Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Great SEO Tips That Work

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization also known as SEO almost all website technicians have heard of it and wish that they could do it as well. Well guess what, SEO is possible to do to your website, you just have to keep in mind that SEO isn’t all the website is made up of. You will also have to keep up with the website in general and not focus too much on the SEO where the web page gets outdated.

First you have to focus on the keywords. A keyword is the word that you will be using a lot in the Web page text. In 250 word texts on your web page use the keyword about 5-15%, You may think that there is no such thing as using a keyword in your web page text too many times, but the truth is that you can. Using the keyword in your web page text too many time can create the negative effect from what you are wanting. You may discourage people away from your web page and they may not be able to find it if you use that keyword too many times.

When it comes to great SEO tips that work something else to concentrate on is maybe to find someone who will compose the SEO text for your website for you, you could pay a friend or family member a little bit of extra money to write the SEO text for you, make sure you tell them exactly what you want and what you are looking for and if the first time they mess up, or perhaps even the second time isn’t quit what you want, don’t discourage them away from it because at least you have the base of some type of SEO script to go by. Nothing will be the way you want it unless you do it, so of course there will be a bit of editing to do to an SEO if you have someone else do it.



Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_215606_62.html

Great SEO Tips To Keep In Mind

Perhaps you have just created a web page and you have found that it is not creating enough hits that you thought it would have created by now. This may be because you are not using enough SEO scripts on your web page.

When you using Search Engine Optimization you will want to have about 5% of 250 words in your article focused on the keyword. The keyword would be what you are wanting to search engine to find on your website. You will have to find the time to calculate how much keyword density is used throughout your site, you can do this easily by finding a keyword density calculator, or maybe you could do this by looks.

If you are not able to include the exact phrase in part of your text you will at least want to try and aim to get the word close to what your keyword is. Your keywords will not be picked up at all if you don’t at least aim close to it. Try not to bury your keyword text at the bottom of your page as well, always try to include it in the top and also, when you are using the keyword try not to use it TOO many times in your text, this can create a negative effect from what you are looking for.

Keywords are the main source when it comes to the text on your web page being found more often in a website. If you are looking for your web page counter to rack up in hits then you may want to try SEO and put a lot of those keywords on your page. Also remember that when you are focusing on your SEO you may be taking the time away from your regular web page usability, so watch out and keep your web page up to date as well.


Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_215607_62.html

Web Analytics Solutions

In this global arena websites are mushrooming and its analysis and monitoring would be a burning issue if technology and WWW had not gifted us with free online web analytics tools.

Web Analytics is a measuring tool, a metric that measures all the activities on a website, tracks visitors and monitors them. Getting a figure and statistics of your web site will help you promote your online business.

The two main technologies accepted these days are: Web server log file analysis and Page-tagging. Irrespective of technologies used the web statistics serves the same, difference lies in some extra added flexibility and rich interactivity.

In general, web log file analysis lets you generate statistics report in your desirable format, import the report and save on your system. We can view the complete website stats from the first day of visit to last day website is accessed. These stats will include number of unique visitors, number of visits, clicks, pages, hits and bandwidth.

First understand what log analysis is?? Web Log analyzer parses web server (apache, IIS) log files (web transactions i.e. when visitors are on your site) and generates report of how and when websites are accessed by the unique visitors.

Starting from website history which may span from an hour record to years record, you can view these statistics record in different graphical form. The stat also gives you information about the geographical locations from where visitors are coming to your website. Not only visits but visit duration can also be measured. For which keyword your website is searched the most, website bandwidth consumed, web browser through which visitors are coming, referring sites, HTTP status code are various statistical segments covered. You can filter this report for specific country, region or cities. You can also check from which IP address clicks are coming, filter out traffic from your own IP. You can give access to different users; can filter result by eliminating user from specific IP address.
Web server log file analysis technology produces detail stats in ASCII or HTML format. Web log files are generated on the server where your site hosts, these log file may be in plain text format or in zip format, user can download it on local host and with the help of analytics tool it can be converted in form of organized report and can be easily readable. With the help of these tools log reports can be generated offline also if you have web log files. Various tools are used to convert log files into organized reports, few of them are:

123 Log Analyzer: this does not require any set for configuration, supports logs from server farms; visitor’s geographical statistics, powerful data mining filter are its important features.

Absolute Log Analyzer: This tool is most suited for large websites with unlimited domains. This tool helps you generate 160 detailed reports, instant customization filter, parsing filter and combine several log files into single log file are its important features.

Affinium NetInsight: This log analysis tool is used in large enterprises across channels supported by hosting solutions.

AlterWind Log Analyzer: This tool analyzes web log files of any format and can produce separate report for SEO, Web Promotion and PPC by gathering information from its extensive database covering almost all countries and these reports can also be customized.

Analog: This tool can analyze files from major servers. It is one of the most widely used web log file analyzer because of its several unique features; it can work on any operating system, report can be generated in 32 languages and is highly scalable.

AWFFull: This is also a free web log file analysis tool and mostly used to generate simple reports. No additional set is required but requires additional libraries.

AWStats: This log analysis tool can be used to analyze log files and generate web stats, FTP and email statistics reports in graphical format.

ClickTracks: This tool also uses web log files to visually analyze website visitor’s behavior. You can see instant stats of ROI, PPC, SEO and campaigns.

FastStats:This tool is basically used for health websites.

Sawmill: Sawmill is very old and most reliable universal web log file analyzer that analysis web server, mail server and monitors security and provides most scalable and flexible solutions.

Visitors: Very fast web log file analyzer tool that is designed to be executed by the command line, output html and text reports and can process more than lakhs of lines per second.

WebAbacus: This tool provides detailed analysis of visitor’s behavior and browser usage.

Webalizer: This software also generates analysis report based on web log files generated by web servers. The stats can be viewed at different time frames geographically.

W3Perl: This is also free tool for website analysis, ftp and mail analysis and record statistics.

Xlogan: Website statistics and analysis is done using web log files.

SurfStats: If you are looking for web server, proxy server or media logs analysis tools – surfStats can generate web statistics and web analytics reports.

But these tools have their own limitation: you can only check but cannot track or monitor these stats figure. Emergence of search engine spiders, dynamic IP addresses, web proxies, web caches made it very difficult to identify unique visitors. Log file accuracy was topic of concern with page cache running in parallel. Example, if you wish to see the landing page, complete path from where and how visitors reached your website it is not possible with web log file analysis technology.

Web Analytics tool based on Page-tagging technology:

MatrixStats: Online web analyzer that is based on page-tagging technique. It is a comprehensive approach to generate a graphical web analysis report. This tool tries to minimize traffic volume just by accounting for sessions not hits and monitor your website performance.
Tracking will help to see who is currently on your website and track visitor’s behavior. A complete report based on the history of sessions, page usage, browser usage, OS usage can be generated.

PHP Web Statistik: Again, this is online web analytics tool based on page-tagging technology and uses php script with other modular web stats. The log function works with java script image or native php. This tool can cache file pages, can handle cookie, review code, protect password. This is free online tool and can supports linux, windows, freebsd, osx, sun.

Urchin: Urchin analyzes traffic to your website from various other websites and generates reports that are very easy to understand and tracks and extracts contents behind the firewall. But Urchin 6 that will be soon released will be paid.

www.onestatfree.com: Password protected web analytic tool that analyzes, tracks and generates analytics reports, just inserting a piece of code is added in the source code that tracks website activities.

clickbench.com: This is one of the most reliable web traffic measuring tool that provides demographic metrics and statistics, hosted web analytics, online site analytics, visitor click analysis, of your website.
The need to monitor, track activities and filter statistics result lead to adoption of new technology of Page-Tagging.

WebTrends: It is used to provide web statistics and leading web analytics solutions. This tool lets you improve your conversion rate and maximize your ROI.


Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_215619_62.html

Meta Tag Optimisation – Mainstay of your SEO Campaign

Meta tags are HTML codes that comprise the main keywords and phrases of a web page. Optimisation of these tags is imperative in order to secure better rankings on search engine result pages. These tags, although invisible to web users, are used by search engine spiders for crawling and indexing purposes. Therefore, the more optimised your meta tags are, the better will be your chances of getting high rankings.

Search engine optimisers ought to pay attention to all kinds of meta tags – title, description and keyword tags. These tags help search engines identify the purpose of the website. The words or phrases used in meta tags imply the content of the page itself. They provide you the opportunity of working around the process of optimisation and rake in increased profits for your site.

Title Tag
It is the text displayed on the top of your Internet browser window when someone clicks on a page. It is also the text that gets captured when a page is bookmarked. It is usually taken as 60 characters by popular search engines. Cover your main keywords and phrases in these many characters so as to increase the relevancy of your page. According to SEO service providers, you should use important keywords in the beginning of the tag so that it is displayed in bold on SERPs.

Description Tag
It is the descriptive text placed as an HTML code, and summarises the content of your web page. Web users always prefer to read through the description before opening a link. The text used for description tag should be appealing enough to tempt a visitor into clicking a page. Within 25-30 words, write a brief and informative description.

Keywords Tag
Take help from keyword selection tools available online and make a keyword list of your own. Search engine optimisation experts insist that these words should be both competitive and traffic oriented. Along with incorporating these keywords in the content of your page, you should use them in the keywords tag so as to attract crawlers and get your page indexed.

Apart from the aforementioned tags, a website can also have a 'robots' tag which allows webmasters to secure pages that they do not wish to get crawled or indexed by search engines. Adhere to guidelines set by search engines and you can actually manipulate your rankings through simple optimisation techniques.



Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_217903_62.html

SEO Forums - A Way of Web Promotion

Forums are useful resource to promote and market your business enterprise. Forums are good means to increase back links and visitors for your website. The other benefit is that you can discuss your problem with a large segment of experts and specialists. For this it is necessary to make the use of best forums available online. Looking for the best forums and posting in these, there are certain key factors which need to be kept in mind.

Always look for those forums that are associated with your business enterprise. This will be beneficial for your website when you will associate yourself with the forum having the relevant connection with your website theme. The forums related with your business will increase knowledge about the terms and activities related to your business.

Find those forums that have solid reputation and good page rank. It is generally seen that some forums do not have good reputation. Quality forum sites always attract more visitors and create constructive and healthy participation. More ever you can find quality article links and constructive evidence of participants to prove their points.

Forums create an atmosphere of active participation. You can get opinions and solutions from experts and specialists for any problem or query. Find those forums that are very active and create large memberships. This depends on the status of forum websites.

Forum posting need certain factors to be kept in mind. Always read the necessary guidelines in the forums before posting. There are general notifications to be followed in posting. When you are posting for the first time it is good to introduce yourself and then start active postings in the forum of discussions with other members. The status of the participant goes on increasing with the increase in the number of forums posted.

Always do the relevant and topic related postings which suits best with the associated category otherwise there are chances of getting forum banned or blocked by the experts moderator. You can put your website link in the signature of forums but do care about the number of words allowed for signatures. Other factor is never start a new thread for a topic which already exists. Such threads are stopped as moderator does not want to create duplicacy in threads.

It is advised not to submit any harsh, irritating and taunting comments in forums. It disturbs the healthy discussion environment. Also never give humourous comments as it disturbs the seriousness of the topic. The mediator may ban such forums. Try to provide a topic with enough proof and evidence that attracts more and more participants. This will inspire more and more members to participate in your forum thread and thus increase the length of your thread.

Keeping all these guidelines in mind you will be able to utilize the best forums which assists you in overall marketing and promotion of your business enterprise.



Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_217654_62.html

Сompetitive analysis of a market niche by means of Serparchive.

Starting with promotion web-site in search systems, all the companies face a problem of choosing keywords in the market niche. Each of them has a certain choice for promotion. It is possible to take hight-frequency, middle- and low-frequency words and phrases. However low frequency of inquiry not means slight competition. Therefore to calculate the budget on promotion correctly, the level of competition in a niche should be estimated separately.
Traditionally for this purpose seo-experts use such methods, as analysing of internal parameters of competitors, and mainly, quantity and quality of their backlinks by various search systems versions.
It is obvious that it is necessary to analyze closely only leaders by the chosen search inquiries. For this purpose it is necessary to know, that the company is the leader for the long time, holds stable positions and had position at the top not by chance and not only for the short time.
It is possible to receive this data only conducting a long-term monitoring of SERP. Such monitoring is hard to manually conduct, especially if it is necessary to know changes in SERP by ten and more search inquiries. The opportunity of such monitoring conducting automatically gives Serparchive.org. By this system it is possible to monitor changes in Google, MSN, and Yahoo SERPs.
Serparchive.org daily stores 100 first SERP results on given keywords and chases all changes. Thus, once having created the project in system, in certain time it is possible to start the analysis of the received results. And it is possible to choose for competitive comparison those web-sites which are top leaders in a long time.
Besides this, by means of Serparchive.org it is possible to define a level of inquiry competition, if positions at the top are immovable. Thus it is possible to make a conclusion that if in the long time there are no moving in SERP, or there are insignificant positions displacement between leaders (despite of the big inflow of competitors to this niche, and beginners appear in SERP only after top-20), it’s the really hight level of competition. And to move down in SERP of such strong rivals, the really big budget is essential.
If beginners regularly hit at the top, top is enough mobile and only three up to five resources hardly stand at their’s position – that is a chance to entrench at the top.

For example, if we take in competitive ringtones subject-matter the most high-frequency keywords:
• Cellphone ringtones;
• Nokia ringtones;
and scan within one and a half or two weeks these key inquiries in Google, it is possible to see the following:
The key inquiry «Cellphone ringtones» is characterized by sufficient stability. Displacement in top 10 are insignificant and within the limits of first ten players, there are no new web-sites at the top, active competitive struggle begins at the top20-30.
http://www.serparchive.org/?context=google&action=results&keyword=513487&filter=1&title=Cellphone%20ringtones&year=2007&month=09&day=13 *
The key inquiry « Nokia ringtones», differs smaller stability. There are new sites in the SERP, leaders of top10 get drop out of 100 first results, etc.
http://www.serparchive.org/?context=google&action=results&keyword=513503&filter=1&title=Nokia%20ringtones&year=2007&month=09&day=13
Thus it is possible to make a preliminary conclusion that it will be easier to begin the leader on trademark «mitsubishi». After that it is possible to confirm the theory further, applying other analysis tools.

*The link it is accessible for the registered users, registration is free-of-charge.


Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_217241_62.html

Using Google to Reach Your Target Market

Using Google to reach your Target Market

If all it took was a good idea to make a web site successful, millions of web sites would not fail in the first couple of years.

In reality, the web site is a very important component in the marketing of a business. For most of us who are selling B2B it is not the only tool in our marketing toolbox. However, most businesses are under utilizing this tool simply because they are not getting found by the people who are searching for the solutions they offer.

Most ad agencies and corporate marketing departments take the time to carefully plan who they are trying to reach and painstakingly craft what their message is. They detail why their company is the right choice to provide solutions to the potential client’s challenges. Many have a good grasp on when they want the customer to act by creating a call to action such as downloading a white paper or scheduling a demonstration.

Where many miss the mark is in the How to reach their on-line target market. They drive people to their sites from Trade Shows, mailings, trade publication advertising, public relations and other largely offline methods. Where many come up short is in getting the free traffic that is available to them from the search engines like Google.

Search engine optimization is the science/art of getting your site found on the search engine results pages when they search for the words that are related to you or your offerings. The search engines do not charge for this traffic.

Search engine marketing is buying ads on the search engine results pages IE: Google Ad Words to get listings. The price for ranking is as low as $.10 per “click” but competitive terms can cost several dollars per “click”.

Many web sites have not been optimized and they are not utilizing the tools or making the adjustments to the site that allow the search engines to send them free traffic.

Below is a quick 6 step assessment to determine if your site could benefit from Search Engine Optimization.

1. When the content of the site was created, were the words and phrases that are important to be found by customers and prospects woven into the copy of the pages?
Yes No
2. Does the URL of your web site contain one or more of the keywords that are important for your site to be found under? (IE: www.yourcompany.com)
Yes No
3. When you look at the pages of your site do the words displayed in the title bar (blue bar across the very top of the page) accurately describe the topic of the page, and do they change from page to page? Yes No
4. Do you have an online press release optimization plan in place?
Yes No
5. Can you find yourself in the top 3 pages for the five search terms, excluding your company name, that are most important to getting found by your potential customers?
Yes No
6. Do you use a tool to measure where traffic came from and the behavior of site visitors including conversion?
Yes No
0-3 Uh Oh, you need help and you need it now. The longer you wait the deeper your competitors - anyone who comes up higher than you do for your search terms, gets entrenched and takes more business from you.

3-4 There is a lot of room for improvement and your site can most certainly generate more leads by getting found by the people looking for your solutions.

If you scored 5+ Congratulations! Chances are that your company is doing very well and has a well thought out site that is keeping hr pipeline filled with quality leads.



Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_217030_62.html

Blast negative publicity off Google & Yahoo with these insider SEO tips

Somewhere out in cyberspace an unknown or known associate, competitor or just plain slanderously natured individual has written a particularly damning or negative article/blog about yourself or your business and posted it on the internet.

So what happens next? The nature of the beast is that the major search engines will index and crawl all of the content on the internet regardless of whether it is good content, relevant or controversial. The next thing you know when Googling your name up comes the offending article or blog on the first page of search engine results.

Annoying is an ‘understatement’ this type of negative publicity has the potential to damage your business reputation and your ability to attract new clients. The bigger problem is that unless the negative article or entry is removed from the site it is posted on it will remain index-able and searchable by the major search engines for as long as the content exists and this could equate to a number of years.

First up, don’t panic there are a number of positive SEO remedies that you can employ to counteract the slanderous attempts of these individuals and their effect on the search engines. Unfortunately with the Internet there is limited recourse by a targeted individual or business to defend their reputation especially when articles are written by so called ‘consumer advocates’ or vigilantes doing the public a ‘service’ yet able to post anything on their websites regardless of the dire effects it may have on the targeted individual involved and their business.

SEO Remedies to tackle negative internet publicity…

STEP 1 – If the article or blog is genuinely slanderous and has no truth or merit then approach the website owner posting the entry and ask for it to be removed. Legal representation and legal advice may be necessary to protect your business. A well written letter from your lawyer or a threat of legal action may be enough impetus to persuade the website owner to remove the post. However be aware that if unsuccessful it may encourage the author of such articles to focus more attention on you so it may be more prudent to try steps 2 to 5 first.

STEP 2 – Examine the keywords within the offending article to see what is being picked up by the search engines, this will normally be your name and/or business name. This is easy to check by clicking on the ‘cached’ entry next to the search engine listing. The keywords indexed by the search engine will be highlighted on the cached page and show you exactly what the search engine is indexing and crawling from the article or blog. These keywords (name or business name or both) will be the focus of your SEO Band-Aid treatment. To push the negative listing off the first page of results on Google and Yahoo you will need to create as many new listings as possible on the Internet to be picked up by the major search engines.

STEP 3 – Start with ‘free classified ad’ listings and post your new ads under the category of business services. Include your name and business name in the body of the free classified ad plus a relevant keyword title specific to your industry or business service provision. Free classified ad listings will show up on search engine results within the first week of posting them on the internet. Complete as many free classified ads as possible and post them for the longest duration possible.

STEP 4 – Write some free articles on your area of business or industry expertise remembering to include an eye catching title and your name and business name in the content of the article and author bio. Post these articles on your website and on free article submission sites, the more the better. Make sure you allow your free articles to be syndicated for content to other sites. This improves the opportunities for your article being listed on several internet sites which has a domino effect, boosting your search engine rankings and the positive listings picked up by the major search engines. If this still does not remedy the problem then proceed to Step 5.

STEP 5 – Create as many free directory listings on the internet as possible under your applicable service or product category. Use the same title and keyword text as your free classified ads remembering to mention your business name and name if possible. You can manually find free directories by performing searches on Google and Yahoo or alternatively use a directory submitting tool such as ‘Submiteaze’ (www.submiteaze.com) which is reasonably priced.

The results from employing these SEO strategies may be instantaneous. Unless the offending article or post has been prevalent in the search engine listings for a number of years (2 or more), then expect the recovery process to take up to 6 months of concentrated SEO effort to bump this listing off the first page of results on Google and Yahoo.

If all else fails…

Employ Step 1 and if that fails then lets hope in the very near future that just like ‘spam’ slanderous material posted on the internet becomes a reportable offence to the major search engines, government bodies and consumer watch dogs. And the consequences for engaging in such underhanded practices results in a site being dropped from the search engines and classified as a ‘bad neighborhood site’ plus a monetary fine of such magnitude as to deter the practice. If a site can’t be indexed or is banned by the search engines then it effectively becomes ‘voiceless’ and the power to publicly affect an individual’s livelihood or a business’s profits, growth and sales is then vastly diminished. Noting, that a banned site would still have the opportunity to remove any offensive or slanderous material and then reapply to be indexed by the search engines.

It may be argued that the search engines are not responsible for this problem, well as the most influential body on the internet with the most power to help who else are we to turn to? The print and television media are unable to publicly slander an individual or business without facing retribution via legal action and a public outcry so why should the Internet be free of same accountability?



http://www.articlealley.com/article_216868_62.html

ROI Tracking

The Return On Investment Tracking will simply, and affordably assist you in finding out whether your advertising campaigns brings you paying customers or just happening in visitors. ROI Tracking offers real-time reporting that brings each of your advertising to conformity with the campaign origin, containing unlimited number of actions. You can now track any advertising campaigns, from typical Pay Per Click to banner campaigns or paid listing in web archives. Keyword tracking is also available.

ROI tracking and reporting can support the evolution of your website into an efficient, effective marketing powerhouse, lowering the cost of getting visitors to your site and converting them into customers. Below some of the ways accurate, detailed ROI tracking and reporting can apply to your online marketing.

Search engine optimization results - Bid management and keyword selection are more effective when you have hard data to back your decisions. Compare results from organic search engine ranking, paid inclusion, and pay-per-click ads to hone your search marketing strategy.

Online sales analysis - Detailed tracking gives you insight into the effectiveness of your online sales channel. Find where customers abandon shopping carts. See which products may need better descriptions, which promotions didn't meet conversion goals--and learn how to improve sales.

Online marketing campaign performance - Evaluate conversion metrics and response results from email marketing, online advertising, and affiliate and partner programs. Duplicate campaign successes, avoid costly mistakes.

Customer segmentation - Identify differences in behavior, objectives, and preferences within your audience. Target your most valuable customer segments with the right messages. Know how to treat customers from each segment to build and retain a strong customer base.

Customer support performance - Optimize your online customer support channel with metrics that show visitor paths and conversions. You'll be better equipped to improve customer satisfaction for online issue resolution, reducing the cost of support.

The ROI tracking system can track the following type of online advertisements:

* Pay-Per-Click search engine ads

* Free listings in search engines

* Shopping Engines

* Ads or links on other websites such as banner campaigns

* Email Newsletter campaigns

ROI Tracking every spent dollar will dramatically increase your profitability, longevity, and marketing punch. Below is the list of features of the ROI Tracking -

* Setup within a few minutes

* Track any marketing campaign

* Keyword campaigns tracking

* Multiple web site monitoring

* Campaign wizard

* Automatic code generation

* Database data storing

* Clients (sales) and leads statistic

* Campaign comparative analysis

* Complete financial report

* No traffic limitations


http://www.articlealley.com/article_216679_62.html

25 Tips to Increase Conversion Rates

Site owners spend so much time and money on search engine optimization that they often leave conversion optimization to chance. They're happy with a 1% - 2% conversion rate, the typical rate for smaller sites. Converting visitors to buyers is part science, part art. No one formula fits all sites but here are 25 tips that will boost conversion rates on most

  1. Keep it simple. The simpler it is for visitors to complete a purchase the more purchases (and fewer shopping cart abandonments) you'll see. Make it simple to find the product and go through the checkout process.

  2. Provide complete contact information including a telephone number. Buyers want to know you're real and they want to know how to reach you in case of a problem.

  3. Provide encouragement throughout the checkout process. The best way to do this is to let buyers know what stage of checkout they've reached, and to provide them with highlighted signage to let them know what to do next.

  4. Use product pictures in shopping carts. This reminds visitors what's in their carts. It also reinforces, in the visitor's mind, the reason(s) for the purchase.

  5. Link back to the product page. After an item has been placed in the shopping cart, the visitor should be able to click on the item and be directed back to the product page in a new window for example. This makes buying comparisons easier and ensures the visitor has the right item for his/her needs without leaving the shopping cart.

  6. Don't keep shipping costs a secret. Nothing kills a conversion faster than a $19.95 shipping and handling charge on a $10 item. Provide shipping cost information on the first page of the checkout.

  7. Is it backordered? The visitor finally reaches the end of the checkout only to discover that the item isn't in stock. Do you think they'll come back when the item comes in? They won't.

  8. Provide complete product information including sizes, colors, styles and other product descriptors. This will cut down on product returns because buyers will know what they're actually purchasing. Avoid hyping products for the same reason.

  9. Keep terms of service (TOS) simple and unambiguous. What's your guarantee? What's your return policy? Eliminate the boilerplate and give them the facts.

  10. Provide a menu of payment gateways. Not all buyers want to pay by credit card. Some don't even have a credit card. Buyers should be given the option to pay by debit card, personal check (snail mail), PayPal and other similar services, bank transfer and, if the want to stop by to pick it up, you'll even take cash.

  11. Never blame the buyer. When a potential buyer clicks on the wrong link, or forgets to enter all data fields, put up a message explaining the problem and how to fix it. The customer is always right and it's always your fault. Period.

  12. Offer gift cards. Some buyers just don't know what to buy as a gift. A gift card solves the problem.

  13. Use real testimonials. If you're doing it right, you've gotten good feedback from some buyers. Ask permission to use their testimonials. Don't use fake testimonials signed by Diane E., California. It's an obvious fake testimonial.

  14. Provide a customer service line. Outsource it if it isn't part of the budget but buyers want to know there's help in setting it up, whatever "it" is.

  15. Avoid distracting links. If your home page is crammed with PPC ads and links to other sites, it's distracting and you'll see a lot more bounces (visitors who never get past the home page).

  16. Offer incentives. Free shipping encourages buyers. So do upgrades, i.e. "Spend at least $50 and receive 10% off your entire purchase." Some buyers will do the math and figure out they're getting something for half price.

  17. Welcome repeat visitors by name. Your customer data base is filled with solid gold information including names, purchase amounts, items purchased and so on. First, welcome a return buyer by name. Then, offer suggestions for purchase based on individual buying histories. (See Amazon.com for examples of using data base information to boost conversion ratios.)

  18. Provide a currency converter. Not all buyers will be using your country's currency. Make it easy to convert from euros to drachmas to dollars.

  19. Offer a free newsletter. Your regular buyers will appreciate it when they're notified ahead of time of upcoming specials, new product launches and other site related information.

  20. Add a forum. This is a great way for buyers to share information, make recommendations and complain. It's also a great way for you to handle complaints quickly, with the resolution posted right there on the complaint thread.

  21. Provide informational content on your site. This establishes your credentials and credibility as an authority, whether you're selling kayaks or bake ware.

  22. Learn from your competitors. Visit the sites of more-established competitors to see what they're doing to convert. How is the homepage designed? Navigation? Checkout? You can't copyright an idea so you might as well "borrow" from the best.

  23. Improve site stickiness. In other words, give buyers a reason to return. Some suggestions? The Sale of the Day, Tip of the Day, Your Horoscope, This Day in History, etc. This keeps your site green and visitors returning.

  24. Let buyers post product reviews. Nothing sells better than a positive review from another buyer. Of course, the converse is true, too. Nothing will kill a sale faster than a bad review. And if a product receives lots of bad reviews, drop it from your product line.

  25. Target your site's skin to your demographic. If you're selling collectible knives, your site should have a certain "look" and that look doesn't include pastels and prissy type. Big, bold and manly — that's the way to go. On the other hand, if you're selling needlepoint patterns, a nice pastel background with little flowers works perfectly.

Search engine optimization is designed to attract search engine spiders. It's also intended to ensure that your site is accurately and completely optimized. But, once traffic arrives on site, conversion optimization takes over.

Keep it simple. Keep it easy. Keep it honest. Not only will you see a boost in conversion ratio, you'll also see a nice pop in return buyers. And they're the best buyers any web site owner could ask for.


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How Important Is Alexa Ranking?

All businesses that have taken up online marketing aim at improving their conversion rate. Now, there are different ways of attracting targeted traffic. Some go for a good place in the SERPs, others like to know that their site receives heavy traffic. Either way, everybody has this goal of achieving financial success.

But, while scoring high with Google may seem to certain business people the only way to make themselves known and thus reaching their goal, there are others that think that a good place in the Alexa ranking system might benefit them just as well.

What is Alexa Ranking?

This is a ranking system set by alexa.com (a subsidiary of amazon.com ) that basically audits and makes public the frequency of visits on various Web sites. The algorithm according to which Alexa traffic ranking is calculated is simple. It is based on the amount of traffic recorded from users that have the Alexa toolbar installed over a period of three months.

This traffic is based on such parameters as reach and page views. The reach refers to the number of Alexa users who visit a particular site in one day. Page view, as its name shows, is the number of times a particular page (URL) is viewed by Alexa users. Alexa.com makes it clear though that, if a particular user visits the same URL multiple times on the same day, all those visits will be counted as one.

The first step of the ranking process is calculating the reach and number of page views for all the sites on the Web on a daily basis. The Alexa ranking is obtained by performing the geometric mean of reach and page views, averaged over a predefined period of time (three months).

How Alexa Ranking Works

It's quite easy to get started. All you have to do is visit the alexa.com site and download (and install) the Alexa toolbar . This toolbar offers a search function but it mainly displays the rank (at a global level) of the visited site, as well as the sites that have been visited by Web surfers that are linked in some way to the site being visited.

The Alexa toolbar not only displays information, but it also sends data to the central server. Thus, each time you visit a Web page via a Web browser (be it Internet Explorer or Firefox) that has the toolbar installed, information is sent to the server indicating your IP and the page you are visiting. Such data is gathered from all the Web user who have the Alexa toolbar.

With Alexa, the smaller the numerical ranking, the better. Most people say that if you manage to make it in the top 100,000, it is a sign that your site enjoys quite heavy traffic.

Is Alexa Ranking Worth Anything?

Benefits
• As opposed to Google's PageRank, the lower your ranking number, the better.
• It helps Webmasters and advertisers see the true marketing potential of your Web site. The better your Alexa rank, the higher they will be willing to bid to buy advertising space on your Web site.
• Personal pages or blogs are taken into consideration and ranked in the same manner as regular Web sites. They will even get a distinctive mark (*)
• Given that Alexa ranking offers you information about your Web site, it is a good tool to have in view of search engine optimization.



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Google Crawlers and Stray Cats

A favorite topic that I write about is advice for small business website owners to add fresh content often for the benefit of their visitors. Those visitors include search engine crawlers, and the search engine optimization value is enhanced by adding new content frequently. A small business blog is the perfect way to create new site content, and making a post once a week may give you an edge over your competition.

Consider how many of your small business competitors have a blog. The majority do not. If you are a blogger, a weekly post could be the key advantage beating out the competition and attracting new prospects to your website.

Let's compare Google crawlers and stray cats with this fun analogy to illustrate the value of providing visitors with tidbits of advice compared to seeing a stray cat near your home and tossing it a small chunk of steak. Do it again each night for 2-3 days. Skip a day and do it again and eventually that cat will come back every day even if you toss the scrap of steak once a week. Search engines are no different. Fresh content, no matter how small, attracts search engines to your site more often.

Here's an example of the value of posting fresh blog content often. Search Google for tips shooting Moose+Maine and view results. As of the date this article was published, my personal blog was listed #3 and #4 on Google page one out of 353,000 results. It may be different as you read this, yet my Growin' Up in Maine bog is probably still on page one. Here's an explanation of why the results were exceptional which may relate to your small business website or blog because that personal site hasn't been around very long.

The storytelling blog was a test site for customizing templates and graphics for the new Blogger, and after a couple of weeks my plan was to scrap it. The topic is childhood stories and it ended up being fun, so I kept it online. The Google page one search results for the moose tips happened when the blog was less than 6 months old, yet by adding new posts at least once a week the new content attracted search engines with high ranking, and perhaps an occasional stray cat.

What's the moral of this story? Get in the habit of feeding Google crawlers once a week and your valuable posts with advice and expert small business content may just give you an edge. If your competition does not have a blog, the search engines are more likely to favor you and drive traffic your way.

Tip: Do not use your small business blog for personal posts with off topic subjects like your vacation, a great restaurant, or anything unrelated to your site theme. While perhaps cute, unrelated content may dilute search results when people search for your real product or service.

The most common mistake I see in new small business blogs is a lack of discipline, and misunderstanding of the true value of posting often. Some owners launch a blog and become distracted with day to day activities that bring immediate income. This is necessary from a tactical standpoint. Revenue means survival. However, blogging needs to become a habit in order to enjoy the strategic long term benefits. Post weekly and the value will continue to grow over time.

Writing may not be fun for you. It may not be your top priority. Once you make blog posting a routine, you may be amazed that writing actually becomes easier each time. Looking back at my posts I can see how the style and slant of my advice has evolved and improved. It can for you, too, and the seo or search engine optimization value makes the effort worthwhile, so do it.

In conclusion, the Google crawlers are no different than that stray cat. Feed them quality content often and they are certain to come back to reward you with results based on your contributions. Previous articles I wrote may help you jump start your blog and get over writers block, too.

Here's some final advice. Search using quote marks for "Small Business Blog Integration Advice" or "Small Business Blog Writing Tips" to find these articles I wrote that are published in a number of article directories. Blogging for small business is worth your time because it is a low cost way to add new content often with significant seo benefits to follow.


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Professional Search Engine Marketing helps to achieve high rankings

With the help of professional search engine marketing you can aim to attain a first page placement in the search engine listings. No SEO consultant can guarantee you a top placement but a professional can give you assurance for this. It can be attained and maintained often may be after some time.

Professional search engine marketing involves an effective use of search engine optimization methods and solutions related to it. Effective implementation of search engine marketing methods can enable your company to achieve higher placements in the search engine listings. The professional approach can include designing a website which is search engine friendly and easy to navigate. Further define the content of website which is easy to understand. Draft the contents using those words and phrases which users frequently use to find it as specified content. To increase the accessibility of the site to enhance effectiveness is another part of professional search engine marketing. Other factors affecting the placement of site are link building. Link building is in the form of reciprocal link building, one way link building and multi site link building. All these elements make the website search engine friendly and direct towards the comprehensive use of SEO solutions. This helps in maintaining higher search engine rankings. The other approaches in professional search engine marketing include website analysis, search engine review, submission to search engines and all other features of optimization process.

Most companies hire professional consultants for their search engine marketing works. In this case the entire search engine marketing activities depends on the professionals. It is advisable to appoint an experienced professional consultant who has trained team of experts with him.

With professional search engine marketing you can achieve ranking in the top of search engines, make a suitable content management system, implement suitable methods of optimization, and use unique optimization methods for each website. So professional search engine marketing is required to have a presence in the World Wide Web. The basic idea is to create an online presence at different places in World Wide Web. Getting professional search engine marketing is not difficult if you find a proper company to work with.

Thus professional approach of search engine marketing not only gives your website a presence in the World Wide Web but also helps in optimizing the site to a great extent. Just select the best online company to provide such professional services, and then you can get the desired results.


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15 Reasons To Join Affiliate Programs

There are HUGE benefits to promoting affiliate programs with your own homebased Internet business. Let’s look at 15 of the best reasons to join affiliate programs.

1. No Production Costs: The cost to develop and produce a new product is prohibitive for almost anyone who wants to start a home-based business. With affiliate programs, production costs aren't an issue. The product has been developed and proven - all on the merchant's nickel.
2. Low Cost Set-up: Compared with building a brick and mortar store, starting a home-based Internet business is relatively cheap. You probably already have a desk, Internet-connected computer and word-processing software, which is all the equipment you may need to start making easy money from affiliate programs.
3. No Fees or Licenses: I often compare doing business as an affiliate, with distributing a line of products in the real world. The biggest difference is that the distributor must often pay for a license to distribute products within a limited geographic region. Affiliate programs, on the other hand, are usually free to join, and geographic market reach is limited only by the affiliate's ability to promote his website.
4. Sell Almost Anything: What isn't sold online? That list must be shorter than the one describing all that IS sold online. There are thousands and thousands of affiliate programs selling every product under the sun. That makes it easy to find products related to your current or planned web site.
5. No Sales Experience Required: When I started my affiliate business, I had absolutely no sales experience. That wasn’t a problem, however. The companies I affiliated with provided excellent marketing material. Using their sales copy, I was able to get my first affiliate site up in less than a day.
6. No Employees: Employee salaries are the biggest business expense. Although you may need or want someone to work for you on occasion, you'll never have to worry about hiring full or part-time employees while working as an affiliate marketer. When you have a project you want to hire out, it is easy to find specialists in every computer-related field who can work for you from the comfort of THEIR own homes. You pay only for the project, and never have to worry about ongoing employeerelated benefits and deductions.
7. No Merchant Accounts: Setting up a merchant account is time-consuming and costly. However, affiliate marketers don’t need merchant account. Merchants bear all the costs for payment processing. As an affiliate, you’ll never lose sleep over chargebacks, fraud or losing your merchant account.
8. No Inventory: As an affiliate marketer, you can sell large items without storage concerns, even if you live in a small one-bedroom apartment.
9. No Order-Processing: Forget the problems associated with collecting and storing names, addresses, credit card numbers, etc. The merchant does all that!
10. No Shipping: The cost and hassle to prepare and ship products to customers worldwide could be staggering. Affiliates never have to worry about packaging supplies or postal rates.
11. No Customer Service: Do you hate the prospect of dealing with nasty people or customer complaints? Don't worry about it! The merchant handles the snivelers.
12. Make Money While You Sleep: What other business allows you as a sole proprietor to keep your doors open and keep making money even when you take breaks or after you go home for the night?
13. Worldwide Marketplace: The Internet is the world's largest marketplace. You can drive more visitors to your online store in a day, than a small-town merchant will see in his or her brick and mortar business in a year.
14. Minimal Risk: The product you chose isn't making money? Dump it. Take down your links and promote another! It's that easy. There are no long-term contracts binding you to products that don't sell.
15. High Income Potential: If you have a job, your salary or hourly wage is probably pre-determined. Maybe there's not much, other than working overtime, that you can do to increase your income. With your own affiliate business on the Internet your income potential is limited only by your desire, effort and imagination. No other business is so inexpensive to start yet offers such high profit potential without investing years of labor.

Affiliate programs enable you to work from Almost Anywhere in the World! Best Wishes.



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Importance of Search Engine visibility

A lot of people search the internet generally when they are in require of some service or to expand product information. Most people would do search using few keywords as they are unconscious of the brands they want to use to advantage the service or product. Also the person who is searching frequently decides before he hits the end of the search page.

Well that leaves us with only one question, how can one get good search engine visibility? How can the product or solution on extend be visible in the first page itself?

There are few tips that can really help you to achieve visibility on the search engines and that means your content is accessible to millions of Internet browsers.

First thing you will have to do is find out what words do people use to search to access a particular service or product and their related key words. Once you set your keywords you could Meta tag the same to represent the entire company’s website content.

Once you have the list of key words you have to try and use these keywords in your content of the website. The more keywords you collect and add on to your content the more will be the visibility for your website.

Regular press releases using these keywords can also do the trick. This way you have more gain more visibility and more search engines will pick up your data as it’s the latest update. Do make sure your press release has relevant and important data so that your possible client gets all wanted information. As he lands on your website he should see the expression of the information he has seen and should be satisfied with the further information he expected on your website.

Start a blog so that you and your employees add on that and they become an entire part of the domain you control on.

With a good search engine visibility you have already won the war of the markets, as most people would not even look at the other websites. So your competition is already filtered and you are ready to be the leader. So now Prepare your content filled with keywords and get ready to rule the market!



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Important SEO Strategies

First, for those of you who may not know, what does SEO mean? SEO stands for: Search Engine Optimizer.

If you would like your web page to be found more often in a search engine chances are you will do what everyone else is doing and shoot for some SEO strategies to help you out. If you are going to use SEO strategies for your web page you will need to focus on your keyword text. If your page is in the subject of “Reptile help” then throughout your text you should put “reptile help” in this. Putting reptile helps” is not the same as putting the actual key word either. When using SEO strategies you have to put the exact keyword in the exact spelling in order for the search engine to pick up what you want it to pick up.

How often should you use key word density when you are using SEO strategies?
If you have 250 words in your text you will want to include at least 5% of it as the keyword. There are plenty of engines out there that you will be able to check your keyword density in, you can search for them by going to a search engine and typing in “keyword density checker.” You should always place the most important writing around the top of your article.

A lot of people are making SEO’s so you should be doing the same as well if you have a web page and you follow the SEO strategies you are sure to have more hits than ever to your web page, you just have to find the time and patience to write your own SEO articles, be sure to mention that word that you are aiming for in there a lot though and you should have no problem with your SEO’s.


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