Thursday, May 14, 2009

Web Design: Scannability

Would it interest you to know that most web users don't come to your site to appreciate the attractiveness of the design? That's not to say that an attractive web design isn't important.

However, the majority of site visitation happens because the consumer was motivated to look at your site to see if you could give them a reason to purchase from your e-commerce business.

The web is based on small resolution sizes. The words read online aren't even as clear as newsprint. The pictures are often low resolution and a computer screen can tax the best of vision.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Blog Post Creating Ideas

Here are 20 ideas you can use to help you create a blog post when you're stuck for an idea:

1. Current events. Can you link what you do in your business to a current event? Open up your daily newspaper or your RSS news reader and see what's happening in the world, your country, your state, or your city. Give your opinion about the event and a solution, if you have it, and relate that to your business if you can.

2. Trends in your industry. I read constantly and subscribe to more industry publications than I have time to review. However, there are a handful that I do regularly read, and it's to those that I look to for what the trends seem to be. When you blog about the trend, put your unique perspective on it, or write a rebuttal post, disagreeing with the relevance of the trend.

3. Get personal. Tell a story about what's happening in your life or in your business that would be useful or instructive for your readers. Chronicle both your highs and lows, your wins and your struggles. One key to successful blogging is getting personal with your readers. The more "real" you are with your readers, the better your reader gets to know you and begins to like and trust you. You become a "real, live" human being to them who faces similar issues that they face.

4. Top 10. Most of my writing is in the form of a Top 10 list because it's an easy way for me to outline the points I want to make and then go back and fill in the details for each point. In this case, each of your points for a topic can become an individual blog post, and when all the points are complete, you can compile the full list for an article for your ezine or website.

5. Frequently asked questions. If you've been in business for awhile, you know the questions that clients and prospective clients ask you to answer over and over again. Instead of repeatedly responding to the same questions, write a series of blog posts that answer your target market's most frequently asked questions.

6. How you helped a client solve a problem. Clients hire you to solve a specific problem they're having, whether they do that when they buy your service or your product. List 3-5 most recent problems that you have helped your clients solve. Create a post that talks about the problem and the solution you provided (either with your client's permission, or by making it generic enough to hide the client's identity) that becomes a learning experience for your readers.

7. Interview an expert. What people do you know and admire in your industry? If you admire them, chances are that members of your target market do, as well. Contact them for a short email or recorded interview and ask them 3-5 questions that you'd like to hear them answer about their lives, their businesses, industry trends, or how to solve a particular problem. Publish the interviews as blog posts, adding audio and graphics if you have them.

8. Solicit and answer questions. Ask your ezine subscribers or blog readers to ask you their most pressing question related to what you do. I do this and get questions for 1-2 blog posts per week, and it helps me stay in touch with the needs of my readers, as well.

9. Review something. Read a good book lately related to your industry? Just purchased a product to help you solve a problem? Reviews aren't limited to the critics at the New York Times. Blog about your experience with a product, book, or service, highlighting both the high points and low points, and whether you would recommend that others use or purchase it.

10. Read other blogs. Go to Google's Blog Search or Technorati and find other blogs related to your industry or your target market. Add those to your blog reader and take an hour or two each week to read the posts on those blogs. Do you agree or disagree with the post? Have another point of view? Think the blogger was on target but you want to expand on her point of view? Reading other blogs is a great way to generate ideas for your own blog.

11. Keep an idea file. Sometimes a blogging idea or concept will strike you when you don't need (or want) to blog. Begin a blog idea file by creating a document or spreadsheet to track your ideas and thoughts. If you're in the zone, go ahead and write the post, and then you can post it to your blog on a day when the idea well is dry.

12. Create a tutorial. There's always something you can tell your target market how to do. Create a written, audio, or video tutorial of the process as your blog post. Depending on the complexity of the tasks, the tutorial may need to created in multiple parts, like Part 1, Part 2, etc., which would make for multiple posts to your blog.

13. Share a positive/negative email. I often share exceptionally positive or negative emails I receive from people (without names to protect their identity as appropriate) either to celebrate kudos I've received or to demonstrate how I responded to a particularly nasty or upsetting comment. I get the most mileage out of the negative emails, and I often ask for feedback about how my readers might respond to the situation.

14. Take a tour. Take a self-made in-person or virtual tour of something useful to your readers. For example, if you're a dating coach, tour the top 5 online dating sites and report your experiences as a client in each. If you're a restaurant consultant, visit 3 local restaurants and evaluate what's often overlooked in staff training based on your experience as a customer.

15. Write about a Twitter or Facebook update. You only get 140 characters in Twitter to write about something. If you need more space, or want to respond in greater length to someone's Tweet or Facebook status update, do so in your blog. Thought-provoking questions are often asked on Twitter, and the answers may inspire you to blog.

16. Create a "Best of" list. What are the top 7 blogs to read in your industry? How about the top 5 people to watch? What about the 10 most useful online tools you use? Nothing attracts attention on a blog quicker than a list, so create one yourself or ask your readers to help you in the process.

17. Report from an event. Attending a professional trade show, conference, or networking event? You can report live about your experiences at the event on your blog. Talk about the workshops your attended, the vendors you met, the speaker you heard -- the sky's the limit!

18. Debunk a myth. Each industry is plagued with myths and fallacies about success/failure or what does/doesn't work that the industry professionals would like to see vanquished once and for all. Use your blog to debunk some of the most common myths/preconceptions/notions in your industry and set the record straight.

19. Talk to newbies. Picture yourself as a newbie in your industry once again. What do you know now that you didn't know then? What questions did you ask? What knowledge do you have that you think everyone knows? Getting back to the basics can help bring all of your blog readers up to speed.

20. Write about a client conversation. Many times I'm inspired to blog as an expansion or continuation of a conversation I had with a client. The blog post focuses on a topic of the conversation, not the conversation itself. Typically the strategy/idea/technique you've discussed with one client will benefit your blog readers as well.

This is just the tip of a very large iceberg of ideas for posts to your blog. Take a look around your life, your business, conversations with clients and colleagues, and what's happening in the world around you. You'll soon begin to see more potential for blog posts than you ever thought possible!

About The Author
Internet Marketing Strategist and Boomer Biz Coach Donna Gunter helps baby boomers create profitable online retirement businesses that they love by demystifying and simplifying the tools and strategies needed to market and grow their businesses online. To claim your FR*EE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at OnlineBizU.com . Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at AskDonnaGunter.com .

How to create trust for high Google rankings

Trust is a major factor in Google's ranking algorithm. Some websites can get high rankings on Google for nearly any content they publish while other websites cannot get high rankings at all although they have optimized web page content.

A high trust level is crucial if you want to get high Google rankings .

The reason why some websites do better than others is trust. Some websites have managed to reach a very high trust level with Google. That helps them to get higher rankings on search engines than you do.

Google doesn't want to list spam sites in the search results. For that reason, it is important to show Google that your website is for real, that you're not a spammer and that you plan to stay in business for a long time.

Here are some things you can do to show Google's algorithm that it can trust your website.

1. Things you should consider about your domain name

The age of a domain is important to Google. When you start a new online business, consider buying an old domain name if a suitable name is available.

If you start with a new domain, buy it with a renewal period of two years and more. You show Google that your domain is not a throwaway domain by doing so.

Check your WHOIS records and make sure that the contact information is correct. Do not use exotic top level domains. If you are in the USA, use .com, .net or .org. If you're in another country, use the official top level domain of your country.

Don't overuse hyphens in your URL. For example, www.keyword-keyword1-keyword2-keyword3-keyword4-keyword5.com might look spammy.

2. Things you should consider about your website content

Make your contact information easy to find on your website. List a full address and not only your email address on your website. The more information about your company can be found on your website, the more likely it is that it will be considered a real business.

Your website should have a privacy policy and terms and conditions (if applicable). Both should be linked from your sitemap.

Don't use doorway pages. They annoy search engine spiders and website visitors. Doorway pages are a clear indicator of a low quality website.

If possible, keep the HTML code of your web pages below 100 KB so that search engine spiders can crawl it easily. Regularly update your web pages to show Google that your website is alive.

3. Things you should consider about your links

Do not participate in automated linking schemes. If your website gets 2000 inbound links on a single day then Google might think that you try to game the algorithm with a link system.

The links to your website should contain your keywords but they should not all contain exactly the same link text. If all links to your website used exactly the same link text then this would be a red flag for Google.

Do not use paid links. Google does not like paid links and they might penalize your website if use them.

If Google trusts your website then it will be much easier to get high rankings. Of course, your website still needs optimized web page content and good inbound links. IBP can help you to get both.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Top SEO Mistakes

Following are the 9 Biggest SEO Mistakes which Web Designers & Web Developers should avoid.

Splash Page

I've seen this mistake many times where people put up just a big banner image and a link "Click here to enter" on their homepage. The worst case -- the "enter" link is embedded in the Flash object, which makes it impossible for the spiders to follow the link.

This is fine if you don't care about what a search engine knows about your site; otherwise, you're making a BIG mistake. Your homepage is probably your web site's highest ranking page and gets crawled frequently by web spiders. Your internal pages will not appear in the search engine index without the proper linking structure to internal pages for the spider to follow.

Your homepage should include (at minimum) target keywords and links to important pages.

Non-spiderable Flash Menus

Many designers make this mistake by using Flash menus such as those fade-in and animated menus. They might look cool to you but they can't be seen by the search engines; and thus the links in the Flash menu will not be followed.

Image and Flash Content

Web spiders are like a text-based browser, they can't read the text embedded in the graphic image or Flash. Most designers make this mistake by embedding the important content (such as target keywords) in Flash and image.

Overuse of Ajax

A lot of developers are trying to impress their visitor by implementing massive Ajax features (particularly for navigation purposes), but did you know that it is a big SEO mistake? Because, ajax content is loaded dynamically, so it is not spiderable or indexable by search engines.

Another disadvantage of Ajax -- since the address URL doesn't reload, your visitor can not send the current page to their friends.

Versioning of Theme Design

For some reason, some designers love to version their theme design into sub level folders (i.e. domain.com/v2, v3, v4) and redirect to the new folder. Constantly changing the main root location may cause you to lose backlink counts and ranking.

"Click Here" Link Anchor Text

You probably see this a lot where people use "Click here" or "Learn more" as the linking text. This is great if you want to be ranked high for "Click Here". But, if you want to tell the search engine that your page is important for a topic, than use, that topic/keyword in your link anchor text. It's much more descriptive (and relevant) to say "learn more about {keyword topic}"

Warning: Don't use the EXACT same anchor text everywhere on your website. This can sometimes be seen as search engine spam too.

Common Title Tag Mistakes

Same or similar title text:
Every page on your site should have a unique <title> tag with the target keywords in it. Many developers make the mistake of having the same or similar title tags throughout the entire site. That's like telling the search engine that EVERY page on your site refers to the same topic and one isn't any more unique than the other.

One good example of bad Title Tag use would be the default WordPress theme. In case you didn't know, the title tag of the default WordPress theme isn't that useful: Site Name > Blog Archive > Post Title. Why isn't this search engine friendly? Because, every single blog post will have the same text "Site Name > Blog Archive >" at the beginning of the Title Tag. If you really want to include the site name in the title tag, it should be at the end: Post Title | Site Name.

Exceeding the 65 character limit:

Many bloggers write very long post titles. So what? In search engine result pages, your title tag is used as the link heading. You have about 65 characters (including spaces) to get your message across or risk it getting cutoff.

Keyword stuffing the title:

Another common mistake people tend to make is overfilling the title tag with keywords. Saying the same thing 3 times doesn't make you more relevant. Keyword stuffing in the Title Tag is looked at as search engine spam (not good). But it might be smart to repeat the same word in different ways:

"Photo Tips & Photography Techniques for Great Pictures" "Photo" and "Photography" are the same word repeated twice but in different ways because your audience might use either one when performing a search query.

Empty Image Alt Attribute

You should always describe your image in the alt attribute. The alt attribute is what describes your image to a blind web user. Guess what? Search engines can't see images so your alt attribute is a factor in illustrating what your page is relevant for.

Hint: Properly describing your images can help your ranking in the image search results. For example, Google image search brings me hundreds of referrals everyday for the search terms "abstract" and "dj".

Unfriendly URLs

Most blog or CMS platforms have a friendly URL feature built-in, however, not every blogger is taking advantage of this. Friendly URL's are good for both your human audience and the search engines. The URL is also an important spot where your keywords should appear.

Example of Friendly URL: domain.com/page-title Example of Dynamic URL: domain.com/?p=12356

These things are the pillars of Search Engine Optimization and so to your web site's success path.

Robin Dale is the publisher for www.teeky.org

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Online Social Marketing

Social Marketing is a good way to make traffic, improve branding, Backword links (which helps to get top ranking in search engines. Here we are showing some popular bookmarking sites, on some sites you can make your profile also.

delicious.com
slashdot.org
digg.com
reddit.com
propeller.comc
onnotea.org
folkd.com
tumblr.com
mixx.com
furl.net
multiply.com
dzone.com
blinklist.com
online-promotion-services.com
mister-wong.rumister-wong.com
backflip.com
vesti24.eu
pipe.bg
smi2.ru
news2.ru
sphinn.com
clipclip.org
searchles.com
indianpad.com
spurl.net
bibsonomy.org
bobrdobr.ru
memori.ru
linkagogo.com
alltagz.de
moemesto.ru
kirtsy.com
spotback.com
fcc.comoyax.com
mylinkvault.com
cellphonenews2.com
sloger.net
buddymarks.com
myvmarks.com
newstube.de
smallbusinessbrief.com
toodoo.ruleenks.com
dropjack.com
joomocracy.com
faves.com
sitesays.com
site.oslikua.com/social/
monrate.ru
chipp.ru
coolstreaming.us/iptv/paie.
cnactualtopics.com
tabletpccounter.com
webmaster911.com
socialogs.com
linkarena.com
100zakladok.ru
chipmark.com
ho.tli.strambhai.com
a1webmarks.com
gaddiposh.com
toxiclemon.co.uk
chaamp.comsweepsgoat.com
feedblog.ru
turputevka.com
socialbookmarking.org
favman.de
koolontheweb.com
jackhumphrey.com/imnews/
easymash.com
iphonigg.com
politigg.us
politigg.co.uk
indiareporting.com
getigadget.com
demos.kubelabs.com/PHPDug/
gogurl.com
klickts.de
wolkenkratzer24.de
lieblnk.defaito.ru/
tagsthe-bookmarks.com
betplug.com
th3scoop.com
newscola.com
ipopu.com
blogreporter.bizn
khobor.com
seedz.org
marlat.de
blogstr.net

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Concepts You Should Know About Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is one of the best business opportunities available today. So here are some concepts you should know about internet marketing.

Internet marketing and web design objectives depend on your specific needs and goals and is vital to any online based business. They can dramatically drive qualified traffic to your website. There's no point having a great web site if no one visits it. Right? Driving traffic to your web site is not easy. It's extremely time consuming, and let's face it, it can be BORING.

Internet marketing, also referred to as web marketing, online marketing, or e-marketing, is the marketing of products or services over the internet which is sometimes considered to have a broader scope because it refers to digital media such as the internet, e-mail, and wireless media.
And it also includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) systems and ties together creative and technical aspects of the internet, including design, development, advertising, and sales. This does not simply entail building or promoting a website, nor does it mean placing a banner ad on another website.

Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing, and Web 2.0 to name a few.
It is associated with several business models such as e-commerce where goods are sold directly to consumers or businesses, publishing - the sale of advertising, lead-based websites - where an organization generates value by acquiring sales leads from its website, and affiliate marketing where a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.

Internet marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to the ratio of cost against the reach of the target audience. As as of 2007 it's growing faster than other types of media. It does require customers to use newer technologies rather than traditional media and has had a growing impact on the electoral process as well. Especially in our most recent Presidential Campaign.

How does YOUR website stack up in terms of internet marketing readiness? Content and website copy-writing is crucial to your website marketing plan, user experience, navigation and overall success.

Internet marketing is remarkably different from conventional advertising and our unique ability is the delivery of completely customized internet marketing and e-Commerce solutions and strategies for effective and real lead generation for your business. Internet marketing starts right from the initial design concept for your new website. This is something that most simply overlook but it is a very important concept that should be addressed.

Businesses that jump into the ocean and start marketing online to stay competitive don't drown in the turbulent waves left behind them. However, they often notice two things. One is that they're not gradually getting more and more referrals from the search engines, and two, that their websites aren't turning enough visitors into customers. Successful internet marketing of your products and services is not easily accomplished. However, with the right knowledge, support, tools and software it can be!

About the AuthorSharyce Arciaga is the Author of this Article and has an extensive 20 year background in the area of Sales and Marketing. Is your Internet Marketing campaign faltering? Get yourself on the right track to success! Make sure to take the Video Tour!

Thursday, February 5, 2009

How to Find the Best Available Domain Names

Domain name is the clue for your online business. You don¢t need to have visual clues such a location, no look, and no store design. Instead, users have to type in a word or a set of words to reach your site. Choosing a domain name is a very critical part of your website¢s marketing strategy. Since thousands of domain names are registered everyday, it¢s really very difficult to get a domain name of single phrase in English language and other major languages.

How to find the best available domain names? This is one of a lot of questions that surround the field of domain name. Today, as the domain names continue to create a certain impact to people, many of them were asking the domain name experts on how to get a domain name for a certain web site. Given such fact, I have some answers here not only for the problem on how to get a domain name for a web site, but also this will give you an idea on how to find an available domain name which is good and interesting. There some tricks to find the best available domain names.

Search Expired Domain

Why do we have to search expired domain? First, because search engine like Google has a verifiable system of grading domain names according to their age, and second reason is because old domain has already listed in search engine, so your website will indexed fast. But of course, searching expired domain isn¢t easy to do. You have to search it by using tools or sites which have a large number of expired domains database. The result screen will allow you to do an advanced search that has many options to narrow down the results. You can make your searching become specific that it returns expired domain names with no numbers that start with a certain amount of characters long.

Use Available Domain Names Resource

Most of good domain names are already registered and owned by someone. You don¢t need to despair because with some lucks you would be able to get some good domain names by backordering domain names about to expire in anticipation that the domain would be deleted and made available again.

In fact, you need a few times to wait for backorder result. I prefer to find domain name in some available domain name resources. As we all know, there are a lot of domain name sources, but PremiumAvailables.com is one of my favorite sites which regularly publish the best available domain name list for free. You can see there are a lot of regular and premium domains with the best available name. Premium available site also offers professional domain investment advice. For those who actually bother reading their page instead of just taking the names and flying, they give us a tip, the domains in bold are their pick of the list. So, you can find some available domain names easily for your sites and begin to make the best online business site.

Author Biography: Article by PremiumAvailables.com is a Premium Availabes Domains Source offers Professional Domain Investment Advice list.