within you not in others.

Addtional Success Tips

1. Keep raising the bar
Look for new and innovative ways to achieve results

2. Results are about choices you make
You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.

3. Winning is about hits not home runs
Each day, each goal, each success is movement toward your dream.

4. Be a student of the game.
Learn what you did right and keep on doing it.

Good luck!

How To Start Making Money With Online Forums

By Mike Anson

Many people wish to learn, if they can actually start making money with online forums and are surprised when they learn just how easy it is. Forums are online communities, where like-minded people hang out with each other and discuss about topics, and at times help solve doubts and questions asked by other members.

Many online entrepreneurs have promoted their online business and improved their returns on investments by starting forums related to the products or services they sell. They use informative and useful postings on these blogs to gain the trust of other people in the forum who may actually be their target market. They use forums to build links to their website, helping it getter listing too. The links are also used by other forum members who may be lured by the postings made on the forum. Thus, posting on online forums improves traffic, in turn improving the return on investment. It is also a cost effective means of marketing the website. Forums are great to lure targeted traffic to your websites, improving your click through rates improving your revenue.

Some people make money by posting on online forums. They are paid to post useful and informative information about a topic suggested by the forum creator. This is done usually when a forum has just been created and is in need of new posts to lure more members to the forum. They love the job, as they get to air their views about a topic and get to make friends online as well as earn for posting on the forums.

Many people also use forum postings to promote their affiliate marketing or Google AdSense programs. You may post in forums that are relevant to the products you market or that compliment the products that you market. You may start posting in a forum that deals with migraine, if you are marketing a natural/herbal cure for migraine. You may offer friendly advice and recommend the products that have brought you such relief that you decided to market it yourself. You may also simply post in any forum, asking for advice from the other members giving a link to you website. You may ask them just how you can improve your website and leave a link. This way the visitors may also add to your revenue when they click on the ads in your website.

Keep posting in forums and ensure that your links are displayed; as this is a sure fire way of improving targeted traffic to your site. The more relevant forums you post in, the more are your chances for improved targeted traffic and the more inbound links you have to your site. Start posting in online forums to improve your returns on investments.


About The Author
Mike Anson is an expert Internet Marketer who has been training others on Internet Marketing for many years. Visit his latest site Affiliate Marketing for Free information on How to make Money Online.

Font Basics for Branding Your Small Business

By Erin Ferree

There are many components of a brand identity: logo, color palette, font choice, and the Visual Vocabulary. There's a lot of information available about the use of logos, colors, and Visual Vocabulary, but not much on the effective use of fonts. So, here's some information on the creative, practical, and technical aspects of fonts.

Font Basics

A font is a set of all the letters in the alphabet, designed with similar characteristics. This is also known as a typeface.

Fonts are usually designed to include several style variations. This can include styles like light, regular, bold, semibold, ultra bold, and italic. Some fonts also include "Expert" versions, which are fonts that include fractions and mathematical symbols.

Font families are typically packages of fonts that include all of the different versions of a font. Using fonts with large families will give you a wide range of fonts to use in your materials, for variety and emphasis.

There are many basic classifications of fonts. Four of the most common classes of fonts are:

Serif fonts, which have little "feet," called serifs, at the ends of the lines that make up the letters. Some examples of serif fonts include Times, Palatino, and Garamond. These fonts are more traditional, elegant, and old-fashioned.

Sans-serif fonts don't have those feet. "Sans serif" means "without serifs." Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, and Helvetica are some of the most common sans-serif fonts. These fonts are more clean and modern.

Scrípt fonts are calligraphic or cursive fonts. Brush Scrípt and Nuptial Scrípt are two common scrípt fonts.

Display fonts are decorative and often used for logos or headlines.

There are other types of fonts as well, including handwriting fonts and all-caps fonts. However, the four listed above are the most common and useful in business communications.

Creative Font Usage Guidelines

Each type of font has certain characteristics that translate into that font's personality. A font might be serious or light-hearted, traditional or modern, legible or decorative, or any number of other personality traits. The traits of the font that you use in your marketing materials and business communications should reflect and enhance your company's brand.

Your company should have designated fonts to use in the following situations:

A logo font, which is typically not one of the fonts that come installed on Windows machines: it should be more unique and interesting. Some logos will have two or three different fonts in them. If this is the case, then consider using one of those fonts as the secondary font as well.

A secondary font, used for headlines, sub-headlines, taglines, special text such as graphics and captions, and decorative text such as pull quotes, which are the large quotes that are used decoratively in articles and documents. This can be the same font as is used in your logo. This is typically an interesting and unique font as well. This may also be used as the font for your contact information in your stationery, depending on its legibility.

A tertiary font is optional and may be used when the secondary font is not always legible, for mid-length texts such as pull quotes and contact information.

A serif text font, for lengthy printed documents. Printed materials are more easily read if they are in serif font rather than sans-serif font.

A sans-serif font, for shorter printed documents and on-screen use. Text on a computer monitor is easier to read in a sans-serif font than in a serif font.

A website font, which may be the same font as is used as the main sans-serif text font, depending on how that font translates for online viewing.

All of these fonts should have similar or contrasting characteristics. Choosing fonts with similar characteristics will make your fonts match and create consistency throughout your documents. Choosing fonts with contrasting characteristics will build visual texture and interest into your materials. For example, you could pick all thin, sans-serif fonts such as Arial and Frutiger to create a harmonious, matching suite of fonts. Or you could pick fonts with contrasting characteristics to create greater interest, such as using a serif font like Palatino for the headlines and then using a sans-serif font like Verdana for the text.

Each piece of marketing material or document created should have a maximum of three or four families of fonts on them. (A font family includes all of the bold and italic variations of a particular font, so using bold or italic effects does not count as additional fonts.) Using more than three or four fonts is confusing, and it looks unprofessional.

Practical Font Usage Guidelines

Fonts can require special consideration when you send materials to a professional printer for reproduction, use them on your website, or send Word documents to others. Here are some basics on using fonts and preserving their appearance in these cases.

In printed materials, it's easier to read long blocks of copy that is set in a serif font. Sans-serif fonts are usually used in print for short blocks of information, like headlines, pull quotes, or bulleted lists.

When sending your materials to be professionally printed, make sure to address your desires regarding the use of fonts. You can either include the fonts with the files you send to the printer (which might be considered a copyright license infringement), rasterize your artwork (convert it to pixels, so the font data is no longer needed), or outline your fonts (creating shapes out of the fonts, an option that's available in most vector art programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand), so that they can be printed accurately. Outlining the fonts is the best way to ensure that your fonts will remain accurate and sharp.

Online, in websites, emails, and HTML newsletters, sans-serif fonts look the best: they're clean, clear, and easy to read. There is one other trick to online font use: you have to make sure that you use fonts that will be installed on the computers of people reading your site. Otherwise, your text will appear in the default font selected by their browser, which is often Courier, a very plain font. That limitation does leave you with several fonts to choose from, though, including Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, and Trebuchet MS.

Serif fonts could also be used on websites; however, it's best to use them in limited quantities, such as for headlines and subheads. Some fonts that are available to use on the web include Times, Times New Roman, and Georgia.

Another issue that commonly arises with online fonts is the difficulty in controlling the size and appearance of those fonts. Standard font tags in HTML don't provide precise sizing control and need to be used several times throughout each HTML document, so making changes can be time-consuming. You can use Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, to precisely control the exact size of your fonts and to make site-wide font, size, or color changes with one simple alteration.

In Word Documents, you also want to make sure that the fonts that you use for the text will be available on the recipient's computer. Good fonts to use are the standard fonts that come installed on PCs, which include Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Georgia, Palatino, Courier, and Trebuchet MS.

In order to insert a small amount of customized text - such as your logo, tagline, or address information - create an image of that information and place it in the header and footer of the page.

Another way to preserve the appearance of text is to export your document as a PDF file and send it to the recipient; PDF files embed the fonts into each document so that they can be viewed on any computer and still look right.

Some Technical Info About Font File Types

When you purchase fonts to use on your computer, you'll often be given a choice of buying a PostScript, True Type, or Open Type font. Here is a brief explanation of the characteristics and problems with each of these formats:

PostScript fonts are considered industry standard and are therefore preferred by professional printers. There is a format of PostScript fonts available for Macintosh computers and another format available for Windows computers; those fonts cannot be shared between Macs and PCs.

True Type fonts are often found on Windows machines. These fonts do not print as well as Postscript fonts.

Open Type fonts are the newest type of font. They are cross-platform compatible, but many fonts aren't yet available in this format.

With this information about the creative, practical, and technical aspects of font usage, we hope that you can make font choices that will enhance your brand.

About The Author
Erin Ferree is a brand identity and marketing design strategist who creates big visibility for small businesses. Through her customized marketing and brand identity packages, Erin helps her clients discover their brand differentiators, then designs logos, business cards, and other marketing materials and websites to reflect that differentiation, as well as to improve credibility and memorability. http://www.elf-design.com/

Internet Marketing Tips - List Building The Smart Way

by Steven Wagenheim.

If I hear one more person say to me that the money is in the list, I swear to Pete that I'm going to take a crowbar to my computer. The money is NOT in the list. The money is ONLY in the list IF you know the right way to build a list and then what to do with it AFTER you have built it. This article is going to teach you smart list building. I do it and it works. Keep reading if you want a list that actually buys from you.

Step one is to make the person an offer that he can't refuse in order to even sign up for your list. That's right. Just saying that he'll get a weekly newsletter isn't good enough anymore. People want more than that. So you have to give them something like a free ebook or piece of software, something that they'd normally expect to pay good money for. Yes, that's what it takes today so get over yourself. Go crank out a 30 or 40 page book on a topic and give it away in exchange for that person's email address.

Step two is to put together an autoresponder series that blows away most ebooks that are out there on the topic of your choice. Have as much excellent info in it as you can afford to give without giving away the store. As an example, I have a series that warns people of all the dangers of marketing online. It goes over all the mistakes that people make when marketing. It covers advertising, site design and so on. Just by avoiding all the mistakes, these people can increase their income. Then, when I make my offer to show them all the things that they should do, they're more receptive to buying.

Step three is to put together a plan for frequency of emailing these people. You don't want to badger your list. Nobody wants to be sold to day after day. You want to give these people a chance to digest the info that you've just given them. I personally email my list about two times a week. The only way you're going to know what's right for your list is by testing. If you want, put out a questionnaire and ask them how often they'd like to hear from you. Take the majority of the responses and make some kind of decision based on them. You won't make everybody happy.

The last step is, when you do sell these people something, make sure it is something of quality. If you sell them garbage, your reputation will be shot quickly. Make these people glad that they're on your list. In the long run, they'll be happy and you'll make money.

To YOUR Success!

About The Author
Steven Wagenheim. Tired of busting your behind for peanuts online? Go to my web site and find out how I earn a monthly income that exceeds 5 figures and how I can help YOU do the same. Get your free report at http://www.mysecretarticles.com/report.html

How To "Big Brother" Your Own Website

By Titus Hoskins
How Well Do You Really Know Your Website?

If you're like most webmasters, you have probably spent years building your site. You have spent years adding content, building links and cultivating traffíc - but how well do you really know your website?

How well do you know the intricate details of your website's traffíc? Where do your site's visitors come from? How long do they stay on your site? Just where do they go to on your site and how well do they convert into buyers or subscribers?

Do you know your site's rankings in the major search engines? What are your site's top keywords? What's your site's Google PageRank? Who are your IP neighbors? What your site looks like in other browsers? How much is your site worth?

These are just some of the questíons you should know, mainly because the more knowledge you possess about your site, the better equipped you will be at improving it. So here's a simple líst of free site checking tools/sites that will let you "Big Brother" (monitor and watch) your site.

1. Google Analytics

Perhaps one of the most helpful analytical tools you can use on your site. Google Analytics will give you a wealth of information about your site's traffíc. Where it comes from, how long it stays on your site, where it goes on your site, how well your content converts... invaluable information every webmaster should have in their possession.

2. NetMechanic Toolbox

Review your site's mechanics - find broken links, test browser compatibility, find bad HTML code, spot slow-loading pages, and review your spelling... all by using the NetMechanic Toolbox.

3. Keyword Suggestion Tool

This free keyword suggestion tool will tell you how many searches are done in WordTracker and Overture for your site's keywords. Extremely valuable information since much of the web's traffíc and ecommerce is keyword driven.

4. Iwebtool

This is another free site which offers many valuable webmaster's tools that will give you information about your/any site. Google PageRank, PageRank Prediction, Link Popularity, Search Engine Positions for Keywords, Backlink Checker... also Visual PageRank where you can see all the PR values of all the links on a given page - both internal and external.

5. Alexa Traffic Rankings

Alexa tracks the web's traffíc by using the Alexa bar in a surfer's browser. Most people know it is not an accurate assessment of the traffíc on the net but it is a handy measuring stick, nonetheless. It is also a handy tool for comparing sites and seeing the long-tern traffíc trends of different sites, including your own.

6. Your Site's Traffic Logs

Most webmasters know your raw traffíc logs are worth checking and reading. They contain valuable information about your site. Especially helpful, if you're checking for broken links on your site, you don't want to see those 302's everywhere. Close examination and regular checking of your traffíc logs and stats will point out the profitable keywords on your site.

7. BetterWhois

You can use this site to find out the domain information about your site. Do you have control of your domain? Many webmasters buy their domain name thru their web hostíng company. While this is not a problem in itself, if any dispute should arise, who has administrative control of your domain; you or your hostíng company? Can you change hostíng companies?

8. Google Alerts

Another valuable tool from Google which notifies you by email when your link or site is found anywhere on the web. Great for keeping track of any new links your site is getting. Many webmasters also use this handy tool to keep track of their competitors' sites. They also use Google Alerts to keep track of whenever their own name is mentioned anywhere on the web. This one would even make Orwell proud.

9. IP Neighbors

Many webmasters have their site hosted on shared hostíng plans, which means there can be hundreds of sites sharing the same IP address. This site lets you discover who your IP neighbors are. Why would you want to know your IP neighbors? Well like neighbors everywhere; there are good ones and there are bad ones. For example, if you have a neighboring site that uses email to sp@m, it could get your IP address blocked or shut down.

10. Any Browser

Use to this handy site to discover what your site looks like in different browsers; you could be in for a real shock.

11. Google Toolbar

The Google Toolbar can be placed on your browser so that when you're surfing you can see the Google PageRank of each page/site you're visiting. Many SEO experts believe Google is not giving us the true PR of a page and this bar is rather useless. However, like the Alexa rankings it is a handy measuring stick, nonetheless.

12. What Is Your Site Worth?

Please take this last analyzing tool with "a large grain of salt", but it is fun to use and to see how much your site is worth. Measurement here is done largely by the amount of links you have coming into your site.

In conclusion, all of these free handy tools/sites will give you a better, more complete picture of your own site. Remember, the more knowledge you acquire about your own site and your competitors' sites, the more equipped you will be to succeed. This is one case where being a "Big Brother" can truly benefit your site.


About The Author
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest and most effective web marketing tools try: BizwareMagic.com . Or why not try these excellent free training manuals and videos. 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

How To Create High Conversion Lead Capture Pages

By Gabriel Aguinaga

In today's competitive marketing arena, it pays to have an edge. Any business, big or small must be absolutely committed to obtaining a fresh flow of exclusive, interested and responsive leads.

In order to remain competitive in the highly sophisticated and intensely competitive Internet Marketing Niche, savvy entrepreneurs must rely on a dedicated networking scheme. One of the most successful ways to garner a piece of the market is through a lead capture page (sometimes referred to as a squeeze pages).

Lead pages are one-page web sites designed to provide only enough information to attract a users attention, arouse their curiosity and inspire them to opt in to your designated opportunity.
Effective lead capture pages can be built with relative ease and their primary function is to highlight the benefits of your offer, provide an online information form that interested parties fill in and allow you permission to contact them directly with subsequent information. In the industry, this is referred to as an opt-in lead.

You may be asking, why should I bother with constructing and maintaining a one page website whose only purpose is to give users the option of continuing or not continuing with their search? Extensive Market Research has proven what Internet Marketers have known for ages, Users do not always commit to a product or service in their first encounter online. Therefore, providing just enough titillating information on your lead page to pique additional interest will often inspire users to request supplementary information.

Creating lead capture pages from scratch is not hard, but there are several tried and true components that are essential in your design:

Your lead page must contain a synopsis of the most pertinent information relative to your product, while having enough pizzazz to grasp a readers attention.

Bulleted points extolling the benefits of the next click (either by use of a proceed, continue or submit button) will serve to whet a users curiosity, thus bringing the desired traffic to your site.

Employing an auto-responders function is essential at this point in order to expedite immediate response. The follow-up e-mail should be comprised of interesting and compelling data about your product and/or service and should be designed to make YOUR product or group stand out from the crowd, thus generating business back to you.

Easy to use software is available to assist first-time marketers in their production of lead pages that look professional and personalized. Your primary goal is to develop a positive rapport with potential clients, so providing some insightful, personal information about yourself, such as your pets, hobbies, family, etc., can create an aura of bonding with the reader.

Establishing this type of mutuality with the reader intimates that you are a person who is likeable, friendly and able to be trusted, which, in turn, can go a long way in swaying a reluctant buyer over to your side.

Once a visitor provides their contact information, you will immediately receive it. You can then employ your marketing skills to their maximum via email or telephone, where you now have a prime opportunity to promote your particular offer.

As a marketing tool, the lead page performs as a multi-tasking agent for your company. It serves to entice prospective buyers, allows you to elaborate on your product and provides you with information on who visits your affiliate site. Most importantly, you will now have legitimate contact information, which can be used to communicate directly with your intended clients.

About The Author
Gabriel Aguinaga is a professional online marketer and the owner of a very popular website, LeadCapturePageCreator.com. To grab a free list-building course or to grab a copy of his famous lead capture page creator software, visit: LeadCapturePageCreator.com

How To Start a Profitable Online Business in 5 Easy Steps And For Under $40

By Gabriel Aguinaga

So you want to start an internet home business?

There are five important steps you must follow:

(1) Find a product to sell

(2) Design your sales page

(3) Setup credit card processing on your website

(4) Find a website host and upload your sales pages

(5) Promote your website products

Now the question remains: How can I follow the above steps with a $40 budget?

FACT: I have found that buying resell rights to quality digital products is by far the easiest & cheapest way to start a successful online business.

1) Find a product to sell. Average cost: $30

You can buy resell rights to quality information & software Products for as little as $30. A quick search for the terms "resell rights" on any major search engine will produce plenty of product offers for you to choose from.

Once you have bought the product/resell rights you will be able to sell the product yourself and keep 100% of the profits every time. Another advantage of selling digital products online is that they costs nothing to deliver. Translation: huge profit margins.

2) Design your sales page. Average cost: $0.

That is right, $0. Most, if not all, digital products for which resell rights are available come with a professional ready to take order websites. This means that as soon as you buy resell rights to a product -- not only will you have a product of your own -- but you will also have a professionally designed sales page to help you start selling your product immediately.

3) Setup credit card processing on your website. Average cost: $0

There are various ways to this; however, since we are trying to keep our expenses to a minimum we are going to use paypal.

Visit www.paypal.com and open an account. Their website is very well designed and it does an awesome job of guiding you through the registration process. NOTE: paypal will setup your merchant account at no cost but will deduct 1.9% + $0.30 transaction fee.

4) Find a website host and upload your sales pages. Average starting cost: $13.

Well, you can do this for free but I wouldn’t recommend it. I suggest that you choose www.godaddy.com because they are highly reliable. Note that I am not affiliated with godaddy in any way; I advocate them because I am a customer myself and I have experienced nothing but 100% top service. You can register a ".COM" domain for as little as $8.95 per year and get hosting for only $3.95 per month.

If you choose to get free hosting, go with freewebs.com. They provide free bannerless web hosting, which is extremely rare to find.

5) Promote your website products.

Now that you have completed steps 1 trough 4 you need to drive traffic to you website. I suggest that you start by advertising on free classified sites, joining free traffic and banner exchange programs, join list builders, use free email safelists as well as other similar programs.

Note: Although it is not free -- I suggest that you start a Pay Per Click Campaign at any of the top search engines in order to drive highly targeted visitors to your site/s. Overture, Google Adwords and Findwhat.com are my top picks for this type of marketing.

Final Thought.

There you have it: a fully functional online business in 5 easy steps and for under $40. Always keep in mind that knowledge is money... the more knowledge you have the more profits you will rake in. Always keep learning about internet marketing, stay focused and never quit.


About The Author
Gabriel Aguinaga, "The Resell Rights Guy", is the owner of Guranteedpayouts.com to learn more about him and his expertise, visit his site at http://www.guaranteedpayouts.com/

How Millionaires Make Money From Real Estate

By Naomi Botha

Intelligent use of real estate can enable ordinary people to become millionaires in about 10 years or less.

A lot of statisticians say that on average across the board, property has doubled on average every 7 to 10 years in the last 146 years in Australia, this has happened in many other countries also. This statistic depends on location, quality of property and the price you pay for it of course.

How you can use property to create wealth

For instance, Bill and Mary are earning $50,000 a year and they want to replace their income. I am going to suggest that just by buying two investment properties, they could achieve this. Let us look at how they can buy two investment properties for them to retire. $50,000 a year is approximately $35,000 per year after tax. So would you be committed to buying 2 properties in the next decade if you could retire from them?

In year 1 of the plan, we are going to buy one property. The properties I tend to buy are often around $300,000, which we will use for this strategy. The second year we do not buy any property and the third year we buy our second property. In ten years time, these properties could be worth $600,000. That is 10 years after you buy them. (Always make your plans conservative as it could take 10 years or longer.) I generally buy properties in capital cities because these properties will continue to grow.

If the property doubles in 10 years, this is $300,000 in extra money we have made over 10 years per property, i.e., $300,000 each, now worth $600,000. You have earned $300,000 from capital growth. Bill and Mary need $35,000 a year net to replace their current incomes. They are probably thinking if they buy the property, they have to work harder. If they buy and sell to make a profit, they generally have to pay capital gains tax. In this strategy, we are going to buy a good property and keep it ideally forever. It is worth $600,000. They need $35,000 net cash to replace their income. Where can they get that from?

What about a line of credit?

A line of credit allows us to draw equity/cash out of property by setting up a bank account from which to draw this down. They can draw out $35,000 in the first year, then do the same in year two and three.

In years 4, 5 and 6 they could take say $35,000 our of the second property. It is just sitting there so why not use it? If they do not use it, when they die, someone else gets it, so they might as well use the money they have made.

Six years after the first property is worth more than $600,000, being in a capital city, it may be worth $900,000 plus. That gives them another $300,000 sitting there available to use. They have not finished using the first $300,000 and now they have another $300,000 and the property keeps going up in value whether they like it or not. This means they have more than they need for retirement.


About The Author
I have extracted this article from a book called "What I Didn't Learn At School But Wish I Had" by Jamie McIntyre, this book is filled with information and exceptional strategies on becoming wealthy. If you are interested in learning more about how to make money in real estate, investing in shares and business, please click here or visit http://www.howtoinvestinshares.com

Where's Your Social Responsibility Google?

by Kalena Jordan

Unless you've been living on a desert island with no Internet access, you've probably seen the recent blog fallout from Google's latest crack down on alleged link brokers.

This week it seems that Google made some type of manual Toolbar PageRank reduction on a handful of major blogs and portal sites like the Washington Post, ProBlogger, CopyBlogger and Forbes.com. Some of these sites had PageRank scores of 7 which have now dropped to 5, scores of 6 which have now dropped to 4 and so on. The blog buzz is that the sites have been singled out by Google as using their high PageRank scores to sell links and have been punished by the world's most popular search engine as a result. There is currently no proof of this and no public statement by Google acknowledging or denying the situation.

A lot of bloggers have weighed in with commentary, observations and opinions. Every time I read a new post about the so called smack-down I imagine some Googlers at Mountain View laughing hysterically and high-fiving each other for turning the tables on the SEO industry yet again.

The situation has even got the SEOs turning on each other. One of the world's best known SEOs, Jill Whalen, made a post in response to the situation that included a comment about one of the affected sites, Search Engine Guide. Jill's post has been interpreted in some circles as a type of attack. Here's the comment Jill made in her post:

"Even my very good friends at Search Engine Guide were smacked down. I hadn't been to their home page in ages since I usually visit through direct article links, but when I looked at their home page today and scrolled down to the bottom, I was taken aback to see what looks more like a link farm than anything else!"

I've known Jill a long time and I read her remark about Search Engine Guide as a quick off the cuff comment, not a deliberate attack. Without putting words in her mouth, I think it sounded more shocking than she meant it, probably because she was typing as a response to first impressions of Search Engine Guide after not seeing it for so long and because (being ridiculously busy) she was probably in a hurry. So the comment itself didn't raise an eyebrow for me. But I WAS concerned about how the general webmaster community would interpret the comment.

Yes, she has every right to her opinion. But being who she is and the industry reputation she's built up, Jill has incredible influence over a large number of webmasters and SEOs who absorb her material. Persons reading her article that are unfamiliar with Search Engine Guide may permanently associate the site with the term "link farm" and all the negative connotations that brings. No matter her intent, her remark definitely has the power to hurt Search Engine Guide and their reputation. The site's publisher Robert Clough obviously thought so, as he was prompted to make an uncharacteristic post in response.

Personally, I think Jill should have considered the possible backlash from her casual comment and worded her post much more carefully. After all, with industry influence comes responsibility. Which brings me to the main point of this article. Google now has extreme influence and power over the Internet. When they make changes to their algorithm or the way they cache and filter web sites, it has a dramatic impact on not just web site owners, but business and life in general. Millíons of people rely on Google to survive, literally. In that respect, this attempt at link bait humor is a little too close to reality to be funny.

With such powerful social influence, I think it's about time Google started taking more responsibility by being more transparent with their activities. If too many webmasters are doing the wrong thing with regard to linking, or an algorithm change has occurred, why not launch a media release to set the facts straight? Not everyone knows about Google's Webmaster Guidelines, or has a Webmaster Tools account. But a lot of people read the newspaper. If they want webmasters to co-operate, Google has to recognize it's a two way street.

By slapping on this latest penalty, (if it is indeed a penalty), Google seems to be claiming to *know* the intent of these sites. But what if they're wrong? What if, as Jennifer Laycock claims, they are merely selling advertising space without Google being a consideration? There's nothing in Search Engine Guide's advertising material relating to PageRank OR Google. To assume they are trying to use their site's high PageRank as a selling point is pretty arrogant and irresponsible of Google, in my opinion.

Without some type of public acknowledgement from them, we can only assume Google's latest move is an attempt to control how webmasters use their own web site space. That's a huge line in the sand they've crossed and I don't know about you, but it makes me nervous.


About The Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running her own SEO business, Kalena is Director of Studies at Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Can you really buy web traffic?

by Michael Fleischner



Many people wonder about generating traffic to their websites through paid traffic offerings. This topic is highly debated among the industries top SEO managers because some believe in the practice and others do not.

Paid traffic services can be useful as part of an overall traffic generation strategy. I have used paid traffic services in the past and believe they do present some value when used in conjunction with Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and Email Marketing.

So What's the Rub With Paid Traffic?

Have you ever wondered where paid traffic comes from? The services that generate paid traffic do it through a few key methods.

1. Traffic Exchange.

Using this method, these sites sell access to their traffic exchange networks where individuals surf for credits. As they earn credits viewing websites like yours, their ads/websites are displayed across the network for others to click on. If this method is being used, you may certainly experience a decrease in performance only because the same individuals are seeing your ad over and over, reducing their likelihood to click.

2. Search Engine Marketing.

A great way to generate traffic for others is through search engine marketing like Google, ExactSeek or Yahoo! Traffic generation sites buy keywords in bulk or many long-tail keywords and resell the traffic generated from them. If they can do this at a profit, its a win-win. This is a difficult strategy only because the cost of keywords change frequently based on industry demand.

3. List Marketing.

Traffic generation websites also generate traffic through email marketing and house lists. These techniques are usually leveraged through daily, weekly, and monthly electronic newsletters. Driving less traffic than the first two methods, the list marketing option usually rounds out a comprehensive traffic generation strategy.

So to answer the question about paying for traffic, is it worth? My answer is that as part of an overall traffic generation strategy, paying for traffic can be beneficial. It all comes down to how you use paid traffic acquisition as part of your overall marketing strategy, the quality of the traffic generated and the costs associated with the traffic.

The other factor to consider is the quality of the traffic you receive. The purpose of most traffic acquisition strategies is to improve sales, generate leads, and/or conversions. To that end, I would only recommend paying for traffic if you have a way to measure the traffic to your site, the path the traffic takes through your website and whether or not that traffic actually converts. Whether you consider a conversion to be the completion of a web form or the actual purchase of a product, your buying this traffic for one reason and one reason only - conversion. Keep this in mind before you spend any money on traffic.

Although you can find plenty of sites willing to give you traffic in exchange for a fixed fee, I personally prefer to sign up for my own traffic exchange, purchase my own keywords, and manage my newsletters and email lists. By doing so, I have a better handle on where the traffic is coming from and ultimately the value of this traffic. Keep that in mind before you run out and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on acquiring traffic that may or may not convert for your web site.

About the Author

Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert with more than 12 years of marketing experience.To discover how to improve search engine rankings on Google and other major search engines visit http://www.webmastersbookofsecrets.com and the Marketing Blog.

How I Got 70,000 Useless Visitors To My Site In One Day!T

(An Analysis of Social Bookmark Traffic)
By Titus Hoskins

Recently, a page on one of my websites was bookmarked or listed on Digg, a popular social bookmark site. It gave me the perfect opportuníty to study and analyze the traffic coming from these social media sites. Read to discover the advantages and disadvantages of social bookmark traffic and how it can be applied to your own online marketíng or site.

Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless?

First, we must make the distinction that no traffic is useless. Any visitor to your site is a good thing and should be welcomed. However, all traffic is not created equally, there are great differences in the sources of your traffic. This article takes a close analytical look at social bookmark traffic from an internet marketing perspective.

In case you haven't noticed, right now social bookmark and media sites are all the rage on the web. Social bookmark traffic comes from such popular sites as Slashdot, Digg, Stumbleupon... basically these sites are driven by their users - that is, users or members pick and bookmark the content they want to view and discuss.

These social bookmark sites are extremely popular; they command the high traffic numbers most ordinary sites can only dream about obtaining. But is this social bookmark traffic useful?

Is it worth your time? Should you be actively promoting to these social media sites? Should you concentrate your online marketíng efforts on these types of sites? More importantly, what are the benefits and disadvantages of getting a front page listing on a site like Digg or Stumbleupon?

As a full-time online marketer I wanted to know the answers to those questions. Moreover, I wanted to discover how or if I could use these sites from an online marketer's advantage; i.e. how can they help me create more online income.

Recently, the Digg listing gave me a first-hand opportuníty to really study these sites.

Of course, nothing happens without a reason... I did actually court these social bookmark sites by placing the free Addthis.com bookmark on all my pages. You can do the same. Just use this simple bookmark to attract these sites.

But be careful; getting your site featured on the front page of these sites can drive 100,000's of visitors to your site immediately, so much traffic that it may overtax your server and crash it.

So be warned; if you're actively promoting to these social bookmark sites just make sure your servers or web hosting is up to the demanding task of handling all these sudden visitors.

In my case, it didn't crash my servers but unfortunately, the page/link in question featured an old poorly written article I did on the history of the Internet. Why it was even featured on Digg is a puzzle and beyond me.

But still I am not one to waste an opportuníty, so I put my Google Analytics into overdrive and starting analyzing these visitors and social bookmark traffic. It pointed out some very interesting factors about this bookmark traffic.

Most of this traffic will:

simply bounce back
very few visitors will spend much time on your site
very few visitors will even venture into your site
very few will sign-up to your newsletter
very few will enter your marketing follow-ups/funnels

(The unknown variable here being the content on your site, how good it is? How well does it perform?)

Regardless, one common problem with traffic from these sites is that it's very temporary traffic. The high volume will only last a few days... until your item is moved back from the front page.

These visitors will not stay on your site long and most are gone within seconds, not to be seen again. A few may sign up to your newsletter or venture to other areas of your site but not many.
Social bookmark traffic is very fleeting, like customers in the drive-thru section in a fast food restaurant. They grab the content and surf back to the major linking site very quickly and surf on to the next item.

This traffic will behave very differently than organic traffic from the search engines, or from your newsletter traffic or from traffic in your marketing funnels. Much different.

It was unlike getting one of my articles featured in Addme or SiteProNews, where I can easily get 200 or 300 new subscribers in a day. Plus, these visitors are interested in my information and have been exposed to my content (article) before coming to my site.

So there was no comparison; I would take the traffic from these sites any day over traffic from the social bookmark sites. And I would take free organic traffic from the search engines over any other source of traffic.

So the question remains - is social bookmark traffic useless? First, as I mentioned before, you must realize no traffic is useless; any visitors to your site is a good thing. Without traffic your site is worthless, just a few files sitting on a server in the middle of nowhere. Obtaining visitors is one of your first objectives as a webmaster. You must get visitors to your site or it's game over.

The best kind of traffic is traffic coming from organic search, visitors who come from the search engines seeking exactly what you're offering on your site. These are targeted visitors who will consider your pitch, read your information, maybe buy a product or sign-up to your newsletter or follow-up system. They often become repeat visitors to your site. These are your ideal visitors. This is the kind of traffic you want.

Social bookmark/media traffic is different but it does have some saving graces.

Mainly it can help expose your site to millions and help brand your site or business. It can get the word out about your site. Start a buzz.

If you have a site that appeals to the mass market, then these social sites could be an excellent recruiting ground for visitors and traffic.

These social sites are good for another reason; getting your links on all these high traffic, high PR7 and PR8 sites can't hurt your search engine rankings. Once featured on a site like Digg, your link will appear on many secondary sites around the web, so far 500+ and counting. Monkey see, monkey do. Although it hasn't been my main ambition to get featured on Fark.com, all these sites do have high PR ranks so from a SEO standpoint it is not necessarily a bad thing.

Since many of these visitors will be using the Firefox browser which has the Alexa toolbar embedded - your site's traffic rank will improve. Over 50% of the bookmark traffic coming to my site were using the Firefox browser. Alexa's traffic rankings are not a true picture of the web's traffic, but it's a good measuring stick, nonetheless.

Google might even consider it when ranking your site. Google basically considers their whole indexing system as a democratic voting structure... sites give a vote by linking to your content; wouldn't it also be reasonable to assume more traffíc means more votes. So wouldn't getting a lot of traffic or being featured on a site like Digg where the users vote to propel the best content to the front be the ultimate vote.

One strange thing I did notice, for some reason the traffic from Stumbleupon was different. These visitors stayed longer on my site and reacted more like organic traffic. Maybe the Stumbleupon site is of a higher quality and this may have been reflected in the quality of the visitors coming from there. It also reminded me, all traffic from these social media sites can't be judged with the one brush.

This whole experience also pointed out another important factor; it made me realize how unsuited my content is for the general web surfer or the mainstream web. All my sites and content were planned and organized to first draw in targeted (warmed up) visitors from free organic search and from my online articles.

If I, or anyone, wanted to take advantage of this social media traffic, they would have to create site/content to appeal to these surfers and then somehow draw them into their marketing funnels. I don't know if the majority of the users of these bookmark sites would make good prospects, but my guess is not very likely - the nature of the beast. But it would largely depend on what you're offering on your site and how well it is suited to these users. So I am not drawing any conclusions yet.

Hopefully, I will have further chances to study traffic from these social sites and get the long-term effects, especially in regards to my keyword rankings in the search engines before making any final judgments.

For now I will keep an open mind but the jury is still way out whether or not social bookmark traffic is worth the interruption to the daily marketing tasks of your site. Just seems like much ado about nothing.


About The Author

The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing.For the latest web marketing tools try:BizwareMagic.com.For the latest Internet Marketing Strategies Go to: MarketingToolGuide.com.2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.