Webmaster's Tools

Google Trends For Websites Rocks

2008-06-23T23:11:00.000-07:00

The new Google Trends product that measures website traffic (the old product simply measures search queries) is a great way to get data on website traffic. It may not be perfect, but it's yet another data source to help people understand what's happening on the Internet.

But curiously Google has blocked most Google properties from the product. Do a search for Google.com and you get nothing. Same for YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, etc. As Google Operating System pointed out, there are a few smaller properties that do show data, so it isn't an across the board exclusion.

Google isn't supplying any good explanation for the exclusion. They told GOS: "We have policy of not providing interim financial guidance, and have decided not to release Google numbers in accordance with that policy." That explanation doesn't make sense because the tool should be an estimate based on the same data sources that Google uses for everyone else.

A better explanation, provided by one of our commenters. is probably that Google simply isn't able to use its own tools for estimating traffic - since by definition all the data is being gathered by Google for the product is from Google users (their toolbar, for example), the data for Google's sites would be skewed to 100% of all Internet users. It points out an inherent flaw in the product, and I'm not sure Google can easily solve it.

Making Money Online With Affiliate Marketing - Tricks of the Trade

2008-02-27T07:57:00.000-08:00

arch engine optimization e-books. It's simple, just register for an account there and then browse the many products and choose one you like, then start promoting it.

How do you know when an affiliate product is worth it?

Make sure the commission you receive is at least 50% of what the selling price is. Also, $30 should be the minimum commission amount you receive, otherwise you won't be making money online with affiliate marketing - your profit margins will so small it won't make sense to continue your efforts.

B) Next In Line?

Make sure there is a demand for the product(s) you select. How do you do this? First you must think as a consumer, NOT a seller.

What kinds of keywords will your customer be using to search for the type of product you're promoting?

How much will the customer be willing to spend?

Can your product help the potential customer?

Making money online with affiliate marketing is so much easier once you have thought about and solved these issues in the beginning. It is imperative that you attempt to predict the mindset of the person you're selling to so you can make sure you are putting the product in front of the right person. This will get you into profit more quickly.

C) Some Marketing Items To Consider...

Article Marketing

Once you choose a product to promote, write commentaries, product descriptions and/or reviews so that you are creating a web presence about your product. Article marketing will easily be one of the most powerful methods you can implement for making money online with affiliate marketing. This method will not only help your presence online to grow but it will build your credibility, which is very important.

Oh yeah, in most cases article marketing is completely free!

Getting The Most Out Of Your Link

This is very important. Whenever you make a post in a forum, comment on a friend's MySpace page, or even send an email to someone, always include your link. As the number of your links online grow, so will your profits. It is very common for people to click links simply out of curiosity.

Forums

Forum participation is very effective. Make efforts to excite people about your opportunity by spreading the word like a virus. The Internet is perfect for this kind of thing.

Lightning Fast Financial Success

The most important element in making money online with affiliate marketing will come down to your marketing effectively online. If you're not sure of how to flood your site with targeted traffic, then making money will become a great challenge.

If you learn to master online marketing then you will absolutely succeed!

Myspace Layouts - the Missing Element

2007-11-26T23:26:00.001-08:00

The world has become so fast paced that people don’t want to stand by reading a page of information, they would much rather look at a presentation and understand the message. It has come to a point where images and videos are used more to promote a product or service and this has extended from businesses to our daily routine. We are all in such a hurry that we wave bye instead of saying “goodbye”, show the watch to point to the time and so on. It is a healthy habit considering how we use our hands and motions to indicate what we are upto or capable of. Imagine dancing a few steps to tell someone you are off to a dance class? That would impress them to no end. The same applies when you are interacting with others online through a forum. You can take the assistance of MySpace Layouts to dress up your pages and convey messages to people who come by. These MySpace Layouts will have boxes for content, and for your personal information. There will also be provisions given in the MySpace Layouts for putting up pictures and videos. One might even be able to use the MySpace Layouts to put in a slideshow of their favorite pictures.

As long as the page does not look too cluttered or it becomes difficult for people to read the text, these extra frills from MySpace Layouts can remain. However, if by using these from the MySpace Layouts, you are aiming at cutting across as professional, you might not really succeed. Because when our pages are filled with text, pictures and other fun elements, it loses its professionalism and becomes a fun page. So, it is advisable for you to choose from the MySpace Layouts sensibly. It might help make friends, but will it help you in your professional endeavors by using those MySpace Layouts?

The MySpace Layouts site offers more than just backgrounds and most of us who have been there know this fact. There are surveys that we can create on MySpace Layouts page that will help us find out about others, or reveal more about ourselves. Apart from this, the MySpace Layouts website will contain MySpace music backgrounds, which will have musical notes or instruments as the background picture. These MySpace Layouts work well for a musician or an aspiring singer. Similarly, if a person loves animals, they can put in one of the many MySpace Layouts available on the site. Or they could upload a picture of their pet and using MySpace Layouts generator; create their own personalized one of a kind background. Whatever you decide to do with the MySpace Layouts, make sure to have put some thought into it if you are hoping to see some kind of visible improvement in your career or job front, welcoming new opportunities.

Living in a Digital Darshan

2007-11-26T23:24:00.000-08:00

The internet just might be a way to transfer more of the Spirit than we know, or is there a deeper secret here? Obviously fundamentalists might not agree with me, but I see the internet as a digital darshan! The bandwidth of connectivity (the world) combined with the instant connectivity (nano seconds), make it an ideal tool. The Indian word "darshan" means a direct transfer of higher consciousness. Why not? Let’s just DO IT!

More and more people are becoming fully awake. The process theology of A.N. Whitehead would emphasize the BECOMING while I want to accent the AWAKE! Pacal Votan, known as a magician of time, understood mathematics, or numbers, as a type of language that transcends the subjectivity of human verbal experience. He believed- “All is number. God is a number. God is in All.” And in an intriguing way, the Maya’s message is that we are intimately linked with and informed by the Galaxy. All of life is ordered by the same basic, re-occurring patterns. We are all BECOMING something- as a collective consciousness.

Maybe Carl Jung wasn’t too far off!

From the slow emergence of we homo sapiens to the agricultural age, to the industrial age, the current age of digital knowledge, and on to the age of wisdom or what may be in 2012 the Golden Age. Time is speeding up even if we’re not aware of it. A 2012 final fantasy?

French paleontologist and spiritual guru, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (of whom I’m devouring about a dozen of his works) believed that we were moving towards a speeding up of time. Unfortunately he left us in 1955, long before the interent, or otherwise he might have been even more impacting in his theorems. Even with that, he took us from cosmogenesis (birth of cosmosphere), to goegenesis (birth of the earth), to biogenesis (birth of life), etc., etc.

He was ultimately leading us to Christogenesis and isn’t that what we who live within the Christian traditions believe: without denying those who live outside of our traditions!

But of course, it all began with Mayangenesis!

Am I saying that one needs a computer to hear God? No way!

But what does appear obvious to me is that the internet is a tool for cosmic consciousness beyond anything that our finite minds can comprehend: currently. It’s a collective consciousness.

It’s a true ONENESS! Maybe an indirect digital darshan?

Author: Ernie Fitzpatrick

How Can I Get My Website Found Online

2007-11-24T08:05:00.000-08:00

When you put up a website for your business, you should treat the occasion as you would opening up a physical storefront. Not only do you have to worry about making sure that it is presentable and accessible, you also have to think about how to make sure that people can find it. While with physical storefronts, you would use signs, television ads and newspaper inserts, thinking about how to get your website found is a little bit different.

When you are thinking about ways to make sure that your website can be easily found by the people who are looking for your type of service, there are many options open to you. The first and most obvious is to make sure that your site is a desirable place for browsers to visit and that contains a good deal of information on who you are and what you do. Doing this actually serves two very important purposes. The first is that having an informative, smoothly operating site is quite important. The second, less obvious reason, is that a good website that is optimized for the search engines can bring a great deal of relevant traffic to your page.

To draw people to your website, working to make sure that your page appears first page on a list of natural search results is essential. To this end, you need to take a look at what criteria search engines use to rate their results. While context and keyword density is certainly a factor, so is the popularity of your site, which is measured through how many sites link to you without you providing a reciprocal link in return. People work on bulking up this ranking through what is known as link-building, where they actively campaign to put links to their site on directories, web pages and article directories.

If you've spent any time on the internet at all, you are already aware of what a powerfully pervasive tool Google can be. A truly enormous percentage of internet traffic runs through Google's servers every day, and there are many opportunities to take advantage of that. Take a look at Google Adwords, the search engine's pay per click program. In this program, you will choose several keywords, and when these keywords are searched, your link will appear on the sidebar. You'll only pay when someone actually chooses to click your link. This is a directed form of advertising that is an excellent way to get people who are really interested in your services

Essentially, remember that the best sort of advertising that you can use is the one that is best suited to your site. Think about what your services are and what sites people who are looking for your services will frequenting. Many businesses have found a great deal of success in soliciting the services of a search engine consultant. A professional can help you find your feet in the online world, and offer you experience when it comes to making sure that your website is found by prospective customers. If you wouldn't tackle a physical advertising campaign without help, why would you do so online?

There are many options open to you when you are looking to advertise your website, so make sure that you consider them all!

Getting Hooked On Link Baiting

2007-11-04T11:14:00.000-08:00

If you have spent any time at all on the internet, there is a good chance that you have participated in or observed the effects of link baiting. Link baiting is the process where a site does things to garner unsolicited links from other sites and these "hooks" can range from putting up information to using negative reviews of popular products. In terms of internet marketing, link baiting can be a terrific way to make sure that your website achieves good notice from the search engines and from people who are just surfing the web.

Informational link baiting is quite popular and has the added benefit of giving you a reputation as an expert in your field. People will want to link to you because you provide good information, especially if it relates to their own site. Though it will require some effort, you will find that this type of link baiting draws you a healthy degree of traffic that is relevant to your business and services. Some informational hook will show thee browsers how to do something, or explain the history or workings of your type of service. You may also want to provide news hooks in the form of a news feed of some sort.

Entertainment hooks are quite popular as well. The prevalence of online quizzes, especially quizzes that can be posted in places like personal blogs are an excellent form of link bait, though they often prove to be quite ephemeral. A good internet quiz or meme is terrific way to take advantage of the viral nature of the internet. You'll give people a favorable impression of your site and your services in this way. If you make sure that the entertainment is geared towards aiming people at your services, you can make sure that though they might come for the entertainment, they'll stay for your sales pitch!

Depending on your services, you might also want to provide tools for the use of those browsing your site. You'll find that people will happily link to tools that they think their friends will find useful and that this is a great way to get whole networks of people interested in what you have to offer. For instance, a financing firm might offer a mortgage calculator, while a makeover site might have a tool that allows users to "apply" makeup to a picture that they upload.

The one of the most important things to understand about link baiting is that there are both good ways and bad ways to go about it. Often, when you read about link baiting, you will see that people are quite negative about, and there is a reason for this. One popular method when it comes to link baiting is to post something negative about someone or something famous. While this can pull everyone from people who strongly support your point of view, to people who strongly disagree with it to people who are just hoping to see some internet drama to your site, at the end of the day, this is essentially a counterproductive type of link bait. You will achieve a rather nasty reputation as well find that there are plenty of people who might like your services, but despise your attitude. If you decide to make link baiting a part of your website marketing plan, do it responsibly!

Internet Marketing - How Newbie Can Lay Foundations Of Success

2007-10-31T10:44:00.000-07:00

As a newbie in Internet Marketing each of us has faced an uphill task; the task of seeing money come to us quickly. The thirst to see money in one's account before one can start full throttle in the business. Each of us indulging in the business of income through internet desire: a checklist method of working, predictable hours of input, a foretold time when income would start and the timetable of amount of income to expect. I have some Dos and Don'ts for you.

Remember that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, hence follow one course at one time - do not get attracted to too many pop-ups or other advertisements that will chase you on your way. Lucrative advertisements will call you - promising the moon BUT be careful. You have to apply yourself and experiment intelligently. Do not throw away your money. Studying available literature is the key to sound foundation before starting any business. This is the first & foremost investment that you have to make. Without it your other investments in form of time or money may go waste. Navigation is started after mastering the basics otherwise accidents are bound to follow. Today programmes with multiple income streams are in vogue as compared to single income streams. Slow & long term residual income is desirable rather than a one shot fast buck.

I can suggest to you few ways to read and build your basics.

Subscribe to a reliable free newsletter. Several free newsletters are available to you on the net. They get delivered regularly in your email and guide you in several ways to strengthen your knowledge about web business.

You can also read ebooks, several are downloadable free. These ebooks can turnout to be your philosopher and guide. They can virtually catch you by your hand and take you to your goal. Several are in step by step guideline format. They may prove to be a goldmine for beginners who want to start but have no directions. They also protect you from making mistakes that prove to be costly and may be inevitable when you are new in this field.

You can subscribe to blogs or attend web forums. Both are full of rich knowledge for beginners. They help you identify scams and expose you to common problems faced by most. The good thing is that solutions can also be found right there in these resources.

Reading all the above like a course in your graduation and examining yourself for retained knowledge and skills can prove to be your biggest asset. Applying them in business to ensue will differentiate you like a professional from a layman. You will need less help, you will waste less time, you will be confident of your decisions and you will be sure of your success.

I wish you all the very best in your endeavors and am sure that success will come your way if you keep your cool; read and take guidance; start after a foundation has been laid and do not be in an undue hurry to either spend or to earn.

SEO Can Give Your Business The Success You Want

2007-10-26T11:53:00.000-07:00

Search engine optimization or SEO is a method that can increase the amount of visitors to your website by ranking on top of the search engines. The better the chance the website can be visited by internet users, if the higher the rank the website has in the search engines’ results.

As the user performs a search through the search engine for a particular keyword or keywords, the website which is on the top rank can be seen on the first or second page of the search engines results. With the use of search engine optimization, it can guarantee that the website can be available and seen on the top rank of the search engine and it has good chances that the website will be visited by plenty of internet users.

If you truly want to gain success for your company, you should optimize our website. This article will offer some tips on how to gain success.

Your website will be left hanging there if you do not optimize it. In order for you to achieve success, you have to be on the top rank of the search engine results and this can happen with the means of search engine optimization.

But search engine optimization is quite complicated and requires lots of work, so you need to learn more about this internet marketing in order to optimize your website well. Another way to make sure that you will have an optimize website and can give you the assurance and guarantee that you will be on the top rank of the search engines results and to gain traffic and popularity is by the help of a professional SEO Company.

Definitely, you know that you have heaps of competitors, so if you do not make improvements and do not optimize your website, your business will not earn and your money and effort will just be put into waste. So you have to make use of this internet marketing in order to assure your company that you will gain success.

Most people use the internet in finding information, products and services through the help of the search engines. But these people rely to those websites who are on the top rank, so you have to be on the top rank in order to be visited and be known to the internet users and you can achieve this with the help of SEO Company. But do not work with just a SEO company, you have to make sure that it is the right and professional one that can aid you to success.

In order for you to find the best SEO company, you have to type the specific keyword or the topic of your business, like for instance if you are into real estate business, such as Miami real estate, simply type Miami real estate on the major search engines and look for the website that is on the top rank, and search for the SEO company that made that possible.

SEO Company can definitely aid you to success, with its how-how tools, strategies, methods and experiences, the company can guarantee you that you will be on the top rank of the major search engines results.

Make Money Online with Tnx

2007-10-25T01:25:00.000-07:00

With Google reducing pagerank of sites selling links (Eg .Stanford Daily) the Link business has a got a big threat from it. If you don’t know what I am talking about, Google is strictly against paid links or in Google terms “selling PR” .Probably, this is the reason why the Pagerank export hasn’t happened for over a five months now. But the subject of our today’s post is about another Web service called TNX which lets advertisers buy links and thus improve search engine rankings and publisher generate revenue from his site by selling links, but in a different manner with a mission to

* Assist website owners in attracting targeted visitors and clients from search engines and relevant websites.
* Reduce the dependence on search engines.
* Improve quality of the search results for those websites that join TNX system.
* Increase the income of every webmaster who joins TNX system.
The working

TNX combines the benefits of Contextual Advertising, Text Link Brokers and Relevant Exchange of permanent non-reciprocal text links.
It’s a bit easy to speak these lines but the folks at Tnx have done their best to give the desired results. Search Engines like Google want high quality relevant back links for higher Search engine ratings.

TNX allowes publishers to sell links from each page on their website, and for advertisers it allowes to buy millions of links from other sites in few clicks. TNX is a convenient tool that allowes publishers and advertisers to save time, efforts and money: in just a few minutes you can have thousands of links from hundreds of high quality relevant sites linking to yours.

All links are direct, they are located on main pages and inside pages that are also very important. Ads are displayed mostly on well-noticeable spots so they can attract visitors.
The system can be used to promote main page of the advertiser's site as well as inside pages.
Site publishers can not only use TNX.net to earn money, they can also use it to promote own websites by taking advantage of our system as an advertiser (balance in the system is unified).

The point system
TNX is probably the first monetizing web site using the point system.Its a very complex , so I tried sorting out a bit.
If you are an advertiser, you can buy 20,000 points with 20$ (1,000points = 1$)
With these 20,000 points you can buy static links for a month on (subject to availability)
- 20 000 different PR0 pages from different websites (1point/link)
- 400 different PR1 pages from different websites (50points/link)
- 200 different PR2 pages from different websites (100 points/link)
- 100 different PR3 pages from different websites (200points/link)
- 40 different PR4 pages from different websites (500points/link)
- 20 different PR5 pages from different websites (1,000points/link)

Lets take, you have a got a PR 3 blog and Want to sell 5 of its links. Selling it directly to advertisers would require a lot of effort and luck too.Instead,you will get 1000 points /month in your account . Then you have got a choice, buy targeted links from other sites with the points you earned or sell the points to Tnx itself. The price for 1000 points is 0.63 $ currently but it has an weekly inflation of 2 % .So far you earned only 0.63 $ for the links but here, the key lies here:

The Bonuses
For whatever site you sign up and get approved, you’ll get 7000 points as a bonus if you signup now.Now, head off to the DP forums post, paste your ID and get 2,000 more points in your account.Note:Offer for a limited period.

Which makes the tally:1,000 + 7,000 + 2,000 = 10,000 points = 6.3 $
An Impressive 6.3 dollars by no extra efforts

A newly launched affiliate program is just as interesting...
When you bring a new webmaster to the system, you will receive 13.3% of all "TNX-points", he/she will earn in the future (a reward for referring an advertiser is also available). This amounts to almost half of the system's commission! Interest is paid for the lifetime.

Example: When you refer a webmaster to TNX and advertiser pays 100 TNX-Points for a link on your referral's website, your referral (webmaster) gets 75 points and you get 10 points which is 13.3% of his income.No bans , no restrictions, No over changes makes this program a stand out.Text Link Ads referral is a high paying one but how many advertisers/publishers get approved in it to bring you the commission? For me, 1 out of 100* referrals of Text Link Ads gets approved.Google AdSense has some restrictions over promoting the referral products.This program has much scope from the referral point of view for bloggers which doesn't has a wide influential audience.

Its good that they have worked on the minimum site requirements page so that Webmasters can come to know how to increase their chances of getting approved.

In addition to the criteria (number of visitors, PR) we also look at the following:

- site’s idea. There is a huge number of sites in the Internet, and each of them was created for a certain purpose. We want the sites participating in our network to be created for people and not for search bots.

- design, navigation simplicity. We would rather accept a site with plain white background without any graphics rather than a site with irritating composition of sharp colors, blinking banners and dozens of buttons on pages.

- actual and unique content – is the main criteria for an Internet project’s success. Without it the site will become invisible for search engines that might decide that it’s just a mirror of another site.

- domain name. The best names are resonant and short, easily rememberable. We prefer second level domains COM, NET etc.

- site’s theme. We do not welcome entertainment-erotic sites, sites about earnings, pyramids, etc.

- lack of forbidden methods of promotion of site in search engines (for example, link bank, because search engines can delete such sites at any time as soon as they find a violation).

Security:This site wins it here.Google is strictly against paid reviews, and if you perform a quick site search on Google with ReviewMe.com for lets take John Chow Dot Com, you'll see the inventory right in the search results.Once you are caught by a Googler, you are the next John chow.TNX doesn't reveal all details of the link selling site to the advertisers , so now the Webmasters can sleep freely

Tip for TNX owners:Give ready made widgets that are compatible with most of the blogging platforms as of current Php, only supported by Wordpress is mandatory.

Conclusion:TNX system has tried to innovate the Link Buying /Selling market.A service newly launched and has got 27,646 users already.If you want to earn some bucks by selling links, are lazy, fear of Google, don't get direct advertisers then TNX is the right choice for your blog

Sign up for TNX

Incremental Backup for Blogger Blog Posts and Comments

2007-10-25T01:11:00.000-07:00

Abhishek is looking for methods to help him download his entire blog archive offline.

The good old option is to use website ripping software like wget or HTTrack to create a mirror copy of any blog with images on your hard disk.

If that sounds too geeky, here's an excellent alternative - Greg Duncan has created a free blogger backup software that's extremely easy-to-use and gives lot of control over the backup process. [enlarge the screenshot]

With Blogger Backup, you can backup your blog posts into a single file or one blog post per file or multiple posts per file. The future versions may even save your blog posts into PDF files that you can distribute as eBooks.

Blogger backup can download everything or you can do incremental backups meaning backup just the new posts since your last backup or download blog posts posted between any two given dates.

Best of all, Blogger Backup can also extract and save your Blog readers comments offline. No image support yet but you can always use Picasa web albums to download your Blogger photos.

Written by Amit Agarwal

Keyword Keepers And Losers

2007-10-24T23:35:00.000-07:00

Christmas comes up faster than we'd like, and before we know it, it's time to hand out those Xmas presents! Whether you're a last minute shopper or you like to have everything taken care of before December, buying Christmas presents online can make your life a lot simpler. Christmas is a great time of year to sit back and enjoy the company of your friends and of family that you've When you are trying to get your site and your information further up on the list of Google search engine results, keyword research is the best way to get started. While Google and other similar search engines use a wide variety of parameters to find what the searcher is looking for, keywords still top the list in terms of getting results.

The first thing to do is to figure out how your site is getting hits. Through the use of Google Analytics, you can put a piece of code on your home page that will tell you how people are getting to your site. This can tell you if your keywords are appropriate in terms of getting you the right kind of browsers. Remember that a high traffic count does not necessarily mean that your site is getting good traffic. If the majority of people getting to your site are just briefly stopping in and deciding that you are not for them, all this is doing is running your bandwidth costs higher.

Google AdWords is another tool that you can add to your arsenal when it comes to researching keywords. Whether or not you want to continue to use it as a main staple of your advertising campaign is definitely up to you, but in terms of figuring out what is actually effective in terms of bringing hits to your site, Google AdWords can be invaluable. Essentially, this pay per click program will bring up a small link to your site whenever certain key words are used. Although you will pay every time someone clicks your ad, this can tell you what words are soliciting the most response.

It is also very possible to become stuck in terms of what keywords you can use. If you already operate in an overcrowded market, you'll find that getting your site to the top using the most obvious keywords is all but impossible. At that point, your strategy should be using the less obvious keywords but using them well. There are several tools that can help you figure out what keywords you might want to try integrating into your site. Google offers a keyword tool that will help you generate related terms that you can use. Remember to use your best judgment; while some of them will be keepers, others will be misleading or misrepresent your site. Use as many as seem appropriate; multiple keywords can bring more business to your site, but beware of keyword stuffing.

It is very important to avoid keyword stuffing and spamming as the top search engines will penalise against it. Once this happens it can really effect your website both short term and long term so it is important to understand what to avoid. One way to check this is to read your page text and ensure it sounds natural. If it is stuffed it will sound strange and not make much seance so as long as it reads well you will normally find that the weighting is fine.

Search engine results are among the best ways to get new and relevant traffic to your site, so do your research and make sure that every word counts!

Author: Norman Vincent

Successful Link Building Strategies

2007-10-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

Link Building

One of the most important branches of website promotion is ‘Link Building’. For every website’s promotion link building campaign is compulsory. A little introduction about link building and than we move on to the concerning subject which is “with out wasting your time money on experiments what are the best link building strategies”

Introduction:

Link building is about getting back links to a particular website. Which is the most efficient and effective way of web marketing. Only you have to do is get backlink from other’s website to your website. For example there are two same main theme category related websites one is SiteA and other is siteB. They have recently come on the internet. SiteA has its on visitors and SiteB has its own. Suppose SiteA has 10 visitors and SiteB has 10 as well. Now the question what is their purpose on the internet' Definitely they want to increase their visitors so it can be possible to increase their product sales.
Is there any method or any way so they can increase it'

Yes there is if SiteA put a link of SiteB on its web page and SiteB put a link of Site A on its web page. What will happen' 10 vsitors of SiteA can be interested in service given by SiteB. Same 10 vsitors of SiteB can be interested in product given by SiteA. So in this way the probability of buying product and the service will increase. What exactly you are doing is increasing the link popularity of your website.

Link building also effects on Search Engine Ranking. The more quality Backlink you get for a websites the more you get the top position in search engine. Link building process is very critical which take your online business website to the top of the search engine and also can be cause of yours panelizing by the search engine. Use all the legitimate ways of building link popularity for your site which I’ll discuss in the last section of this article.

Types of Link Building:

There are three types of link building given below.

One way link building:
In this you get back link from other sites and you don’t give back link to them from your website.

Two way link building:
In this method you give Backlink from your website and get the same Backlink to your website as well

Three way link building:
In this you get link from others and in return you give a Backlink from one of your other website. Instead of the wesbsite where are taking Back Link.

Let’s take a look at some diagram on the types of link building.

Here comes the most effective the most efficient strategies of Link Building.

1. At the time to asking other’s to add your link add their link first to your site and than ask them to add yours
2. Always give them the exact html code of your website.
3. Don’t forget to place you target keyword title as anchor text in the code.
4. Try to contact others on by calling them this much effective than email.
5. Make sure they placed your link according to your requirement. Mail them to change and if they still don’t response without wasting your time move on to the next.
6. Find out your theme related website to exchange link with.
7. My prescription is that grab link exchange forms of websites related to your theme and want to exchange links as well.
8. Take a deep analysis of Backlinks of competitors related to your field. Your make a search in yahoo or googe like this. “link:http:// www.google.com”
9. That syntax will show you all those links that are linking to Goolge. Just like that you check who is linking to your top competitor and request them to link you as well.
10. Buy Backlink from valuable sites this method is a bit costly but drives worthy traffic a lot to your website. Just remember some points at the time of buying
11. Buy link on the most viewable page of the seller’s website. That page should have a good PR as well and also having informative things to read.
12. Natural link building is very very very useful for your website’s promotion. That a bit difficult for the brand new website. Its very time taking but it can be archived when you done all above discussed strategies.
13. Use some Blogs to submit your comment. But don’t post spam comments that should be informative and natural
14. Article writing and submission also gives you natural Backlink. There are many sites you search on search engine with the keyword “Free article submission”

15. At Yahoo and Google search bar grab link exchange form with the syntax given below

• inurl::add_link "keyword phrase"
• inurl:submitasite "keyword phrase"
• inurl:user.php "keyword phrase"
• inurl:add_site "keyword phrase"
• inurl:add.cgi "keyword phrase"
• inurl:addlink.asp "keyword phrase"
• inurl:add.php "keyword phrase"

Link Building And Places To Submit Your Links

2007-10-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

Search engines are a great way to get people to your site. The problem is no matter what you sell, search engine rankings for your keywords are most likely competitive. What makes it worse is, people usually don't bother looking for listings beyond the first few pages of the search results. The good news is, on the Internet a small company can effectively compete with companies that are willing to spend thousands of dollars for search engine optimization.

This is what makes it fun. When it comes to competing for keyword position in the major search engines you can stomp large companies in the ground. You will not be able to do it for all keywords, but you will be able to beat them consistently for many keywords. That is if you have a well thought out, persistent linking campaign.

Used effectively, link building can be one of the single best techniques you can use for getting your web site listed in the first few pages of a keyword search. Link quantity and quality are an important element of every search engine's ranking algorithms. If your site doesn't have links, it will not rank well for competitive keywords.

Places to submit your link.

Link Directories

There are hundreds of free link directories where you can submit your link. Search Google for, "link directory". Submit your site to a few new link directories every day. You will soon get link requests from members of these directories. Be picky, only exchange links with sites that are in some way related to, but do not compete with your site.

Article Directories

Good articles will bring one way, related links to your site. Write articles which are related to the subject of your site and submit them to free article directories. At the bottom of each article you can put a link back to your site. Don't just link to your home page, link to pages deep within your site. If your articles are worth reading, there is a good chance that web masters looking for content will use them on their site. There are no better links than one way links that point to pages deep within your site.

Blogs

Search for sites with blogs that relate to your site. If your site is about gardening search Google for, "blog gardening". This will pull up gardenings sites with blogs where you can leave your comments and a link to your site under your name. It is important that your blog comments are genuine and not spam.

Forums

Search for forums with the same niche as your site. Leave your link in forums signature. Again, it is important that your comments are genuine and not spam.

Web Directories

There are thousands of free web directories where you can submit your link. Always submit your site to the major search engines like Google and Yahoo by hand. This means going to their site and filling out the information they ask of you. Doing this to all the thousands of web directories is not possible. I recommend using an automated submission program like AddWeb.

Press Releases

Write press releases about your site and submit them to press release distribution services. Search Google for, "press release distribution service".

Social Networking

Social network services like MySpace and Facebook provide ways for people with the same interests to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, file sharing and blogging. Search engines and people love social networking sites, participate in them and leave a link to your site under your name.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a way for people to remember, organize and share bookmarks of web pages and see what others have bookmarked. As people bookmark sites, sites that are of more use are bookmarked by more users. Thus, sites are ranked based on their usefulness.

Links are one of the most important ways for visitors to find your site. It's all about getting people to your web site. With persistent link building the search engines can find your site faster and will rank you higher on their search results.

Blogging - History Exceeds Itself

2007-10-12T12:31:00.002-07:00

When blogging was a relatively new concept many bloggers simply looked to the medium as a way to empty their thoughts into an electronic file. Many viewed the medium as a journal that may never be read by anyone else.

In fact, early bloggers saw very little activity without sending out a direct invitation to view the blog to friends and family.

There are two primary roots to blogging. The first is old style message boards (now commonly referred to as moderated forums) and the second root is Online Diaries.

The earliest predecessor for blogging goes all the way back to 1983, but like most early Internet ideas they were basically useful only to the computer geeks and technicians.

Blogging as we see it today really came to the forefront in 2004. If blogging were a pot of water the boiling point wasn't reached until that year.

Today blogging is incorporated into almost every form of social networking site. Business Blogging (b-blogging) is common with many online businesses.

Perhaps blogging has been embraced because the individual blog owner becomes the journalist, publisher and commentator without the need to consult with any of those journalistic types.

Blogging may seem meaningless initially. It may, in fact, seem more like an old style online diary read by a very few. You may even believe that the medium has no impact on your business marketing strategy. However, like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies it can take some time for blogging views to reach the boiling point.

One way to improve blogging traffic is to post a link to the blog in any signature line when participating in forum discussions. Make a prominent link to the blog on your primary business site. Use links from other blogs, which may become reciprocal. You can even mention your blog in any company ezines, newsletters or autoresponders.

Many Internet users have come to view blogging as an alternative news source. If your business is on the cutting edge of your industry a business blog might become authoritative and be referred to by other bloggers for additional content. Their backlinks only serve to improve the traffic to your blog.

The growth of blogging serves the interests of knowledge and entertainment seeking consumers as well as businesses that understand what type of content their visitors are most interested in.

Blogging has really allowed a free exchange of ideas with the belief that if you meet the intellectual needs of the customer they are more likely to return with both trust and their credit card.

SEO - The History Of Optimization

2007-10-12T12:31:00.001-07:00

Virtually every good thing comes to an end. Strategies that were once standard in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ultimately came to an end when individuals with less scruples than a box of corn flakes manipulated the system to their advantage.

Some of the earliest optimization methods were a simple alphabetical list much like a phone directory, but by 1996 web site programmers tried their luck at placing specific keywords in parts of the programming and they began to learn they're manipulations had some influence in site rankings.

A variety of algorithms were utilized in 1997 that allowed programmers to crack the SEO code at Excite. These programmers were able to produce # 1 results for their clients at will.

What began as client-based assistance ultimately led to nefarious systems that sought a corner on site rankings to the exclusion of any competitor.

It wasn't long before most search engines began using Yahoo as a means of checking site rankings. Most programmers learned that by 1997 their clients needed to be included in Yahoo - and they needed to perform well in that arena if they wanted similar results elsewhere.

By late 1997 Infoseek offered anyone the opportunity to optimize a website and made the role of programmers less prominent. Angry programmers strike back by essentially creating a mirror site of top ranked sites and diminishing the effectiveness of the rankings.

In the next two years search engines develop complex, multi-level algorithms that were difficult to decode and made little sense. However, these systems would serve as a foundation for filtering spam and punishing offenders with banned sites.

By the late 1990's algorithm decoding essentially ceased. It was getting too hard to try to fool the new systems that were developing and many of the original ideas for SEO assistance were now considered Black Hat SEO.

As the Y2K doom reports fade into memory a fresh realization hits programmers. The roller coaster ride that had been SEO now fell to one search engine for acceptance. If you could not make it with this search engine you would find little acceptance elsewhere.

Today Google is the gold standard for SEO. This search engine provides details on acceptable ways to promote your site through optimization.

Now that a comprehensive standard has developed programmers are back in the fray seeking to serve customers by attempting to gain respectable rankings.

Interestingly there are some SEO firms that must remember the old days of SEO because they continue to insist on using methods that could ultimately cause a site to be banned from search engines.

Learn what you can about SEO strategies. With this knowledge you can begin to personally implement strategies that help your site rankings in the long run.

Above all keep up to date on SEO strategies because this is an area that has a long history of being refined.

Making Good Websites that Stand Out

2007-10-08T12:36:00.000-07:00

Websites, there's literally billions of them out there in cyber-space. How many of them do you go to and just think this is boring, bland, or hard to use? It seems like too many to mention. So what makes a good website? I reckon it's about interaction. You've got to make the visitor interested. You've got to grab their attention. Many sites use plenty of bright and shiny gimmicks to attract you, but once you make it through to the content of the site it's just not worthy. A good site uses easy navigation, relevant content, and interactive media like comments and message boards. If you're fortunate, whoever builds your site may even have a few tricks up their sleeves to make it really fun with sound, video, and other interactive fun stuff.

Do you want people to come to your site and then tell their friend and family about it? Do you want to have huge amounts of visitors? Do you want to succeed in making your dreams come to fruition on the Web? Make your website exciting! It might be easier said than done, but there are people around whose job it is to construct and design sites for a living. If you can afford it, go for the best. How great is it when you come across a site that has some special feature that you've never seen elsewhere? Isn't it great when you find a site that relates to one of your interests that is simple and easy to get to the information you want? If you want to have people to come back again and again, you've got to keep updating the content to keep it fresh and interesting. Have a way for people to communicate with yourself and others who are into the same things. E.G. Forums, message boards and comments. The aim is to catch the 'viewer's' interest. A lot of sites just look like giant advertisements and you have to search for the needle in the haystack to find out what the actual site is for. I know advertising is a way of making money, but if you want your site to have an authentic, respectable atmosphere that exudes a feeling of integrity, you better be careful. People are becoming wary of this consumer driven, mindless attack at the average civilian's wallet. Some people will automatically leave a site if a bunch of commercials pop-up on the screen. Pop-ups, don't even make me go there? So, the aim of the game is to make a site that offers the public to be part of the action as well as being a source of knowledge or information that is in demand. A simple to navigate, good 'feel', and if possible-innovative site is the means to becoming the popular Internet magnate you've always dreamed of becoming. Another important fact is the idea of 'you'. Your website is a chance to put your identity out there in the world. Be yourself. If you try to appeal to an audience in a way that doesn't reflect your true self, you're destined to fail. Be honest and speak from your real perspective on life. Give it to us from the heart.

How To Ensure Targeted Traffic To Your Website

2007-10-04T00:25:00.000-07:00

Online businesses are cropping up everywhere on the Internet these days. For every product and service out there, thousands of enterprising individuals and companies are making websites to market to the vast online world. Already established companies are beginning to look forward to the future that is the Internet. Even contemporary establishments that had formerly frowned on the Internet as a temporary hype are now jumping on the bandwagon and grabbing themselves an online presence.

Obviously, with this massive proliferation of online businesses, the logical conclusion is the increase of competition between online businesses engaged in the same product or service market. Thus, the only way for an online business to survive and to flourish is to drive as much human visitor traffic to the site as possible. Of course, offering the best deal on the Internet will help build traffic but first you need to get your potential customers aware of your existence.

One of the best ways that you can drive traffic to your website is through Targeted Traffic. You can seriously increase sales with Targeted Traffic backing up your online business. Targeted Traffic helps to deliver to your website a high amount of visitors daily. With increased hits from targeted online visitors, you have an improved chance of making a sale from your traffic.

What's more, to help you to more efficiently increase sales with Targeted Traffic, Targeted Traffic Hits sends to your site only people who are actually those interested in your products and/or services. They don't just send random traffic and hope for the best. You can increase sales with Targeted Traffic merely by getting "targeted traffic" visitors to your site. This is the essential function of Targeted Traffic Hits. With Targeted Traffic, you are never left second-guessing whether you have the right kind of traffic or not.

The service that Targeted Traffic offers is focused mainly on offering links from purchased expired domain names. When domain names are abandoned, Targeted Traffic picks them up depending on the keywords and the links that could lead to that domain name. Naturally, during a web search, a web surfer will find links toward this domain name, depending on the type of search that they made. Usually, Targeted Traffic uses domain names whose names are connected to the particular traffic that Targeted Traffic determines as optimal for the search. Once a user enters the bought domain, he or she can then organically chooses the links that are located there to further find the service or product that they truly want.

Once you decide to increase sales with Targeted Traffic, you can be sure that the company will be working diligently to increase your traffic. They will be using tried and tested techniques that are not deemed as "black hat" by search engines. Using only organic search links helps to ensure that your website is healthy for the long-term. Targeted Traffic is also fair, they only count each unique traffic hit to your site and will not count repeat visitors. Thus you are assured that you are getting the best targeted traffic service at a very reasonable and fair price. Why waste time with random visitors when you can ensure Targeted Traffic Hits for your web site.

7 - Steps to Building a Team - not a Mailing List

2007-10-02T05:09:00.000-07:00

Stop trying to sell something all the time to your mailing list, this is one of the biggest mistakes of most list owners. They see their list as dollar signs. That is why people opt-out of their list and don’t read their emails.

7 - Steps. How To build a team instead of a useless unresponsive list?

Here is my input on How To build a team of people who will follow your lead into most any program that you have to offer.

Step 1. Use a lead generating system that actually offers something of value to the person who is thinking about joining your team.

Step 2. After they sign up send them to a website loaded with tools and helpful software that will help them to build their team also.

Step 3. Send them a welcome letter in their email congratulating them for joining your team. Note: Don’t try to sell them something at this time. Send them a FREE Gift and start building a relationship with them first.

Step 4. Answer all their questions that they may have about the free gift or software that they received, when they joined your team. Remember you are building a team not a mailing list.

Step 5. Never, and I mean Never, share or sell your list to anyone... Period! Protect your teams information at all cost. You will be rewarded many times over in the end for your trust.

Step 6. Give them some learning tools to educate them about your system and how it works. And give them advice about building their own team. You must educate your team and doing so will give the person self esteem and worth. See, people want to be part of something of worth while and that actually works.

Step 7. After they have proven themselves by following your training advice and learning tools, that you provided them. Then invite them to your product or service that you are selling... Let them prove themselves first.

When you build a team like this, they will join almost any program or service or even purchase your products in a heart beat. Why? Because you helped them also build their own team and taught them how to keep them on their team and not opt-out, because of abusing their mailing list.

See what I’m trying to say here? Stop looking at your list as dollar signs, instead help them to become successful first and they will help you become successful also.

Email your team from time to time about new products that you have to offer. And send them free advice about ways to increase their marketing skills and income.

I do this through my newsletter called “Raptor Marketing” and blog site and my team loves me for this. They are always looking for my next newsletter or blog post.

And by treating your team with respect you will profit for years to come.

I’ve been amazed at the response that I receive from my team when I offer them a new ebook or product through my email promotions (back end sells).

I have actually made more money from back end sells then I have from front end sells. How did I accomplish this? I stop abusing my list or (team). I give them more things FREE, instead of trying to sell them something all the time.

Try this it works like crazy.

Yes, there is power in a team, not an abused mailing list.

To learn more about team building see my recourse box. You can thank me later.

Copyright © 2007 & Beyond All Rights Reserved.

This article may be distributed freely on your website and in your ezines, newsletter, your blog site or ebook as long as this entire article, copyright notice, links and the resource box are unchanged.

9 Ways to Keep Your Online Identity Secure

2007-09-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

In a world where you can do virtually everything online, one has to wonder where all the information is going, and how it is being protected. High speed Internet access and devices like Blackberry's give us constant access to the Internet, and therefore, the ability to exchange information via the World Wide Web. But with this convenience also comes a price.

Local and national news stations run stories frequently about hackers that have corrupted someone's database leaving millions of facing the possibility of identity theft. How do you go about protecting your identity when you're online? And, is it really safe to do business online?

#1- Install a firewall on your computer. A firewall is software that installs on your computer to prevent unauthorized access to your computer. Without a firewall in place, you become exposed to hackers while surfing the Internet or simply having your computer connected to the Internet. There are many available, both free and paid, stand-alone or part of a package.

#2 - Use anti-virus software to avoid contracting a virus which can monitor your computer habits. Remember, anti-virus software is usually an annual subscription, don't let your subscription expire.

#3 - Don't use the same password for all of your online accounts. It can seem tempting to keep them all the same just for the sake of simplicity, but if you do, and a hacker gains access to your desktop, you may find that they are able to also gain access to all of your personal accounts.

#4 - Use spam filters in your email. Most hosted email solutions now have anti-spam solutions. If they offer it, use it!

#5 - Avoid Email Scams. - Different than spam, email scams use social engineered methods to convince you to trust the sender. Often these scams talk about large sums of money that need to be deposited in your bank account. If you respond, you will begin emailing with a live person, maybe for months, that will work to gain your trust and then steal your money through gaining access to your bank account.

#6 - Don't ever click links in emails from senders you do not know; this is one of the easiest ways for hackers to gain access to your information.

#7 - Make sure websites you visit are secure. These are easily distinguishable just by glancing at the toolbar on your browser. A URL that begins with 'Https' indicates a secured and encrypted site.

#8 - Beware of phishing. Phishing emails are those that look like emails from reputable sites like PayPal, eBay and even your bank, but are designed specifically to steal your identity. The hope is that you will read the email, panic at its information and click on a link within to verify your account details. The website you visit appears as being from the vendor and you are asked to enter your personal information to verify your account. Once you do this, you will find your account at a zero balance within days. One way to avoidphishing is to avoid clicking the embedded link in the email and instead type in the organizations official URL in your browser and login on the official page.

#9 - Watch out for misdirected urls. When you type in a misspelled URL, you can be redirected to a bogus website, although it looks authentic. Often you are asked tologin with your legitimate credentials, which are captured by the bogus site. Then you are often given an error notice that the site cannot process your request and to return at a later date. This buys time for the criminals to take your stolen credentials, visit the legitimate site, and drain your bank account.

Keeping your identity safe online takes work and persistence, but it's worth it. The only certainty when dealing with identity theft is that the battle will never end. As the hackers become savvier, the solutions will become more high-tech and you will need to stay on top of what's current. Common sense plays a large role in keeping you and your family safe from online identity thieves.

How to Use your Autoresponder for Maximum Profits

2007-09-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

In order to maximize the profits you receive from your internet marketing it is important to automate as much of your internet marketing business as possible and autoresponders are one of your main tools in doing so. In this article we discuss how you can best use your autoresponder to maximize profits.

Maximize Profits by Using your Autoresponder to Create an Opt In List

One of the first ways you should use your autoresponder to maximize profits is by creating an opt-in list. Create an opt-in page on your website with a form where people can fill in their name and email address and then send this information through to your autoresponder. As soon as people have sent in the form they should get a request to confirm their subscription and then give something in exchange for their email address. Start immediately to send them information either through running an autoresponder course or starting to send them your newsletter. Using an autoresponder to create an opt-in list means that you will be able to increase the exposure people have to your products and make them more likely to buy from you.

Maximize Profits by Running an Autoresponder Course

Your autoresponder can also be used to maximize profits by running an autoresponder course. The purpose of the course should be to give practical information through which you can sell your products. By using autoresponder courses to maximize profits you are not only ensuring that people stay on your opt-in list to get the latest information or the next part of the course but you also increase their exposure to your products.

Maximize Profits by Improving Customer Service with an Autoresponder

Autoresponders are also great for improving your customer service and the more people like your company and the better customer service you offer, the more likely people will be to buy your products. Create an FAQ email that can be sent out via your autoresponder when people have questions they need answered so that they can get an immediate reply to commonly asked questions.

Maximize Profits by Sending Product Descriptions through your Autoresponder

Another way you can maximize your profits using an autoresponder is to send people product descriptions and specifications using your autoresponder. Give people an option to order more details on any of your products via your autoresponder and so make more sales.

Maximize Profits by Allowing People to Order Information through your Autoresponder

If you have lots of content and articles on your website then allow people to request that this information gets sent to them through your autoresponder. Have copies of your articles and content programmed into your autoresponder to be sent out to people when they request it. Also constantly update the information you have on your website and in your autoresponder so that people keep coming back to find more. Allow people to send your articles to others after they have received them in your autoresponder provided that they keep it as is so that more people will visit your website.

In conclusion, autoresponders are a great way to automate your internet marketing business and maximize your profits. You can use your autoresponder to create an opt-in list, send out autoresponder courses, provide additional information via autoresponder, answer frequently asked questions, and get the content on your website emailed to them. All of these methods increase the exposure the client gets to your company or improves their perception of your company and so maximizes your profits from each customer.

Make More Money Online - How to Create Effective Ads

2007-09-20T04:39:00.000-07:00

If you wanted to make more money online, you will have to have your own online business. No matter what kind of business it is, you may consider to use Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing or any other kind of advertising methods to help you promote your business. Therefore, you must know how you can write an effective ads before you can capture more business online.

As you know, more and more people are getting online, and they wanted to make money online. Small business owners are increasing drastically. And this includes bloggers as well. Since they are managing small business, they don't have much budget to run advertising campaign. And if they run an advertising campaign, they will have to make sure that it will be a hit! So I'm going to discuss with you how you can create an effective ads.

1. This is the most basic, and same with every money making concept. You will need to identify the reason and the goals of your advertising campaign. So you see, it is the same as the Millionaire Mindset you will need if you want to be a Millionaire. You may want to get more traffic to your site, and hence more sales. And your goals can be attracting 10,000 visitors to your site after one month. There are many reasons and goals, just define yours.

2. Look for the most suitable sites for your ads. Of course, if you want to use PPC campaign like Google Adwords, then your ads will appear on many sites that are relevant. So just assume that you would like to set up a banner ads now. The things you should do is to look for a site, or a few, that is the best for your target market. For example, if you are selling weight loss pill, then you may consider to advertise on a site that talks about weight loss only. If you have more than one product, then you should consider on a site that has a larger category of audience.

3. The content of your ads are very important. An effective ads content can bring a lot more visitors than the one that has low quality. You should write something eye-catchy and call to action phrases. Write benefits of your product or service and not features. Your ads must have something that is different from your competitors, just think of what makes your ads so special that it could attract more visitors than other ads. As for the description on your product or service, the more detail your ads, the better filter the ads will be. For example, when you write some description like "make money", your targeted visitors will be large, it is not concentrated. You may get a lot of clicks, but less quality. But if your description sounds like "make money using blogs" then the click through rate of your ads may be less, but more quality. Therefore, the a detailed ads will also work as a good filter. It is up to you to choose between quality or quantity. The above are just examples.

4. And lastly, if you want to run your ads campaign, be sure to create a few more different ads, and keep switching them. For example, if you are using Google Adwords, then you may create at least two ads, and advertise them both. Then change the ads with lower click through or conversion, change it to be better. Use the better ads as standard and keep changing the one with less quality.

With all the tips here, I believe you can now create a better and effective ads. So now you can capture more traffic and your conversion will increase. To Your Success.

What is Link Exchange?

2007-09-18T22:20:00.000-07:00

Link exchanges have been used by webmasters for years as a means of direct marketing. Recently, this practice has gained more popularity among webmasters due to the fact search engines prefer websites that have many inbound links, thus improving positions in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). To the search engines, this is an accurate means of determining the importance of websites. This practice by the search engines to rank websites has helped lead to the popularity of linked-based search engines, like Google. Thus, link exchange software and services have become popular.

There are various ways to initiate a link exchange with another website. The primary way of beginning a link exchange is to email another webmaster and ask to exchange links. Another way to find websites looking to exchange links is to visit webmaster discussion boards. These websites might have link exchange forums or link exchange directories where webmasters can request link exchanges from a specific category or have open requests to allow any website to exchange a link.

The basics of the link exchange
If this is all a bit foreign to you, let's start with the basics: There are two kinds of links: "outbound" links and "inbound" links. Outbound links are links on your site that point to other websites. Inbound links point from outside sites to specific pages within your site. Therefore, as you can see, any specific link is both outbound and inbound, depending on your point of view. A link on your site - yoursite - pointing to our site - othersite - is outbound for you, and inbound for us.

Link Exchange Increases PageRank
Google's PageRank is an important measure of the popularity of each web page. The higher your site's PageRank, the better your site will rank in Google's search results. The more high quality links you have pointing to your site, the higher its PageRank will climb.

Link Exchange Increases Link Popularity
The number and quality of websites that link to your website (link popularity) is one of the most important factors that help all search engines (not only Google) to determine your site's relevance for a search phrase. Exchanging reciprocal links with other websites has proven to be an extremely effective solution for webmasters seeking to improve their search engine rankings.

Benefits
* increases your search engine ranking dramatically.
* helps to get a link to your site on similar sites.
* finds sites that are linking to your competition.
* automates your email contact with other sites.
* generates and maintains your links page.
* automatically checks partner sites to ensure they are maintaining their link to your site.
* imports your current links pages.

Download New 3 cloumn Blogger Template

2007-09-18T07:04:00.000-07:00

How to install your template
Step 1: Click on Download Link

Step 2: Goto Edit template section of your layout tab

Step 3: Upload it from the place where you saved it.

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When Others Do not Approve of your Blog

2007-09-11T12:35:00.001-07:00

Regardless of the topic of a blog, all bloggers face the potential for situations in which others do not approve of their blog. Although this type of reaction is popular with blogs focused on political or controversial issues, bloggers who maintain a personal blog may also face disapproval from those who do not approve of the bloggers choices in life. This article will discuss subjects such as dealing with negative comments on a blog, dealing with criticism from friends and family members and will touch upon situations in which blogging can cause legal problems for the blogger.

Dealing with Negative Comments on Your Blog

Negative comments posted on a blog are one of the most common forms of disapproval a blog may receive. These comments may be posted in response to a specific blog posting or may be posted as an objection to the blog in general. These negative comments may be very troubling to the blogger but fortunately there are some methods for dealing with these comments.

Bloggers who are concerned that negative comments may influence other blog readers have a few options for dealing with these negative comments. One way to do this is to set the blog to not allow comments. This will effectively eliminate the comments but it will also eliminate comments from supporters of the blog as well. Another option a blogger has is to simply delete the negative comments as he finds them. This is not a very effective method because other readers may have time to read the comments before they are deleted. Bloggers who are online often and are not concerned about negative comments appearing on the blog for a short period of time may utilize this method. Another method of dealing with negative comments includes rebutting these comments on the blog. Finally, bloggers often have the opportunity to ban visitors who are leaving negative comments from making future comments.

Dealing with Criticism from Friends and Family Members

Bloggers may also face criticism from friends and family members for the content of their blogs. Friends and family members may not use the comment section to express their disapproval but may express their concerns directly to the blogger in person, via telephone or via email. This can be a difficult situation for bloggers because they may be torn between maintaining the blog according to their vision and keeping their friends and family happy. In many cases friends and family members may object to a blog because they believe it can be potentially harmful to the blogger or because they are concerned about how the blog will reflect on them. In these delicate situations the blogger has the option to either delete or modify the blog or to speak to the friends and family members to explain his feelings without making changes to the blog.

When Blogging can Cause Legal Problems

Bloggers should be aware there are some situations in which their blog can cause legal problems. Making statements about another person which are untrue and defamatory can result in the subject of the blog seeking retribution for libel. Other blog postings can also be found to be illegal for a wide variety of other reasons. Bloggers may assume freedom of speech laws protect them fully but there may be situations in which the statements in a blog are not protected under freedom of speech laws and the blogger faces legal ramifications for his postings. Blogging which violates the copyright laws of another can also cause legal problems.

One-way Links, Reciprocal Links, Three-way Links: What Works Best?

2007-09-07T00:43:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of rumors about one-way links, reciprocal links and three-way links on the Internet. Which of these links work best for your business and which links do you need to get higher search engine rankings?

What are one-way links?

A one way link is a simple link from one website to the other. For example, if you link to http://finance.yahoo.com/ and that page doesn't link back to your website then it's a one-way link from your site to their site.

What are reciprocal links?

A link is a reciprocal link if you link to a website and that website links back to your website. You send visitors to the other site and the other website sends visitors back to you.

That makes sense because all visitors leave a website sooner or later. You can send your visitors back to search engines or you can send them to affiliates websites that send you traffic in return.

What are three-way links?

Some webmasters believe that reciprocal links don't help web pages to get higher search engine rankings. That's why they invented three way links: Website A links to website B, website B links to website C, website C links to website A.

Which links will help you to get higher search engine rankings?

Good inbound links will help you to get higher search engine rankings. None of the link types above is worth more than the other.

It's important that the links to your website are from related sites and on-topic. If a reciprocal link is on a low quality page with links to every Tom, Dick and Harry then it won't count much. However, that's also true if the same page carries a one-way link or a three-way link.

It doesn't matter if a link is one-way, reciprocal or three-way. It does matter if a link is on a related website. Links from high quality websites will help your rankings, links from garbage sites won't.

If you want to improve your search engine rankings, try to get links from web pages that have something to do with your site. Link buildings tools can help you to find these sites.

Can Online Videos Drive Targeted Traffic to My Web Site?

2007-09-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

Even before Google purchased YouTube for a whopping $1.6 billion, the 20-month old YouTube was doing well on its own with millions of video views per day. YouTube holds millions of short video clips on their website, produced by both amateurs and professionals. How can the YouTube traffic translate into your web site's traffic and actually help in promotion or sales?

Amateur publishers upload their videos for fun, fame or notoriety, while professional publishers use these videos to drive traffic to their web sites, sell services, advertise products, attract new customers and make sales. When you browse videos of amateurs and professional publishers on YouTube, you are actually viewing along with 10 million users. Many web marketers are taking advantage of the high YouTube traffic for the sake of their own marketing goals and objectives. How do they do this?

Since YouTube is a video hosting website that allows free uploads of short clips and videos, virtually anyone can publish their own videos. You can measure the number of times your video was viewed, how many clickthroughs were generated that drove to your website and how many visitors converted into subscribers or buyers. The YouTube traffic from your video leads the viewers to your web site and thus allowing them to check out your products or services.

As simple as this process may sound, it is important to understand the nature of the environment wherein your videos will be distributed. While you can always count on YouTube traffic to divert visitors to your web site, only a small percentage of viewers will "accidentally" find your video. As such, it is best that you follow certain optimization techniques for your videos so that tens of millions of people can find your video within YouTube.

YouTube traffic, plus proper optimization of your videos, increases the chances of your short clips and videos to be more visible within the YouTube website and being found easily through the search engines of other online communities. As YouTube is a community-oriented website, it allows viewers to vote, share, rate and distribute videos they like the most. Meaning, the larger your video's audience becomes, the more traffic your website receives.

If you want to learn how YouTube traffic can help your website increase popularity and clients, master optimization techniques and implement these tricks into your marketing campaign, then you may want to check out various YouTube related Traffic sites online.

Suicide in Cyberspace -Your Outward Links Can Kill Your Rankings

2007-08-31T03:01:00.001-07:00

Link building strategies have, for most people for a long time, revolved around reciprocal link exchanges. Whilst most people understand that links are important, they generally don't understand why this is so. In a nutshell, a link to your site has traditionally been accepted by Search Engines as a vote for your site. A link from a topic or theme-related site to yours is better than a link from a site having a completely different topic. An important site's link to yours carries more weight - for example from The Open Directory, or Yahoo Directory. All pretty straightforward...

BUT... the rules have changed... significantly! All the thinking webmasters worked diligently to build links - willy-nilly - in order to subvert the search engine rankings and gain an advantage to themselves at the expense of everyone else. For a long time, there have been mutterings about this, and comments from Google staffers about possible penalties from linking to "bad neighbourhoods'" and - heaven forbids it - buying links! Google et al simply don't approve of willy-nilly link-building schemes, and have recently tightened the screws a bit more, in two notable ways...

Bad Links

Some links are bad... for example, if you are a car sales company and you've got dozens of completely irrelevant links to international hotel sites... yeah, YOU know the ones! in Prague, Munich, Shanghai etc! That's a BAD neighbourhood over there! That IS going to put a world of hurt on you! And as for the Free For All link sites, web rings, and 3 way link schemes... that's just suicide in cyberspace! Why? Coz its a blatant and completely indefensible attempt at cheating the system!

Reciprocal Links - Almost a Waste of Effort

Reciprocal links are still of some value, providing the link titles are explicit, and if the page they link to you from has a higher Page Rank than the page from which you link to them. The concept of a link to you being a vote for you, and being added to your site's Total Vote Count has a flip side. A link from you to someone else essentially deducts one vote from your total vote count... meaning its value is minimal when compared to a 1-way incoming back-link!

1-way Outward Links Are Toxic

Ok, lets assume you are a service provider, maybe a health clinic, and you deal with hospitals, other doctors, specialists, nurses, laboratories. So, as a benefit to your visitors, you place direct links to their web resources on your links page. Is that clever?

Most certainly it is NOT! Transfusion time, because you'll be haemorrhaging Page Rank with nothing in return! Do it, but be smart about it, because there is NOTHING to be gained (by you) from linking to any site that does not link back. So make sure your links include the "nofollow" attribute that tells SE's that the link is NOT a vote by your site for that site!

Link Content Is Mission Critical

This is mission critical because Google and other have decided that they can't trust you to be honest about your site! Basically, it seems like there are two web tribes - those who know not so much about how things work, and those who know more than they should. There should also be a flourishing third tribe, who just build great sites with lots of terrific content that automatically ranks highly - but nobody's seen nuthin' from those guys for ages!

The tribe who know more than they should ruthlessly manipulate every available loophole to dominate search engine rankings, at the expense of those who have yet to read SEO For Dummies. Therefore, Google decided that its essential that there is some external correlation between what YOU say your site is about, and what OTHER people say your site is about... This is done by analysing the words in the Link Title on all links pointing to your site. Bottom line here is - if a keyword phrases does NOT appear on links to your site, you ain't gonna rank for that phrase!

For many established sites, this is the main reason they might have experienced a noticeable decline in rankings in the last few months. Most older sites will have a majority of incoming links based on their business name, and NOT on their activities / products / services / location etc. To use the common "widgets" analogy - if you are selling "widgets" and all your incoming link Titles have your only business name e.g. Smiths Manufacturing Co Ltd, its now very difficult for you to rank for "widgets"!

Backlink analysis reveals this shortcoming rather quickly and, lucky for you, it is possible to remedy this by building 1-way incoming back-links using multiple Title / Description combinations that contain a good spread of relevant keywords. It does require some keyword research, and it is tedious - but if you don't do it, you are certainly not going forwards! But
your competitors might be...

Easy To Build Website Builder.

2007-08-31T02:58:00.000-07:00

How about building your own site' Here is the site with a lot of features where you can design your site with ease and short steps. It's very helpful especially for those who have just started or doing it for the first time. The best feature of site is its support to the customer to make them easy going in creating their site efficiently. To ensure this they provide Site Builder Video Tutorials, E-MAIL SETUP TUTORIALS, CPANEL TUTORIALS, FRONTPAGE TUTORIALS.
The site provider allows you to try the site for free here you can test all features offered by site builder. The trial site will be active during 30 days. During this time you will be able to load your trial site to your real hosting account, if you will decide to order the hosting service. Easy-To-Build will refund your hosting fees at anytime during the first 30 days, no questions asked. Give a try and if you are not happy, they will give you your money back.
During this trial version you can manage all advanced parameters of the site, Email system, Statistics, Sub domains, FTP access, Databases, Password Protect Directories, forums, chats, counters, shopping carts and much more... on the site at demo of web based Control Panel i.e, Cpanel.
Easy-To-Build is professional web hosting service, so you can use any web site builder software. Good example of popular and compatible web design software is: Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver. Unfortunately they are expensive. So they offer free web design software NVU. You can download it and use for free.
For the beginner, they offer a simple, template-based builder that is easy to use and fully customizable. For the expert, they are compatible with all major web publishing tools, offer free advances scripts and a wide array of resources to enhance your website.
This information has been brought to you Easy-To-Build.com, the US leading web hosting company specialising in the web hosting service. If you wish to discuss any of the above issues in more detail, do not hesitate to contact dk@avahost.net

How To Ensure Targeted Traffic To Your Website

2007-08-21T03:13:00.000-07:00

Free Directory Submission Gets You Tons Of Quality - 1 Way Links

2007-08-21T03:09:00.001-07:00

As the search engines are evolving each and every day, it's getting harder and harder to get top search engine rankings.

The search engines now, highly favor, websites that have a large number of quality, one way links pointing to them. Because of this, it's absolutely critical that we consistently try to get other websites to link to us, WITHOUT us linking back to them.

Yes, reciprocal linking is becoming less and less valuable. Submitting your website to website directories is an excellent way to get, quality, 1 way links pointing to your websites. You see, many of the website directories online have a high amount of page rank and have been online for several years.

These are 2 of the most important criteria for determining what a good link is, vs what a bad link is. These two criteria are:

The age of the website linking to you
The Page Rank of the website linking to you
With that said, many of these directories have both a high Page Rank AND are old websites, giving them more authority and power in the search engines.

Not only that, but there are literally thousands of website directories on the internet that are absolutely free for you to submit your website to! While it does take time to find these directories and then manually fill out all of the required criteria to submit your website, it is an excellent way to help increase your search engine rankings.

There are some good website directory submission software products on the market. The best of which is a product called Directory Submitter created by Brad Callen. Esentially you simply enter your website details into the software program 1 time, and then click on any of the 1600+ website directories in the software and it wil automatically fill in all of the submission criteria for you. Click the submit button and then your site has been instantly added to the website directory.

Affiliate Marketing How to Make it Successful

2007-08-18T22:50:00.000-07:00

The internet is all about connections and tying data together. In the beginning, this mostly meant providing references to cited papers, and scientific data. However, in a world that's increasingly content and marketing driven, this interconnectivity is a way to make money.

The first truly successful affiliate program was run Amazon. Amazon set up a system where a person linking to the Amazon listing for a book (and later nearly anything Amazon sells) got a small payment accrued if someone linked to the book. A small number of people started making a modest income at it, then book review sites started doing it, and generating a significant cash flow, and then it simply exploded. This, of course, drove traffic to Amazon, the likes of which had never been seen before, and the internet marketing boom was on.

For your internet marketing business, an affiliate program can work, whether you're the vendor, or the affiliate. It all depends on your business model; we'll discuss the affiliate side first.

Affiliates get paid for being a trusted source of opinion or information on a given product, topic or subject category. Bluntly, an affiliate only does the vendor good if they can generate traffic on their site, and that traffic needs to actually click through on the links to the vendors; affiliates need to provide strong content first and foremost, to get people to their sites.

That content has to be more than search engine optimized drivel; after all, a Google indexing spider never bought anything, and this is where a lot of affiliates fall down. Make sure you have content, that that content is updated, and that it's updated regularly.

Whether or not it's a good idea for an affiliate page to use a squeeze page (a front end where, to get at the content, someone has to give a name and email address) is open to some debate; a lot of people are growing tired of spam storms, and are getting more and more cautious about entering that data into landing pages, no matter how tempting the content might be.

From a vendor's perspective, affiliate programs make a lot of sense. Basically you're only paying someone if the traffic actually buys something; this is a darned sight better than pay-per-thousand-impressions, and somewhat better than Pay Per Click advertising.

However, an affiliate program is an adjunct to a multi-phase marketing plan, not a replacement for one. Do make sure you check your affiliates pages regularly; even small changes in indexing and sorting can turn an affiliated page into nothing, and you do want to make sure your affiliates are presenting you in a positive light.
Author: Derek Vanderpool

How to Pick a Paypal Scam Email

2007-08-18T22:48:00.000-07:00

Ever since I started encouraging people to take out Paypal subscriptions to support my ezine, I've had lots of questions along the lines of "Can Paypal be trusted?" and "How do I know that they are not going to empty my account?"

Well, the simple answer to these questions is that Paypal are the biggest and the best in online eCommerce, and as far as I know they are completely trustworthy. For the same reason though, they are constantly being targetted by scammers worldwide, who will email you, pretending to be representatives of Paypal.

I get one to two Paypal scam emails per day, so if you haven't received any yet, you've been lucky. You can't avoid getting them. The trick is to recognise them as you receive them, and consign them without hesitation to the virtual dustbin.

Let me give you a simple four-point checklist by which you can pick the scam emails, and then I'm going to show you a video where I actually open a few scam emails to illustrate the same points.

Here's Father Dave's checklist:

Does the email come from Paypal.com? If so, in my case, it's a scam email. I'm in Australia, so if I get a genuine communication from Paypal it will be from Paypal.com.au. If you're in Brittain it will be from Paypal.com.uk, etc. This is no help if you're based in the US but you get the idea.

The subject lines have a familiar ring. Admittedly, this assumes that you've seen Paypal scam emails before, but believe me, once you've seen a dozen, you've seen them all! 'Flagged Account' is a favourite subject line. 'Urgent Security Measures' is another. 'A new email has been added to your account' is a third. After a while, you can pick them.

The email does not address you by name. Even if the first two criteria aren't much help to you, this is an absolutely sure-fire indicator. When Paypal write to you they always address you by name. When scammers write to you they don't use your name because they don't know it. But they want to know it, or more particualrly your account details.

The link does not take you to Paypal.com. This is of course the crucial difference.
If you follow the link in the scam email, you'll be taken to a site that has been made up to look like the Paypal site, but is entirely designed to prize your account details from you! Sometimes they use html code to create a linking text in the email that contains a genuine Paypal URL! This is very sneaky! You can always check the real URL in the status bar
(if you're not sure what I'm talking about here, see the video).
The bottom line is that, if you think you have received an email from the real Paypal, go to your account independantly of the possible-scam email and see if there are any messages attached to your account. The real Paypal will do this.

If, after finding no notices attached to your account, you still feel it might be a genuine email, contact Paypal yourself! You email them. They'll tell you if the email was genuine.Author: Dave Smith

The Benefits of Internet Marketing

2007-08-14T04:29:00.000-07:00

Internet marketing is exactly what it says, marketing that is done over the internet. Internet marketing and website promotion have many benefits, the principal one being that anything that is published on the internet has the whole world as a potential audience. It is also a relatively cheap way of driving traffic to your website and gaining more sales and boosting your income.

There are several different types of internet marketing that you can use and one of the most popular is by having a lot of content on your website that is SEO rich. SEO stands for search engine optimisation and it is a method of using keywords in your text so that it is highly ranked when someone puts them into a search engine.

Internet marketing and the relevance of SEO

If you have any product or service that you are selling, you need to let people know about it. There is no point in having a website that has no one visiting it, so you need a way to get people there. This is where search engine optimisation (SEO) becomes so useful to you.

When a person decides to search on the internet for anything they will type what they are looking for into a search engine. They will then usually click into a website that is within the first 3 pages of rankings. This is because a person assumes the higher the Google ranking (if that is the search engine they are using), the more relevant to their search the website will be.

A good ranking is usually down to good SEO. You can check that your website has good SEO and keyword density by using SEO tools to measure the percentage of times your keywords occur during the text. A good keyword percentage is 2-3% in order for a search engine to rank your website highly.

The rise of Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is growing daily and more and more people are using the internet as their first source for information. This is something that any business should realise and make the most of by looking at ways to improve their internet marketing.

256m people visited a search engine in December 2006, this represents 81% of global internet users. [Source: Nielsen/NetRatings, March 2007]

In addition to the clever use of SEO, one way links within articles are another great way of increasing your traffic. This is done by submitting articles related to your product or service and having a link that directly sends the reader to your website. If you want to get your business noticed then use internet marketing and see how it can improve your sales.

Hot Secrets Revealed : Things No Website Designer Or Web Hosting Provider Would Tell You

2007-08-14T04:10:00.000-07:00

Web-hosting and designing the apt website for your business can be quite a daunting task for the uninitiated. Notwithstanding the jargon and the fact that most of the technical nitty-gritty would sound like a death knell to you, it is important and is something that your online or offline venture cannot do without. When it comes to website designing and hosting, there are a few secrets that the industry tends to keep them under wraps. Not that it would eat up your bottom-lines but it might help you in making the most prudent decisions with regards to your small business web design and hosting requirements.
We have listed out a few things to keep in mind for the non-technical YOU. The more you pay heed, the better your decision is going to be.

• Read the terms and conditions of your web hosting provider and ensure that you know what you are getting for your money.

• Choose a plan that is appropriate for you. Some web hosting providers lure you into believing that they provide you with "Unlimited bandwidth". No one can provide with Unlimited "disk space" and "bandwidth" just because it is a saturated market out there amongst the web hosting providers and there is no one in the world to be able to provide you with the same. It is a marketing gimmick and it helps if you are aware of this fact. What is required here is your acuity and decision making skills - You ought to know approximately how much traffic your website must be getting to determine the bandwidth and the disk space. The hosting providers can manage to con you into believing that you have access to "Unlimited" Bandwidth and disk space because they know that most small business owners and webmasters do not need a lot of these parameters and hence they get to improvise.

• Please do ensure that you know your web-hosting provider's policy with regards to increasing your bandwidth requirements if you envision your web site's traffic. Higher number of hits on your website would mean more bandwidth requirements. Just keep track of the surges in traffic and ensure that your provider gives you the flexibility of increasing the band-width as and when required. Also, pay special attention if you intend to include videos, blogs and mp3 content on your site. You need to make a lot more space available for all that content and you have to think about all this when you talk to your web-hosting provider.

• Does your hosting provider have a range of hosting services - ranging from shared common hosting to Dedicated servers or virtual servers' Does your service provider also provide you with other relevant products like email, traffic boosters, blogs, photo sharing utilities and a whole lot of things depending on your unique requirements'

Building a website isn't as easy as it was earlier. Its difficulty level has now evolved along with the innate complexity of the Internet itself and your success is now attributed to prudent and acute decisions that you ought to make while considering your Internet Strategy for your offline or online business.

The Future of Search Lies With Content Syndication and RSS

2007-08-08T10:15:00.000-07:00

In an interview about the future of search and outdated SEO methods, Matt Cutts of Google said it is useless doing traditional SEO on a site unless you also have enough good content and the reputation in your field to be a challenger.

Building a reputation by third party endorsement is one of the most basic PR strategies and now it has to be done online. How can this be achieved? Provide content that will encourage relevant and authoritative websites to link to you.

One of the tools that helps a business build content and establish a reputation is Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Adding RSS feeds to your web content gives you the opportunity to distribute your news across the Internet, where it can be seen by new audiences and related websites.

Adoption of RSS as a preferred method of receiving content is growing by leaps and bounds and since the personalized pages of sites such as MyYahoo, My MSN, Google and Earthlink have incorporated RSS readers into the page, use of RSS has shot up.

Most PR and marketing people are not technically trained – they are not web designers or programmers. But the Web 2.0 tools now available can overcome this hurdle. 50 million Americans go online to get their news, says the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
"Distributing your news content on the Internet offers new marketing and PR opportunities," says Sally Falkow, President of PRESSfeed, a content syndication and RSS feed service created specifically for marketing and PR purposes. “There are many untapped opportunities in online news distribution and it's vital for PR, marketing and SEO professionals to be able to RSS enable their news content.”

A year ago Forrester Research urged companies to RSS enable their press releases. A recent survey from Jupiter Research shows that 30 percent of the companies implementing RSS are doing so because of customer demand. Making your content available in an RSS feed is no longer something you should be thinking about – it’s something your customers want. It will raise your online visibility, build your reputation and increase your search rankings.
Author: Jayden Adams

Making Money On the Internet With Video Marketing

2007-08-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

It may seem daunting to most people, but like it or not, video is becoming a huge part of the internet. Nowadays, if you're not making money on the internet, it may be because you're not using videos as one of your main marketing tools.

Technology is scary to a lot of people, not to mention, exposing oneself online in a video for the whole world to see. That's why so many people shy away from learning what it takes to market a business using video - either they figure it's too technical for them, or they want to maintain their privacy.

That's precisely why you should think about making money from the internet with video. It's the things that people don't want to do that you should be jumping on as a new opportunity for you. In the internet business world, it's where you find holes, and gaps, and things that people don't want to do that you can start making real money online.

Video is becoming more and more like the written word, and will soon have the same tagging capacity as you find in articles and blogs that are carefully sprinkled with effective keywords.

In that sense, if you are looking to make money on the internet, you can expect the search engines to send heaps of traffic your way if you have keyword packed videos.

Videos are very effective in teaching people how to do things, and can probably establish more trust from someone thinking about buying one of your products or services if they can see and hear you.

Furthermore, just like sharing information via social networking sites from blogs and articles, and other information sites on the net, videos also have their social networking services that allow you to share your videos with others in your niche.

If you think you're in the dark about technology and will never have a clue how to use it, or how to make money on the internet with video, then have no fear! Any good video creation or syndication service will offer easy-to-follow training for setting up your first, and subsequent videos.

Much like article writing, you're not done with your videos after you've created them. You have to submit them to video syndication sites to spread them around the net.

If you've been involved in manually submitting your articles to the various article directories, you will realize how time-consuming and tedious this can be, and how much worse you can expect it to be for submitting a video file!

Luckily, just like article submission services, there are video submission services that can save you loads of time on your video uploads!

If you really don't want to venture into the land of video marketing, you can always opt for an equally popular podcast, or audio cast, so that the whole world only hears you, but doesn't have to see you. You can start making money on the internet just as fast with an effective podcast that you submit the same way as videos.

Just think about the results you could achieve by combining article writing with video marketing, and podcasting! Most people are familiar with YouTube, so if you visit their website, you will be able to setup an account, create your video, and start making money on the internet faster than you ever imagined!

Don't be fooled by the all the technological jargon out there. If you know how to work a digital camera, have a movie feature on your camera, or have ever used a camcorder, then relax! You are most of the way there!

Making money on the internet can happen for you, and tackling your fears about technology and starting a video or podcast marketing campaign can make your dreams come true, especially now when it's still relatively new!

Author: Liane Bate

SEM Industry Consolidation – The Trojan Horse Is Deployed

2007-08-04T02:21:00.000-07:00

High Position Ltd has once again come under the spotlight due to their continuing success in organic search positioning; this time the bid to purchase the company has come from a leading Scandinavian company who specialise in complete IT solutions including marketing and hosting platforms. The bid has been turned down by the High Position management team, managing director Steve Dart released the following short statement: “High Position Ltd are flattered by the attention we are receiving from major players in the market, we feel that our ongoing success in search positioning and the rapid acquisition of corporate clients has made us the envy of SEM agencies worldwide, we expect to receive further interest from the industry as we progress our comprehensive corporate client base”.

The market speculation about consolidation in the search industry is gaining momentum especially after the recent acquisitions of two other leading SEM agencies, this particular bid is of interest as it shows once again that the growing UK search marketing industry is a lucrative and enviable market. The “quoted” Scandinavian company is looking to capture a share of this market and would be following the recognised strategy of other large organisations that are now targeting this industry sector.

Of course this consolidation will be driven by the larger companies looking mainly to strengthen their overall suite of marketing services or by adding value to an existing service where it is performing poorly, what is interesting here is that there is a desire for companies to want to move into the UK market using the acquisition of an SEM company as a ‘Trojan Horse’ for the UK market. There is evidence that existing Media companies servicing US markets are looking to use the digital path to get offline advertising services into the UK market, similarly hosting companies, networking and general IT companies are all eyeing up this market space so they can target the rapidly growing UK market from within.

Additionally an established European ‘quoted’ company has much to gain in PR by announcing its introduction to a growing and valuable UK market, an appreciable rise in share price will often accompany an announcement of a serious step into this space and if the purchase is for a well known and established purveyor of digital marketing services then it is likely to push added value rapidly for their shareholders and this is definitely a driver at present.

The interesting twist on this is that whilst traditional UK advertising agencies are slow to step into the UK SEM market the overseas companies hungry for a share are not, some of these will acquirers will undoubtedly be IT based but some will be general advertising companies. It is likely that by the time UK advertising leaders truly switch on to the fact that they currently cannot provide a complete digital experience for their clients the cherries in the industry will be owned by their overseas competitors and will lament the missed opportunities they had to step in first.

Software Outsourcing India is a Wise Decision

2007-08-04T02:20:00.000-07:00

If you’re interested in developing high quality web applications that are robust and cost effective its better to contact a software outsourcing company from India. India has emerged as a major hub for software outsourcing services. The business is growing at a healthy pace of 30%

Why Software outsourcing from India

India has a very large number of English speaking populations, which is more than in any other non English speaking country. Add to that the lower manpower cost. Both the factors make it attractive to hire Indian software professionals.

Governmant of India has taken a lot of initiative for the fast growth of software outsourcing to India. They are providing tax incentives to Software industry and also setup Special Economic Zones for IT and software industry. These zones have all the infrastructure and provides simple licensing services to the software outsourcing company of India to save unnecessary time and lesser paper work.

Software Outsourcing India can give you about 40% - 60 % of net savings and help you stay nimble in today's global economy that too at at un-imaginable speed. Being a distant customer, it would be a great idea if you get your custom application development a genuine cost. You can fetch great development benefits that too without the difficulties of managing it.

Apart form this Software outsourcing India helps in getting optimum quality work that includes high-end professionalism and security by the Indian software professionals. Software outsourcing India has helped businesses all across the world to get a good amount of work done at low cost and at the same time it has helped them to get the work done without having any tensions. Software outsourcing India also helps these businesses earn good amount of revenues as they provide the businesses with some of the best business strategies and business modules.

Take advantage of software outsourcing from India and relaxed. An established Indian software outsourcing company can provide you a quality work which can definitely prove a cost-effective business strategy for your dream business.
Author: Rashmi Saxena

Importance to Opt a Web Design Company

2007-08-04T02:17:00.000-07:00

To get a more fruitful business from your website it is important to get your website noticed. So don't compromise on your business website, contact an established web design company. An establish Website Development Company and Website Design Company always one step ahead of the competition. They offers a variety of best-in-class services from basic website design services to complete website development services.

For this the first critical step is selecting a website design company or a website development company that understands search engine optimization to use the internet to promote your business website. The search engines tends to change its indexing rules and behaviors tend frequently, so optimization techniques that work wonders one day might be completely ineffective one day. Even in this ever-changing atmosphere at least the relationship between search engine robots and website design will always remain constant.

Search engine robots are the automated programs that scan the text, read the tags and navigate the links present on a website and then index it according to it's fixed algorithm. So, plain and simple, ease of navigation and quality content are the key constants in the search engine optimization process. Complicated or complex website design may confuse the search engines robot, an action that is not desirable if you want a website that gets results.

Although you may have a complex website with exceptional design and features such as frames, Flash, java script, mouse-over links and graphics. You simply need to contact a website design company that understands how to intract with search engines with these features and get design the website in an optimal manner.

You can have a simple website design with a simple source code which is the easiest for the search engine robots to read. Ssearch engines attracts Hyperlinks, Text and particularly text links. But there are aspects of a website that could cause it to be slow loading, or can cause difficulty for the visitor to navigating the website. These barriers are the stumbling blocks for both search engine robots and human access. An expert website development company is always one step ahead of the competition and work around these complications making index processing a breeze, even for a website with special features.

An unprofessional website designers often don’t understand how to optimize a dynamic pages, flash designs, frames, mouse-over links, images, query strings, and image maps.

So, while considering a website design company or website development company, don’t settle for simple, boring designs, make sure that your chosen website design company ensures your chances of being indexed properly. Choose an expert webdesign design and development company who has the qualifications and experience needed to provide quality content, eye catching design and optimal results that will enhance your ranking, improve your conversion rate and produce exceptional website performance and at the same time increase your advantage over your competition in the search engines.

So, while considering a website design company, always choose an expert in the field of website development who has the adequate qualifications and experience can ensures your chances of being indexed properly, improve your conversion rate and produce exceptional website performance and can simultaneously provide quality content and eye catching design to intact with search engines.

Author: Rashmi Saxena

FAQs In Choosing A Content Management System (CMS)

2007-08-02T23:27:00.000-07:00

Content management system remains to be a big question mark to some web developers and web marketers. They are missing out an important factor in website development by being naïve to CMS. To help webmasters and web developers get the benefit of CMS, here are some of the frequently asked questions about CMS and their answers:

What is CMS'

CMS stands for Content Management System. This is a system that helps in maintaining and expanding website. It aims to make content and structure expansion easier.

What does CMS create'

Content management system stores data in a database. It makes pages only when a site visitor asks or searches for it. This is useful especially for websites that constantly updates their information. So when a site visitor asks for a specific page, the system will display the page being searched for. Some systems cache every new page and create a new one only when some changes are made.

Is CMS useful in publishing site on different platforms'

Content management system is very useful in ensuring your website appears at its best in different platforms. CMS allows you to create different templates that will be suitable to different platforms. This can be done without changing anything with the content.

Is CMS being used now'

There are several large organizations that are already using content management system. Most websites prefer to use CMS because of its promising features and benefits in terms of web content and structure maintenance and expansion.

What is the cost of CMS'

The cost varies depending on the supplier. Some may charge a large amount but includes training on its usage. Others are cheap as well. But be careful in choosing low fixed rate since most of the time the supplier doesn’t give extra technical support.

Will there be website restrictions if I use CMS'

Content management system breaks up the presentation and content by using templates. There are systems that restrict templating. But others don’t offer restrictions. There are also systems that impose restrictions on how the site is hosted. So when looking for a CMS, consider asking the supplier about the restrictions of the system.

Can I use my existing data base'

In choosing for CMS service, be sure that the system can be easily linked to your existing database. This makes working easier. Most websites have data stored in their own databases. Easy linking of the existing database with the system is a big relief for work.

Lifetime Commission From Online Affiliate Programs

2007-08-02T00:12:00.000-07:00

An online affiliate program adds value to your website. Signing up for an online affiliate programs can be very effective way of paying for web hosting charges, domain names, and the time it takes to keep an informational site updated. Now, purely informational website that doesn’t sell anything can generate outstanding revenue by adding recommendations to products and services via online affiliate programs.

Online Affiliate Programs with Lifetime Commission

Earning lifetime commission from affiliate programs is the most effective way of promoting any affiliate product. Lifetime commissions are very important because they mean that links you put out there today and get clicked on months from now will still pay you the commissions you deserve.

Merchants paying lifetime commissions offers membership products or services where you as an affiliate recommend those merchants. As your referred member upgrades their membership you get paid your affiliate commission.

Top Affiliate Programs paying Lifetime Commission

Some affiliate programs works in tiers which pays residual income for life. Following are some top affiliate programs that pays lifetime commission:

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Keyword Country: Keyword Country powers you with 4 Keyword Research tools that let you recognize most profitable niche keywords that exist on planet earth. Not only their affiliate programs offers 2-tier commission but also gives you chance to make lifetime commission.
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Search Engine Promotion Tools: New easy to use high end, professional grade, search engine submission, promotion & optimization tools that free up hours of your time each and every month! Their amazing affiliate program pays steady recurring income month after month.When you send them a new subscriber, not only will you receive a 40% commission when their first month of service, but again each and every month for as long as they stay with them.To top it off, they’ll pay you another 10% override for any affiliates that sign up under you. That’s right; this is a 2-Tier program which means you can even earn money on clients you’ve never even sent to our site!
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Real Estate Articles - PLR: Private Label Right membership website gets 50 fresh real estate articles a month with private label rights - Use these articles any way you want - There are No Restrictions!
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Five Pillar Affiliate Program: The Five Pillar Program is the affiliate program of SiteSell. They market a range of quality products to help online businesses. To ensure commissions are paid for the life of the customer, SiteSell uses lifetime cookies, an in-depth customer database and cross checking of customer details, making it one of the best tracked and most rewarding programs around.

The Five Pillar Program is two-tier and pays between 15% and 30% commissions on the first tier and, depending on how much your referrals earn, up to 20% on the second.
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Internet Marketing Center: Get a big share of the revenue pie! Derek Gehl pays his affiliates 60% of net profit. Derek offers wide range of courses.

Just as there are a number of products you can promote, there are a number of tools you can use to promote them - ranging from pre-written e-mail promotions, to pop-up and banner ads, to classified ads and product reviews.

How To Start With New Forum - Blog Site

2007-08-02T00:11:00.000-07:00

Creating a new discussion forum/blog looks lucrative to every one, the benefits being there is no scarcity of content for it until there are enough members to participate actively. Since the more specific answers were found on forums so there is shift of search engines results from web publication pages to discussion forums.

There is no headache of adding new article on your own once it boost up runs for over years without any assistance. Creating the forum for getting clicks on PPC ads can be great idea but you have to keep it secondary preference and try to become the authority on the topic, earning can be started at later stage. Sometimes such earning attempt gets failed due to non targeted traffic though the number of visitors is satisfying.

Competing between mushrooming forums sites

Easy and Free availability of PHP script have made forums creation job of hours this is what growing the number of peoples tempted to create such sites and hence the competition among them by distributing the online users, now you can expect success only if you create it on entirely different subject. And believe me if you do so success is one step ahead. For example if you want to start another web/design/seo/promotion forums without enough financial support your venture may doomed into failure, instead you can choose the topics like satellite channels discussion, cell phone price blog etc the way is much easier.

The forum can be created inside the subdirectory/subdomain as a separate section of your site like forum.nokia.com or purchase a new domain specially for forum, the later is recommended if you are serious.

The precious members of the forum

Forum has to be promoted by inviting the large number of people to become its member, moderator and administrator etc. in the beginning to promote the forums most of the message will be posted by its moderator and administrator group. Sometimes people post in their own forum with different user name or hire paid posters for initial take off.

You need to search for other people who may be willing to share some of their time with you to lure them you need to propose them premium membership like administrator and moderator and create an environment so that each member feels that they are integrated part of community and they have individual brand here. From some member of forum you may get some back links too.

To keep the member working on your forum you need to provide them features of better comfort and get rid of irritating ones. For example it must have auto login system to avoid logging each time. You can provide them wysiwyg editor with small toolbar. A quick reply box at the end is necessary. In the beginning to encourage users to post in your forum you can give them anonymous access which can be removed at later stage.

Designing and developing

Now come to the design and development part. Newly launched forum must be noticeably different from existing ones in layout and look, if you can create you own layout from scratch with personal touch and look that would be best to become respectable in the eyes of others webmasters, however creating a full featured secure forum is very difficult and time consuming task, and if you can’t then there are plenty of ready made free and paid software are available like bblog, vbulletin, invision etc.

Sometimes forums are subjected to kind of hacking with the loss of information in the database, these are mostly seen with free PHP scripts as many people use them and know their loop holes. For better security use software like; vbulletin by paying somewhere US $150. Looks and layout of these forums can be customized to fit you requirement by installing new themes or do small trick with the script.

Depending on the type of forum you have to keep a distance from graphic elements on you forum, for example if members are webmaster then they will only look for content and lots of GIF/Flash picture may drive them away.

SEO side of the forums

Its clear that many ready made forum software are highly search engine unfriendly because the software developer know little about search engine optimization. Page loads up slowly as everything is loaded from database. You can minimize these effect either by looking for forum software that automatically generate html page or do it manually. Look at the biggest webmaster forum webmasterworld.com which loads very fast almost like Google home page.

Keep Your Web Site Content Fresh For Great SEO

2007-08-01T03:26:00.000-07:00

In the World of billions of websites, it’s getting harder and harder to keep your website in the free search listings of major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The search engine algorithms are looking for fresh new content as part of their total evaluation of your website. So not only do you need tons of quality back links, a good website history, and continuous monthly traffic you need to update your content at least once a week to keep your site relevant.

How do I add fresh content to my site and make it usable to my visitors you ask. Keep your customers up to date with new products, product specials, and latest business news; highlight an employee of the month. Update your website home page with what you think is relevant that will keep you visitors interested as well ass feed the search engines fresh relevant content.

Make sure to optimize this content to target the keywords you are seeking to place high in the free search engine results with. Keeping your content fresh will create a habit of putting more effort into fine tuning your website which can only help you ROI in the long term.

Consider adding rss news feeds to your site, when you update your news, it will go out to your subscriber list as well as post fresh content to your site. There are lots of articles on adding RSS feed script to your website.

So what are you waiting for' Get creative and give you customer’s news they can use.

Integrate FeedBurner With Blogger

2007-08-01T03:25:00.000-07:00

I'm going to show you how to use FeedBurner with your blog in this short guide. First of all, here are some cool things that FeedBurner can do.

FeedBurner takes over your blog's feeds, enhances their functionality and gives you detailed statistics on your subscribers. You can add social bookmarks like Digg! to both your feed and your blog, offer e-mail subscriptions, show subscriber count on your blog and so on. You can even see what kind of feed readers your subscribers use, and what kind of bots (like Technorati search) visit your feed. And this is just a part of what they offer!

Once you signup at FeedBurner and configure it to your liking, you can integrate it fully with your blog hosted on Blogger. Let's start by changing AutoDiscovery URL. When you visit a site which has feed information between it's tags, all modern browsers display a little icon to indicate that. You will need to change it to point to your "burned" feed at FeedBurner instead of default one.

Start by opening your blog. Right click anywhere on it and choose "View Source". Find the following lines:

Select the whole block and copy it (not from here, but from your own source code). Once you do that, go to your blog's control panel and click Template>Edit HTML. Find the following line:

And simply replace it with all the lines you just copied from your source code. Now, change these 2 lines you just pasted:

Into a single line:

YOURFEEDNAME is the one you chose when adding your feed to FeedBurner. Congratulations - now when visitors click the feed icon at your blog, they will be taken to http://feeds.feedburner.com/YourFeedName.

Next, you might want to hide "Subscribe to posts (Atom)" link at the bottom of your blog, especially if you add subscription link on your sidebar. Simply go to "Edit HTML" window and add the bold line to the following code:

.feed-links {
display: none;
}

You might want to add FeedCount chicklet to your blog next to show off your subscriber number, or FeedFlare module to add all these social bookmarks I mentioned. If your feed has lots of subscribers, you can apply for FeedBurner's Ad Network and monetize your feed as well!

The Definitive Guide To Build Quality Inbound Links

2007-08-01T03:24:00.000-07:00

Every web site need a links rather lot of links to improve there link popularity which in turn leads to higher search engine ranking. Higher search engine rankling will drive more traffic and more sales and profit. Inbound links can be created by link exchange, buying links or making site so useful that other website owner should link it naturally. Links from similar theme based sites drive more relevant traffic which is interested in product and services you provide and also result into more sale conversion. There are various question while getting inbound links i.e. will link quality is important or quality' or What should be the theme of site giving inbound links and many more. We have made the following quality guidelines which must be followed while buying a link or getting inbound link by other means from other web sites.

# · First of all you should get One Way Link Try to avoid reciprocal if not possible you can go for three ways link.

# · Links must be from closely related or complementary websites to theme of your website. You should consider the theme of the whole site which is more important but if the website falls in broad match theme you can consider the theme of the pages from where you are getting inbound link.

# · You should not get more than one link from one domain.

# · The more outbound links a page the less value a link have. Please ensure that there are not more than 30 links on page from which you are getting inbound links.

# · Links should contain the target keyword or key phrase as a text hyperlink and must vary the link text.

# · Links should contain the target keyword or key phrase as a title tag on the text hyperlink.

# · Don get only link for home page you must have deep link to sub pages which are important on your site to make link building strategy more natural.

# · Links should be followed by a short description of the target website also containing related keywords.

# · You should make sufficient randomization in the anchor text and associated link description text so as to not have a set pattern of linking.

# · Staggered deployment of the links to avoid any search engine penalties no more than 30 every 4 weeks.

# · Link should not be from framed page or java scripts.

# · Links should not be through redirection script i.e jump.cgi , out.php it should be direct so that search can consider it as vote.

# · Links should not include a "nofollow" tag or any other robot tags.

# · Links should not be on Flash sites or pages.

# · Links should not be on a links page excluded by a robots tag.

# · All Links should not be on a site penalized or banned by Search Engines.

# · Links not from link farms or link exchange sites, FFA's, linking clubs example: or any free sites.

# · Links should not be from same IP - from sites with unique c-class IP addresses only.

# · Link should be from pages which are already indexed by search engines.

If you follow the above quality guidelines we ensure that your link building campaign give the maximum possible benefits to improve you link popularity and search engine ranking. Be sure that link building campaign should be spread over a time so that there should not no sudden surge in the incoming links count.

Why Server Logs Are Important Than Traffic Counters

2007-08-01T03:23:00.000-07:00

This article tries to explain why use server log files for traffic report instead of popular statistics counters. While everyone will agree that traffic report, visitor information and their query is extremely important for websites to run. For example what exactly users are looking for can be found more precisely. In case if you use service like overture and wordtracker then they may not display result specific to your site.

Statistics counters

Counter seems to be easy to use just create an account copy and paste the JavaScript into your pages and it’s done. You are ready to get users demographic and system information easily. But the down side is most of the time there is lack of detailed page access information by search engine bots and human. I was using a popular counter that wasn’t showing much about search engine crawling also using Google’s webmaster account it appears to be Google was visiting my site after 3~4 days. Which was inaccurate as the crawling frequency of search engines are so high to drive crazy the web server.

Benefits of server log files

Now look at the server log files which are bit difficult to understand. But once when get used to it it will definitely change the way you look at the search engines. Server log files are generated and updated when somebody tries to access the web pages from server. They are easy to use as well, just by FTP account you can download all the data starting from the beginning. The last lines of this document explain how to read log files.

When I was not using log files and completely dependent on counter for my traffic reports. I had impression that search engines are reluctant to crawl sites regularly and also my traffic bandwidth limit would be enough for my visitors. Now after looking at log files I was shocked that search engines are daily coming and downloading the files many. times per day. Also my agony with certain search engines were gone as they visiting my pages daily though they don’t index them.

You may argue that why can’t I use counter and log files together. Well to use counter on each pages you need to put a back link of counter service provider. Remember search engine love pages with enough content and comparatively smaller number of outbound links. By adding each new link in your pages you are decreasing the value of your partners back links kept in your pages. This is obvious when you understand the basic Page rank calculation formula.

The following lines explains how to read log files

203.145.159.44 - - [30/May/2007:03:37:24 -0400] "GET /indexhtml HTTP/1.1" 404 2294 example.com "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0" "-"

The above lines represent the single file access log here;

(203.145.159.44) - IP Address of visitor that may be human or search engine bot.
(- -) – The first dash will be replaced by login name and second dash will be replaced by full name of visitors but because of security reasons most of the ISP will hide it.
[30/May/2007:03:37:24 -0400] - Is obvious it’s the visit time and date the, last parameter is the GMT offset.
GET – Command for http request.
/indexhtml – File requested.
HTTP/1.1 - Protocol here http
404 – Status code returned by server.
2294 – File size in bytes.
Example.com – File residing under the domain.
Mozilla/5.0 – Name of browser or search engine bots for example for Google it is GoogleBot/1.2
Other parameters are system information.

Utilize Traffic Exchanges By Using Splash Pages

2007-08-01T03:21:00.000-07:00

When advertising in traffic exchanges, you have to remember that most surfers won't be interested in your site. All they want is that traffic credit they will get by waiting a short amount of time (15 to 30 seconds usually). You can, however, try and get them out of that "clicking zombie" state by using splash pages.

A splash page is used to capture the surfer's attention before they move on to the next site. Here are some guidelines to creating an effective splash page for traffic exchanges:
1) Write an attention-grabbing headline. It should clearly define what your site/product you want people to see is about. I advice against using cliché headlines like "Discover How You Can Fire Your Boss in 7 Days With This Guaranteed Money Making System™" - most people know already that it's usually an ad for yet another useless e-book. It's better to keep it short and simple.
2) Keep it short. Tell them what makes you different. A bulleted list might work well to outline the most important information that surfers will find interesting. If they will want to find more, they will have to take action.
3) Keep graphics to the minimum. A lot of traffic exchange users actually surf with graphics off - if they see nothing where a big image should be (a chart with text, for example), they will leave. Not to mention that a splash page must load quickly (remember, you only have 15 to 30 seconds - site load time included). If you absolutely have to add a big image, don't forget to write alternate text for it.
4) Keep it silent. Sure, an auto-playing video telling how awesome this product is, will get surfers' attention, but it almost always triggers a negative reaction. Traffic exchange users hate sites with sound! If you absolutely have to add a video or a record to your splash page, let the visitors decide whether they want to hear it or not. Consider the loading time as well. It won't be affected if video will be streamed only when visitor clicks the "play" button.
5) Add a "call to action". That's what visitors do after they read through your splash page: join your mailing list, visit your main site, join the program you promote through your affiliate link, and so on.
6) Track your splash page performance. Create several copies of the splash pages, with different headlines, colours and promotional text. Find out which combination generates most clicks on your links and concentrate on promoting that particular page.

Remember that there is no "best way" to design a splash page. Your best bet is creating something original and different from those advertisements we see every day.

How To Re-apply For An Adsense Account'

2007-08-01T03:18:00.000-07:00

Google follows strict policies for Adsense Publishers. If you violate any of those TOS then your account will be banned from Google Adsense. Once they ban your account it is very difficult or almost impossible to get your account back into action. Only if you have a complete proof that you haven't violated their rules there are a few chances to get your account back. Submit those stats and proof to them for consideration. If Google feels that you are correct you might get your account back.Once they disagree with your proof do not approach them again. According to Google TOS once your account is banned you can never re-apply for your lifetime. Even if you try to re-apply for an adsense account using different e-mail address you will be caught. Google has an excellent tracking system and you can never cheat them. Even if you re-apply with a new address or web-site you won't be approved. Google checks its banned publisher's database before approving any new accounts.So never try to cheat the Search King Google. They are the best in tracking and they will find you by any means.Still there is one way to "Re-Apply for an Adsense Account even if you have been already banned from them.”Remember Google only bans adsense publisher account and not their web-sites. One legal trick or method to re-apply your adsense account is to use your friend’s name.Consider you have a web-site like "www.yourdomainname.com" on which you have used your adsense ads. After your account has been disabled the first thing to do is try convincing Google that you have not violated their terms using suitable proof. If this doesn't work then go the other way.It's time take the help of your friend. Create a blogger account with his Google account and apply for adsense program in his name and in his address. Now Google will easily approve his account. Then get the permission from your friend to use his adsense publisher id in your website which is “www.yourdomainname.com". Now as per Google TOS you can use your adsense ads on any number of sites once your account is approved. So you again make money from adsense.But you will be getting the cheque in your friend's name. Make sure you have very good understanding with him and so you get your percent of income from him.If your friend has no web-site then no problem you can get all the money provided you explain everything to him and get his permission.That's it! You have successfully re-applied for Adsense Account. Make sure that you don't violate their terms again and get more problems for your friend.

How to fidelize users throughout online games

2007-07-31T09:20:00.000-07:00

Which are the questions every webmaster is asking himself everyday? How can I get new users? How can I make them come back to my site? How can I make them stay longer?

According to the last rumors, time spent on a site will become the real criterion to understand which are successful sites or not. Nilesen/NetRatings will begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites. The move by Nielsen/NetRatings comes as online video and new technologies increasingly make page views less meaningful. Very soon "time parameter" will be much more important than page views or unique visitors to award the most popular sites on web.

This new parameter will make necessary users to be entertained as longer as possible on the site. In this article, I'd like to suggest to webmasters one of the most convincing method to increase time spent on a site (and also make them constant users of the site).

The secret lies on contents since content is king: you should give users funny and high quality contents that will be able to involve users on the community of the site, of which he/she will become an important part.

Generally speaking, webmasters should try to give substance to their site: many webmasters take for granted that this is the way to follow, but looking at many online sites, everyone can understand that it is not so clear for everyone. There are thousands of sites without any kind of communicative target or aim, without coherence or essence.

Good webmasters know the great value of community tool used till now: newsletter, chat and forum are the mainly used tools to fidelize users. But now, the same goal can be achieved with less time and in a more effective way using new tools which are having a great develop in the last period.

And what is better than giving users the possibility to play, have fun and challenge many other people directly online?

Online games are extremely good contents to increase widely time spent on a site and, if they are multiplayer games, they are able to create a real community: users play, challenge each other, save their scores and climb charts. Daily online "rendezvous" will become a necessity for them.

There are many and many online games that can be inserted on a site, but today I'd like to suggest to every webmaster a high quality platform with a simple affiliation system, that allows everyone to display many different games on the site.

This affiliation program is offered by the online game site www.popyeah.com. With the program "Popyeah on your site", you could insert easily and freely (...very good!) all the archive of singleplayer and multiplayer games on your site. Popyeah online games are free, extremely funny, involving and easy to play: there are a hundred of online games divided into different categories - from Word Games to Board Games, from Arcade to Billiards.

Popyeah is a very good example of what I'm sayong above: users needs a gaming experience integrated into a wide and vivid community. They want to become part of a real community that plays, talks, has fun and meets throoughout the games.

On Popyeah, users can have their own players profile, they can insert their photos, search for other players, insert them to their friends list to follow on their favourite games, communicate through the chat, the personal blog and even through Skype. These advanced community features make Popyeah platform really suitable to every site that wants to offer real entertainment to users and build a strong community.

Thanks to this affiliation program, everything is available for those site that want to host new contents dedicated to online entertainment.

Browsing this page you can choose between the different available graphical options. Clicking on the link "Code", you will go to a page where you can set up some parameters: language, colours, other plaiyng options and then generate the code to insert into your site.

Such a simple system that allows webmaster to have an additional content with a strong impact to make your site a funny place to come and return and where users can spent their saper time enjoying themselves.

Affiliate Networks Explained – Webmasters Get Paid Today!

2007-07-31T09:19:00.000-07:00

An affiliate network is exactly what it sounds like, a network of affiliate programs. Affiliate networks work by having merchant’s signup and submit there commission offer which can come in the form of pay per sale, pay per lead or pay per click. Therefore other webmasters pay you to display there link or banner on your website. Once choosing the affiliate program that best fits your website tracking is then accomplished by having each affiliate given its own unique affiliate link. This affiliate link tracks when visitors to your website click to the merchant’s website. All you have to do is place this link or banner on your website in some prime real estate so it gets some attention.

Three different types of programs exist, the first of the three being pay per sale. Pay per sale can be a flat rate fee or a percentage of the total sale. I personally prefer a flat rate per sale so I know how much to expect from each sale. The second type of program is pay per lead or action. This program pays out when a visitor clicks on your link affiliate link and then performs some type of action on the merchant’s website. The action ranges from signing up for a newsletter to submitting a form. The merchant chooses what action the visitor must take for you to earn commission. I highly suggest starting with a pay per lead program if you are new to affiliate programs and networks. The last type of program is a pay per click. Payouts range from $0.01 to $4.50 per click and payouts vary by website subject. I would not suggest signing up for any pay per click program paying anything less than $0.25

You may be asking yourself how affiliate networks are at all different from affiliate programs. Well the answer is simple, affiliate networks are simply a collection of affiliate programs compiled in a user friendly fashion so you have the flexibility to find programs and change which programs to promote simply by replacing a link.

Many benefits are associated with affiliate networks including the variety of programs to choose from. With the advanced search tool that many networks offer you can filter affiliate programs in the network related to your website by selecting a similar category or searching for a particular keyword. You can also narrow these searches by choosing only programs that are pay per click, within the United States, newly added, etc...

While not all affiliate networks offer multiple payment methods many do. This is another great benefit of working with an affiliate network in opposition to an affiliate program. I personally do not like waiting for a check to be mailed out every month which is the payment method of most affiliate programs. Instead affiliate networks often offer additional payment methods like Paypal or direct deposit.

Running a profitable ad campaign is another tough obstacle to overcome. I suggest if you are new to affiliate networks to signup for one that offers pay per lead programs and choose a program that fits your website. If you notice your affiliate campaign is not performing as well as expected this could be the cause of multiple reasons. The most common error would be choosing an affiliate program that has a high payout yet does not relate to your website content. Please I cannot stress this enough, when choosing an affiliate program from your network choose the one that best fits your website content. Even if the payout is less more of your visitors will convert to sales, leads, and clicks so in the long run it is the more logical choice.

On occasion you will find an affiliate program that fits the content of your website perfectly yet still does not perform. The solution is more of a trial an error than anything else. You need to try multiple affiliate programs to see which one results in the highest payout by percentage. This is why affiliate networks are so superior, they offer the flexibility to test different programs effortlessly and choose which one best fits your personal needs.

Finding an affiliate network has been made easy, our affiliate network list displays the program types available, payment methods, amount of programs in the network, and if the program is two tier or not. The link for our website is in the article signature, so start earning money with your website today!

Written by: Michael McLaughlin at Affiliate Networks – List of quality affiliate networks. Affiliate Program Directory - Most comprehensive directory of affiliate programs on the web.

Alexa Traffic Rank

2007-07-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

Visual PageRank

2007-07-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

Google PageRank Prediction

2007-07-17T12:56:00.001-07:00

Google Banned Checker

2007-07-17T12:55:00.001-07:00

Back Link Checker

2007-07-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

Selecting a Quality Domain Name

2007-06-08T03:00:00.000-07:00

When you're ready to launch your web site and you're trying to select a good domain name, there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration.

Select a Domain Name that Reflects Your Web Site

Above all else, your domain name should reflect what your web site is all about. For example, if your web site is about grooming a dog, you certainly wouldn't want to select a domain name like 'mybusinessname.com,' as this would have nothing to do with your web site's focus. You would want to select a domain name that tells the world what your web site is all about -- something like 'doggrooming.com.'

Select a Domain Name that Contains Your Web Site's Keywords

Another consideration of great importance are your keywords. Try to select a domain name that contains your most relevant keyword phrase, as some Search Engines place relevancy on them. A keyword phrase is two or more words that best describe your web page. If your web page is focusing on grooming a dog, your best keyword phrase will be "dog grooming."

Select a Domain Name that will be Easily Remembered

With millions of web sites accessible on the Internet, it is also very important to select a domain name that will be easily remembered. As in the 'doggrooming.com' example above, 'doggrooming.com' is very easily remembered, contains the most relevant keyword phrase and describes the web site in explicit detail. It is the 'perfect' domain name for this particular web site.

Select the Best Domain Extension

Another consideration of importance is the domain name extension. Although there are many new domain extensions available, dotcom is still the best choice. When typing in a web address, Internet users automatically want to type in a .com extension, as this is the extension that has been embedded into our brains from the start.

Avoid Using Numbers in Your Domain Name

Although you may be tempted to do so, avoid using numbers within your domain name. Including a number within your domain name can cause problems, as when you tell someone your web address, you will continually have to tell them it's a number and not the word. For example, if you selected a domain name like number1host.com, if you were to tell someone your web address, they may try to type it as 'numberonehost.com' instead of 'number1host.com.' This type of domain name would cause confusion.

Avoid using Dashes and Underscores in Your Domain Name

Although many people do it, don't make the same mistake I made when I first started out. Avoid using dashes, underscores or any other characters within your domain name that may cause confusion. When I registered my domain name, Web-Source.net, I actually wanted websource.com; however, it had already been registered. So, I settled for Web-Source.net. Now, when I tell someone my domain name, I have to say it like this: web dash source dot net.

Don't get me wrong, www.Web-Source.net is now a high traffic web site, but I can only imagine how much traffic I've lost over the years due to my domain name. I have received many emails over the years from visitors who had a hard time finding my site. They said they couldn't remember the domain name and kept wanting to type in websource.com.

Avoid using Abbreviations within Your Domain Name

Although well-known companies, such as IBM, can get away with using abbreviations within their domain name, most companies can't. As a rule, try to avoid using abbreviations or anything that will be difficult for your visitors to remember. Not only will this cause confusion, but it can also cause your potential visitors to make spelling mistakes when trying to type in your web address.

Avoid using Long Domain Names

Although you may now register long domain names, it's really not a good idea. I learned this lesson the hard way. I registered 'www.workfromhomebusinessguide.com' and the sad thing is ... I can't remember the domain name half the time. How can I expect my potential visitors to remember it? Try to keep your domain name as short as possible. The longer the domain name the harder it is to remember and the more apt your potential visitors are to make a typo when typing it into their browser.

Ensure Your Domain Name is Not a Trademark Infringement

Prior to registering a domain name, you may want to consider searching the Trademark Electronic Search System, http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm to ensure your potential domain name isn't infringing on any trademarks.

Please don't take this point lightly, as trademark infringement could cost you your entire business. It is your responsibility to ensure that your potential domain name doesn't infringe on any registered trademarks, as the trademark laws that apply in the hard copy world also apply on the Internet. Any company that registers a trademark has the right to protect their trademark and has the right to notify you that your domain name is infringing upon their trademark.

When you're ready to begin, create a list of a dozen or more potential domain names, as chances are, your first choice will already be taken. With any luck, one of the domain names on your list will be available.

Take your time and select a quality domain name that will grow with your business. It will be well-worth your time and effort in the long run.

35 Deadly Website Sins That will Kill Your Business!

2007-06-08T02:52:00.000-07:00

by Shelley Lowery

After reviewing thousands of web sites over the years, I have come to the conclusion that many business web sites are missing the boat.

For example, I've been working on some offline promotions and was searching for a simple targeted mailing list. I searched through about twenty sites and not one of those sites were, what I would consider, professional. Their standard blue links were enlarged to about a size 16 font, busy backgrounds, flashing images and very unorganized.

Did I purchase a mailing list from any of those sites? Absolutely not. Why? The way I see it, if those companies don't take pride in their web sites, chances are, they won't take pride in their products either. Large linked text and flashing graphics won't make sales.

Your web site is a direct reflection of you and your business. The appearance of your site is the most important factor in determining your sites value. In other words, if your site doesn't look professional or pleasing to the eyes at first glance, its perceived value and the value of your products and services will be low.

On the other hand, you may have a great web site, well designed and a quality product or service, but if it takes too long to load, the value will still be perceived as low. Why? Because your potential customer won't wait. Ultimately costing you business.

Another consideration of great importance is your content. Not just links, but content with value. When someone is surfing the net and they visit your web site, they're visiting for a reason. Your site has something they want. Whether it is your product, service or information, that's why they're there. If they don't find what they're looking for, they'll move on to the next site and so on.

If you want your visitors to stay at your site, provide the quality content they're looking for in a nicely organized fashion. Give them a reason to want to explore your site and to continue to visit your site in the future.

After receiving many questions in regard to web site design, I have devised a list of, what I refer to as, "35 Deadly Web Site Sins."

• Poor load time
• Poor overall appearance
• Spelling/Grammar
• No contact information
• Poor content
• Poor navigation
• Broken links and graphics
• Poor browser compatibility
• Large slow loading graphics
• Too many graphics
• Pages scrolling to oblivion
• Multiple use of animated graphics
• Animated bullets
• Too many graphic and/or line dividers
• Busy, distracting backgrounds
• Multiple banners and buttons
• Poor use of frames
• Large fonts
• Pop up messages
• Over use of java
• Poor use of tables
• Poor organization
• Different backgrounds on each page
• Over powering music set to autoplay
• Confusing
• Too much advertising
• Large Welcome banners
• Multiple colored text
• Text difficult to read
• No Meta tags
• Multiple use of different fonts
• Under construction signs
• Scrolling text in the status bar
• Large scrolling text across the page
• Poor use of mouse over effects

Take some time to really look at your site. Compare it to sites that you feel look professional. Time your site's load time -- your customers won't wait. Their time is valuable.

The simple, well designed sites make the sales. If your sales aren't what you had hoped, take some time to seriously evaluate your site and make some changes before spending your time and money on advertising and marketing. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Copyright © Shelley Lowery

About the Author:

Shelley Lowery is the author of the acclaimed web design course, Web Design Mastery. http://www.webdesignmastery.com And, Ebook Starter - Give Your Ebooks the look and feel of a REAL book. http://www.ebookstarter.com Visit Web-Source.net to sign up for a complimentary subscription to Etips and receive a copy of the acclaimed ebook, "Killer Internet Marketing Strategies." http://www.web-source.net

You have permission to publish this article electronically, in print, in your ebook or on your web site, free of charge, as long as the author bylines are included.

**38 Web Design Mistakes you should Avoid

2007-06-08T02:47:00.000-07:00

Confusing
Pop up messages
Poor load time
Over use of Java
Poor overall appearance
Poor use of HTML tables
Spelling/Grammar mistakes
Poor organization
Inconsistent page design
No contact information
No 'about us' page
No privacy policy
Different backgrounds on each page
Poor content
Poor navigation
Over powering music set to auto play
Broken HTML code links and graphics
Poor browser compatibility
Large slow loading graphics
Too many graphics
Large Welcome banners
Flashing banners
Pages scrolling to oblivion
Multiple colored text
Multiple use of animated graphics
Text difficult to read
Animated bullets
No Meta tags
Too many graphic and/or line dividers
Multiple use of different fonts
Under construction signs
Busy, distracting backgrounds
Scrolling text in the status bar
Multiple banners and buttons
Large scrolling text across the page
Poor use of HTML code frames
Large fonts
Poor use of mouse over effect

Online Banner Generator

2007-06-08T02:37:00.003-07:00

Online Banner Generator: This will custom make simple advertising banners for websites. I'll be adding more banner blanks when I get the chance if this tool is popular.

Copyright Generator

2007-06-08T02:37:00.001-07:00

Copyright Generator: This handy little tool generates a copy and paste, custom javascript with your copyright information.. OK, so what's the big deal? The code will automatically update the copyright date when the new year arrives!

Online Link Checker / Validator

2007-06-08T02:36:00.001-07:00

Online Link Checker / Validator: This link validator will crawl your pages and return back telling you which of your links are OK, and which are broken (404) and even lets you know if you have any 301, 302 etc links that may need looked after.

Meta Tag Generator

2007-06-08T02:35:00.000-07:00

Meta Tag Generator: A free, online wizard to help you create valid meta tags. No knowledge of coding needed, just read the guide, fill in the questions and generate the appropriate meta tags.

Free Web Design Resources

2007-06-08T02:34:00.000-07:00

Ready to start making your own website?

Web design is great fun at times, frustrating at others, but it's always rewarding and can even be free! This section is filled with free stuff for your website including web design resources and tools to help you on your way to completing the website of your dreams.

Learn the basics of web design with the tutorials, add interactive content to your website, like guest books and forums, find a server to host it for free... and when you're ready find out how to promote and make money from your website.

This section is where Webweaver started. I was brand new to the Web and wanted to make my own webpage. The problem was I had no idea where to begin and didn't want to spend money on it while learning. Slowly my bookmark file began getting filled lists of free design resources and services, so I uploaded that to my first website. Along the way other people found that list and eventually I turned it into the main focus of that site. Webweaver was born shortly after. I hope it's as helpful to you as it has been for me =)

Handy, Free Stuff for Web Developers

Before you go wandering off, here's a couple resources that are worth checking out. Yes, they might be sponsors, but they offer great products and/or services for your website, and yes... I do use all of them personally.

Organize your pictures. Get Google's photo software.
Organize, edit and share your photos, clipart or any other type of image you want with this handy free image software from Google. Picasa is extremely easy to use and has a ton of handy features like tagging with labels to make it easier to find the photo you're looking for, star ratings to easily find your favorites, and the ability to password-protect any Picasa collection you'd prefer to keep private! Very handy for any web developer who has a collection of images for many different sites!

Firefox with Google Toolbar
OK, it's not directly a tool just for a webmaster, but there are a ton of extensions that make it incredibly useful (Web Developer Toolbar, HTML Validator, DOM Inspector and Live HTTP Headers just to name a few). And it's faster, safer and well.. in my opinion, better than Internet Explorer.
The web developer in me wants proper css support, and the surfer in me want a safe, secure and fast way to wander the web. Well, FireFox delivers both and it's totally customizable! It's been my default browser since it was still in beta. Download it and see for yourself!

Bravenet
They offer tons of free resources for your website including Human Click (visitors can see if you're online and page you, right from your website!), polls, guest books, forums, chat rooms, free storage space, tickers, password protection and much more (way to much to list here!).

Back Link Analyzer Link Popularity Software (Beta)

2007-06-08T02:31:00.000-07:00

What is Back Link Analyzer?
A free link popularity / link analysis tool. It shows what anchor text is linking into a page or site. Deeper explaination below.

Before Downloading (a few usage notes)

If it is not working here are some things to take note of

off the start if it does not work you may have to click the preferences button (the one with two check marks on it) to de-check the "use proxy server" option if you do not want to use a proxy
Norton (or equivalent) may block it
make sure you set the result limit count to a reasonable number (like 100 or 1000)
you have to select at least 1 engine to pull link data from
if you want to enable PageRank, site age, etc. you have to check those features
you can't get the keyword summary until the tool is done pulling in all the links

Download Back Link Analyzer:
Download Back Link Analyzer

if you can't extract it you may need to use WinRAR to unzip it

System Requirements:
Backlink Analyzer currently is a Windows only application.

Quick Website Tips

2007-06-08T02:29:00.000-07:00

Fill out the subject in email from your site.

This is a handy way to organize your incoming email, it's could also be fun to decide what they'll say to you ;-)

OK, here's how you do this just add: ?subject=whatever you want inside your email tag, like this:
email me
Fill out the body of an email for your visitors.

Yes, this can be used as a fast and easy alternative to the Tell a Friend scripts. The body will be filled in for them, and it allows them to fill in the recipients email address.

Here's how you do it, just change the subject and body to whatever you'd like:
Tell a friend about us!

Website Maintenance Tips

2007-06-08T02:26:00.000-07:00

Why are some people seeing an old version of your site?

Most browsers will cache or keep a local copy of your pages to speed-up future viewing of those pages. Depending on how the viewer set up their browser, it might display an old version of your site, especially if you update your pages often. To tell browsers when to use get a newer copy of your site, you could use following tags:
< equiv="Expires" content="Tue, 01 Jan 1980 1:00:00 GMT">
< equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache">

These meta tags should be placed in between your and tags. Also the specified date should be a date in the past so that the browser will immediately get rid of the cached copy or not keep it at all. The reason for two tags is that while the "Expires" tag is understood by most browsers, some older browsers may still look for the "no-cache" tag.

Find out how many sites are linked to yours and who they are.

Most search engines offer this feature but each do it a bit differently.

Yahoo: type in either linkdomain:www.example.com link:http://www.example.com into the search box... or for more detail, try Yahoo! Site Explorer, click "Inlinks", then choose "Except from this domain" from the drop box (this is it's current setup, I don't guarantee that it will stay exactly those steps, but if it changes look around and I'm sure you'll find it.)
Google: link:www.example.com
MSN: link:www.example.com

Method 1 - .htaccess 301 Redirect

The smoothest way to redirect your visitors is to use an .htaccess redirect. This has no delay since before a page is served to the browser the server checks first for an .htaccess file... if it sees this the old page never loads, instead visitors are sent directly to the new page.

These are a few .htaccess redirect codes that I've used that might come in handy for you. This is not a complete list by any means, but it took me ages to find how to do these so I'll save you the hassle and list them here. Oh, and please don't email me with questions about how these work, like I said, I found these with the help of others.. I have no idea in the slightest how to write this stuff and take no credit (or responsibility) for how they work.

If you're more technically minded than I am and want the information straight from the source, check the Apache Tutorial: .htaccess files for more detailed info.
Important notes about htaccess redirection

1. Always be sure to upload .htaccess files in ascii mode, sending it up as binary will break it (and usually make your server very, very unhappy.)
2. .htaccess does not work if you're on a windows server.
3. Make sure you triple check your changes. Clear your cache and look, test the server headers to make sure you see a 301 (that means its permanent) not a 302 (temporary) unless you are absolutely sure you really mean temporary.
4. Since some operating systems don't allow you to make a file without something before the "." you may need to save it as something.htaccess, some may even have to save it as htaccess.txt and change it once you've uploaded it.
5. Make sure your ftp program will show .htaccess files (FileZilla does and is free) It is a bit hard to edit something you can't see ;)
6. Double check that you're not overwriting an old one (some servers already place one there for your custom 404 pages etc.)
7. Make sure you replace example.com with your own sites URL ;-)

301 Redirect Examples
To Move a single page

Quick, easy and seamless for your visitors.
Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.example.com/newpage.html
To Move an entire site

This will catch any traffic on your old site and redirect it to your index page on your new server. If you want to redirect each page to its new spot, this isn't the one for you.
Redirect 301 / http://www.example.com/
Changed file extension?

This example is perfect if you've decided to switch to .php from .html pages. It will look for any .html page and redirect it to .php (ie http://www.example.com/yourpage.html and redirect it to http://www.example.com/yourpage.php). Now, be careful with this, it does mean any html page. I did this on one of my sites and had totally forgotten I had an iframe with .html content on some pages... I didn't notice for weeks that it was broken :S.
So learn from my mistake ;-) check, double check, then check again.
RedirectMatch 301 (.*)\.html$ http://www.example.com$1.php
Redirect www to non www version of site

It's best to stick with either always using www.example.com or just example.com. Allowing both can confuse the search engines. So here's how to force your site to always show the non-www version. (Search for "canonical url errors" in your favorite search engine for more info.)

Note: If you do use either of the next 2 codes below, and use a secure server (ie. https:) be sure to check that it doesn't redirect the secure to the insecure version. I'm pretty sure this will do that and that isn't something you want!
Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} . RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^example\.com RewriteRule (.*) http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Redirect non-www to www

Same as above except in the reverse, this one forces the www. into your url.
Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Redirect example.com/index.php to example.com/

Another snippet that I've heard is a good idea to make sure search engines don't give you a duplicate content penalty, this will also redirect example.com/folder/index.php to example.com/folder/.
Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on # index.php to / RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3, 9}\ /.*index\.php\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.php$ /$1 [R=301,L]

I might add more later as I need them, for now those are the one's I use on a few different sites I run. Remember, I can't stress enough to test, test and re-test anything you do to your .htaccess file.
Method 2 - Meta Redirect

I'd really advise against redirecting this way! Most search engine are having difficulties with this one (and spammers have been using this in very bad ways) and it might get your page in a heap of trouble! Some browsers also don't read it properly so your would-be visitors may get stranded. Seriously, it really isn't advisable to use this anymore but if you insist on trying it, here it is.
< meta equiv="refresh" content="10; url=http://example.com/">

Content="10; tells the browser to wait 10 seconds before transfer, choose however long you would like, you can even choose 0 to give a smoother transition.
Final Notes

I can't stress enough how important it is to test your server's response headers any time you make a change to your .htaccess file! If you use Firefox the LiveHTTPHeaders extensions is the best I've ever found. That will tell if you're sending a 301 (permanent redirect), 302 (temporary redirect, not what you want probably!) or 200 which means page found, as well as a ton of other info.

Reference Tips For Uploading

2007-06-08T02:24:00.000-07:00

Ascii or Binary?

The general rule of thumb is if you can view the file in a text editor like notepad (ie. .html, .js, .css files etc) you should upload in ASCII mode, most others (including images, sound files, video, zip files, executable's etc) should be uploaded in Binary.
Exceptions to the Rule

It seems all things related to computers have exceptions to the rules. Yes, this is yet another case of it.

If your text files contain international characters (ie. Chinese or Japanese text), they are to be uploaded as binary. The reason is that ascii takes into account differences between DOS and UNIX files (7 bits) but it doesn't do well with text using higher bits.
Why Does It Matter What Mode You Transfer Files With?

If you upload images etc. as ascii you'll end up with corrupted files. Some browsers seem capable of figuring it out, but not all... and not all the time. Netscape is much more picky, so you'd end up with broken or missing pictures for your Netscape users. (Yup, I learned this the hard way :-o )

Same thing with uploading text files as binary. While this is less important for html files, scripts will have a HUGE problem with it and will just not work. This is the most common cause of the "Server 500 Error - Malformed Headers", and other equally unlovely errors that have caused many a webmaster to bang their heads against their computers.
So What Does Uploading In ASCII Do?

I'd wondered this for a while and finally decided to learn why uploading in ascii is so important for some file types. What I found out is that different Operating System's use different ways to specify that a line has ended. So if you're using a different operating system than your server (which is very likely), the files will have extra characters at the end of each line that the server doesn't recognize. So it'll usually print them out resulting in script errors.
Setting Your FTP Program to "Auto"

Most FTP programs have the option to set your upload to auto. What this usually does is compare the file type you're transferring against a list of known file types and set it to binary or ascii upload on its own.

By default, most FTP programs will have a pre-set list of files to be transferred in ascii and will upload / download everything else in binary. (These settings are in different places depending on the program you are using. Check the "Read Me" file or their Website if you can't find it.) Be sure to double check that the files you want to transfer are in the appropriate list.
Summary

ASCII Files
.htm .html .shtml .php .pl .cgi .js .cnf .css
.forward .htaccess .map .pwd .txt .grp .ctl

Binary Files
.jpg .gif .png .tif .exe .zip .sit .rar .ace
.class .mid .ra .avi .ocx .wav .mp3 .au

Chmod - What is it?

Chmod stands for Change Mode and is a command usually needed for installing CGI scripts on a UNIX server. Basically it tells the server what the file or folder permissions are, ie. can the script read the info, or can it write information as well.
What do the Chmod Settings Mean?

Chmod tells the server the access privileges for a file. For example, common file settings are:

777: all can read / write / execute the file.
755: owner can do all, group / others can read / execute.
644: owner can read / write, group / others can read only.
Common Chmod Settings

cgi scripts: 755
data files: 666
configuration files not updated by the script: 644
directories: 777

Tips For Creating Your Website

2007-06-08T02:08:00.000-07:00

What is Hotlinking?

Are you a hotlinker?

Ok, so you may be new to the web or even web design in general and want to create your own space online...
You see an image you'd love to add to your website, you:

Download it to your hard drive and upload it to your own server (after checking that is is allowed to be used)... or,
Add it to your page without uploading it to your website.

If you chose #1, congratulations, you've already decided to not hotlink! If you chose number 2... please read why this is theft.

Hotlinking - What is it?

Hotlinking, inline linking, remote linking and many other terms are used to describe a way taking images, or other files and embedding it directly into a website. In other words, unauthorized use of someone else's bandwidth. Hotlinked files are files Not stored on your own server. For example, a hotlinked image code would look something like this:

OK, so why is Hotlinking wrong?

If the person who owns the media file you are embedding into your own website gives permission to hotlink, then nothing is wrong. Sadly, this is not usually the case.

If you don't have permission, remote linking to any media and / or program file is theft.

Yes, theft.. even if it's a clipart archive offering free images, a music server giving away free tunes or a website with freeware... Unless the original website specifically states otherwise, hotlinking is stealing.

"Wait a minute" I hear you say, "I didn't steal anything, the file is right where the owner left it!" OK, let me explain this a bit. Each time a file is called from our servers we have what is called a data transfer request, or another way of saying it.. we have bandwidth used.

Bandwidth is a bit like gas for a car. Every time you drive (or a file is loaded), a bit of fuel (or bandwidth) is used up. Now imagine if each night one of your neighbors siphoned out a tiny bit for their own car... then other neighbors thought "I'll just take a couple drops as well"... by morning your fuel tank is empty. Your neighbors each thought taking just a tiny bit would be unnoticeable.. but added all up it left nothing for you.

Serving up images is not only usually our biggest consumer of bandwidth, when others remotely link to them (ie. embed them in their websites from our servers without our permission), we have to pay... bandwidth is not free! Most websites have a limited amount of data transfer and the website owners either have to cough up extra money each month to pay the fees, or face shutting down.

The difference between hotlinking & linking to a web site:

When people link directly to a media file (gif, jpg, png, mov etc.), the webmaster of the original site has to pay the fees. When someone links to a page on that same website, the webmaster still pays fees but the content is shown in the form the designer (and copyright holder) wished, and they may be able to cover costs by displaying advertising on the page.

Super simply put... Hot Linking to media files = bad... Linking to pages = good ;-)

Other reasons you shouldn't hotlink files

Eventually every website owner that faces this dilemma has to make a decision. Close up shop... or fight back? Since their files would now be embedded into your website, they are free to do with those files as they wish... and most will.

Some things webmasters can do to hotlinkers:

Rename the file and give the hotlinker a broken file.
Replace it with a very nasty file (think of whatever you'd most dislike seeing on your page and I can guarantee the website owner with the original content can imagine something ten times worse.)
Replace it with a notice that hotlinking is not allowed and an advertisement for their own website.
Contact the hotlinker's website host and submit a copyright / terms of service abuse report. In most cases this will result in the hotlinker losing their website.

OK, but...

So by now you (should) realize why hotlinking is wrong, but what if your web site host doesn't allow images stored? That's an easy one!

Either find a better host, (here are free subdomain hosts and a list of free domain hosts) that will allow image uploading.

Option number 2, keep your current host and use a free image host that allows hotlinking.

Can't save files?
If for some reason you can't save a file, or perhaps not on your own computer and find an image that you want, there's the Transload Service that will upload it for you, or you could always email yourself the file for later use.

Oh, and please, before you take any file whether it's an image, sound file or anything else.. check that it is allowed to be used elsewhere. Just because something is on a website does not mean that anyone is free to take it! There are copyright laws online as well.

Thank-you for taking the time to learn about hotlinking

If you didn't understand what hot linking or remote linking files before was, a big thank you for reading this! My hope is that by reading through this, learning why hotlinking is theft and how to avoid it.. there will be more responsible linkers in the future.

Please help keep the free clip art collections and sound files that are freely offered online, and available for free for future users. Do your part by linking properly and explaining it to other people you might know that hot link simply because they don't know any better.

Speed up page load time

Formatting Tips To Speed up Your Website

While more and more people are getting access to high speed internet, there are many left on dial up. Be kind to those visitors and do a few, simple things to speed up your webpages. Not only will these tips give you a faster load time, most will also help keep your bandwidth fees low as well!

Use CSS For Faster Pages

Even if you decide to use tables, CSS can greatly improve your web sites load time! With your styles in an external .css file, the browser can cache all the formatting and stylizing for your pages instead of having to read each and every single tag all over again. Also it cuts down on long drawn out tags and replaces them with smaller class styles instead.

Use External Scripts

Use the same script on multiple pages? Switch to an external script. I'm not talking about remotely hosted, I mean loading javascript files from one source instead of adding all that code to each of your pages like this:

That way the browser already has it in it's cache and won't have to read it each time another page loads. This one saves a ton of load time, specially for larger scripts!

Remove Anything You Don't Really Need

OK, while this might sound obvious sometimes the hardest thing about creating a website is not using every fancy trick that you know. Images, flash and sometimes even sound files are very impressive.. but do you really need to showcase all your talents one one page?

Embedded sound files are something many people just find annoying anyway. You'd be surprised how many are surfing at work ;-). The last thing anyone wants is a loud music or sounds announcing to their boss that they're surfing. Also many people have their own music playing... hearing a song over top of what we're listening to is less than pleasant. As for Java applets, try to ditch them or if you want those effects, JavaScript unusually loads faster and can do just as much or more. Stand back and take a critical look at your website, you may see a few special effects that can be let go of for the sake of faster load time.

Avoid Nested Tables

OK, I'm not a big fan of using tables for layout anyway (I'm one of those people that believes content and presentation should be separate.. but thats another tip page). With that said, if in your templates tables seem neccessary (or the easier way to do it), try to avoid nesting. Why? When you place a table inside another table, it takes a lot longer for the browser to work out the spacing since it has to wait to read the entire html and then work out the layout. If at all possible, try using CSS to create the columns on your page.

Avoid Full Page Tables for Faster Rendering

If you use tables, try avoiding the whole page being one big table. The browser won't show anything until it's read the whole thing that way. For a faster loading webpage, either try multiple tables (not nested) or having stuff above the main table to make your content in the first table show up faster. That way your visitors will have something to read while the rest of your page loads. It may not really make you page faster, but it will feel like it to your visitors.

Split Up Long Pages - Multiple Short Pages Load Faster

By splitting up long pages into multiple pages you not only make the content show up faster but many people that see a very long scroll bar give up. Remember, people's attention spans are often shorter than a grasshoppers (OK, not literally, but you get my point) since so much information is available at our fingertips. Try breaking it up into more readable lengths.

Remove Excess "Whitespace"

Whitespace is the spaces between your coding, removing the unneeded tabs and spaces can help a lot! Doing this will take a lot of extra bytes off the total size of your page and will speed up load time quite a bit. (Careful using automatic squishers, I find they often squish too much and makes it rather hard to edit later.)

Keep Your Code Clean

If you do use a wysiwyg editor, most times the will add useless code to your pages for example, many will leave empty tags (ie. ). Removing any of those excess tags will not only speed up your load time, but make you pages validate a lot cleaner.

Speed up Images Load Time

Don't Go Overboard On Images

While images can greatly enhance the look of a site they can really slow it down if there are too many. Try to decide if all your images are really needed (quite a few nice effects can be done with css, so sometimes images are unneeded.)

Height And Width Tags

When the page loads and the image size is already defined (ie. you've used the height and width tags), the browser knows where everything will be before the images are loaded. Otherwise the page has to wait and load the images before the text. Same goes for tables, so try to use width tags when possible on those as well for a speedier page.

Faster Images? Reduce Their File Size

There are many totally free, online image optimizers so you don't even have to install anything and it's extremely easy! Online Image Optimizer will greatly reduce the file size of your gif, jpg, or pngs and neither you or your visitors will be able to see the difference other than a page that loads a heck of a lot faster. They also keep the transparency and animations in gifs! For another JPEG reduction, try JPEG Wizard, also free, this one will only work with pictures in your hard drive not ones from the net. You can also choose some simple effects to be done (flip, mirror and rotate).

GIF vs JPG vs PNG

Personally on new sites I design I tend to go for optimized pngs. They have lossless compression (unlike jpgs and can be used without worry (gifs have the potential to have copyright issues) and load fast! With all that said, if you still want to use gifs and jpgs, here's a bit of fast info... If you don't need sharp resolution, choose GIFs over JPEGs, as GIFs generally load quicker. JPGs are generally best for photos, GIFs for anything else.

(I'd add a rant here about how Microsoft had held up the web's development with not making IE6 support png transparency... but *sigh* I've ranted about this already to anyone who will listen. Firefox, Opera and other modern browsers however have been able to show alpha transparency in png for years... oops, sorry, that was a mini rant after all!)

How To Create a Custom 404 Page

"Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server.
Apache/1.3.31 Server at www.example.com Port 80"

Look familiar? We've all seen that too many times while wandering the Web. And if you're like most people you just hit the back button and try another website. Why not make a custom 404 page that's friendly for your website visitors and gives them a way back to more familiar (or at least not lost) territory.

These tips won't work for windows servers, but are perfect for Unix hosts.

Step 1 - Create the .htaccess

To begin open up your .htaccess file if you already have one, if not pop open notepad or your favorite text editor (No, a WYSIWYG editor won't work here) and add this line:

ErrorDocument 404 /404.php

You can name your error file whatever you'd like and use whatever extension you are most comfortable with.

Step 2 - Create the Custom 404 page

Create a file called 404.php (or whatever you wrote in your .htaccess), add whatever you want your visitors to see when they hit a missing page. A sitemap or search is nice, along with letting them know the file they requested is not available.

Step 3 - Upload

Make sure your FTP program is set to upload as ASCII, upload the 404.php, then the .htaccess.

Step 4 - Check it

Make sure your browser cache is clear and type in a file you know doesn't exist on your server.. something like http://www.yoursite.com/oops. You should be seeing your new, fancy, and much more welcoming 404 page.

Step 5 - Double Check it!

This is important, make sure your custom 404 is actually sending a 404 header! The best way I've found is using the Firefox extension called Live Http Headers. It shows you the entire conversation between your browser and the website. Again, type in a file you know doesn't exist on your page, it should say 404 Not Found, not 200 OK. (If you have images on your 404 page, those will show code 200 which is exactly what you want because.. well they are there ;), so scroll to the top of the header testers output and read carefully. The page itself should send a 404.) If it's showing a code 200, remove the .htaccess and try again. The last thing you want is for the search engines to see a 200 response code for a page that doesn't really exist!

Notes About a Custom Error Page

What you have on your error is personal choice. Some people prefer just a link to the main page, others go for a more friendly approach and let the visitor know that the file isn't there, but give a nicely designed page with links to other areas or even a search to let them find what they wanted. Below are a few (hopefully) helpful notes.

"Friendly" Error Messages in Explorer

Internet Explorer 5 and up display "'friendly' error messages" and not the carefully crafted and actually helpful 404's available on many sites. To avoid this simply make sure your 404 files size is over 512 bytes, not including images (the actual pages code itself) and even IE users will have the benefit of your new page. (This is probably the only time I suggest to get files size up. Useful in this case though!)

Absolute URLs

If you use images or any type of external files in your new custom page, use absolute links in your error pages code. (ie. /images/mylogo.png or http://www.example.com/images/mylogo.png). Why? Well your 404 pages is different than other files on your server, if someone lands on http://www.example.com/stuff/morestuff/lostfile.php the error page is actually being served from that folder. That in place you should have your bases covered in case of an accident or confused bot.

Things to Avoid

I've seen many people use the 404 to redirect to the main page... no warning that the file was missing, no way of letting the visitor choose where to go. Besides, do you really want the search engines to get caught in a redirect and see you main page as one big 404?

Another thing I've seen a lot is a customized 404 that is well... not so customized. More than once I've seen just the logo and "Not Found", no way of getting to the main page or other areas.

What is a Favicon?

Favicon stands for "Favorites Icon". It's the little icon beside your site's name in the favorites list, before the URL in the address bar, as a bookmarked website on the desktop, in the "Links" bar and on the windows taskbar.

Why does Favicon.ico Show Up as a 404 in the log files?

I was confused when this first started showing up, if I'd never had a file called that... why were people looking for it? The answer is simple, all it means is that people with browsers that use favicon (Internet Explorer 5.0 +, Firefox, Mozilla, Konqueror and a most others) are visiting your site. While seeing a 404 in your log files usually means that a visitor got the dreaded "404 Page Not Found" error, in this case it doesn't. All it means is that the default icon was shown instead of a custom one, your visitors saw no errors :-)

Why should you use a favicon?

Most peoples bookmarks / favorites list is a very cluttered place. Having yours stand out with a nice graphical reminder of your site beside it is a good way to get their attention again.

How To Make a Favicon

There's quite a few good favicon creators for free, a few of my favorites are FavIcon from Pics (within seconds create a favicon from any image on your computer, even an animated favicon!), Favicon.com's online creator, or use one of the popular icon creating programs. You could also make it in your favorite image editor, save it as a bitmap (.bmp) and use Icon Master to change it over to the icon format. (Just renaming the file isn't going to work.)

I'm not going to go into detail here about the actual creation of icons, there are tons of other sites to help you on that if you get stuck.
I will tell you the icon basics. Icons are image files that actually contain one or more images, so a good idea is to make the 16x16 size as well as a 32x32 size. If you want you can make other sizes since xp users can have larger icons on their desktops. Make sure you use the default windows color palette (256 colors), again, if you wish you can make extra images inside it that go up to the XP colors. When you've done that, name your file favicon.ico.

How To Get Your Favicon To Show

There are 2 different ways to do this:

Method 1: This is the easiest to do and it will show your icon no matter what page your visitor adds to their favorites. Simply upload your new icon to the main directory of your site, ie. www.example.com/favicon.ico.
Method 2: If you don't have access to your root directory (if your on a free server for example) or it you want a different favicon for certain pages, add this to the < head> of your html. URL:; < link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://example.com/favicon.ico">

Note:

The first time (OK.. I admit it, the second time to) that I tried to add a favicon I got rather confused when I decided to change it. If you upload a new one, be sure to clear your cache for the new icon to show up ;-)

How To Link to a Specific Spot on a Page

Want to give your website visitors a shortcut to a specific spot on a page? Or maybe add a link back to the top so they can get back to your navigation menu or any other area within the page? Targeting within a page is really easy and there's 2 ways to do this, here's how.

The XHTML Compliant Way to Link Within a Page

If you don't know what XHTML compliant means, don't worry it just means that it will help your pages validate as XHTML Strict, the old way won't pass. This method is just as easy as the older link jump and when you continue getting better at designing you will probably be glad you did it this way in the first place (no messy editing later).

1) Name the Target
Choose the exact spot you want to send your link to, choose and element near it (a div, header tag, paragraph.. whatever as long as it's in the right spot), add id="something", you can call them anything you like as long as the names are the same in the link and the target ID and preferably no spaces (spaces change to %20 in the address bar and look a tad messy).

An example would look like this:

The content of your div here.

2) Link To Your Anchor Target
To link to your anchor simply use:
Link Text Here

or if it's on another page:
Link Text Here

The Old Way

This way of jumping to a spot within a page is not as good an idea for a few reasons. The "name" attribute has been depreciated for XHTML, and using tags you already have on your page like < h1>,

or any other places you can add id's will leave you less clutter on your page. (ie, you can use them for css styles, javascript and a lot more. And yup, if you happen to already have a something styled on your page using ID, linking to it works just fine.)

With that said, just in case for some reason you want to try the other way, here it is. As with the linking method above, you can call it anything you'd like, try not to use spaces though (they look rather messy in an address bar).

1) Naming the Target
Choose a spot on the page you want to link to and make an anchor by making a link mostly as usual but instead of "href" add "name" inside it.

Here's an example:
something here so you don't have an empty tag

2) Linking to your new jump spot
This step is the same as above:
Link Text Here

See, either way you choose to link within the page it's fast, easy and can be very helpful to your visitors.

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2007-06-07T06:51:00.000-07:00