Solutions For SEO

SEO Services - Guide to Basic Internet Marketing That Deliver Traffic

2007-06-13T09:46:00.001-07:00

SEO Services:

Search engine optimization or SEO has become one of the most important components of Internet marketing strategies. It is a tool that enhances the process of increasing the quality and quantity of web traffic improving and provides organic search results. The normal trend is that the higher a website is ranked on the search result page, the more traffic it will get. SEO services can vary from website to website depending on the requirement but is used on website headings, in text or body copy, design and even on images.

There are many people who have a website that displays some of the best products, has some well written content and offer great service and yet these sites don't receive even half the desired traffic. This is simply because they didn't understand the importance of SEO nor did they realize its potential in driving the targeted traffic. Great products, excellent services and a site that is very well written. To enhance your website, you will require the services of a SEO consultant or an SEO copywriter who knows his/her job very well.

A SEO copywriter will add more depth to your existing website copy by adding singular or plural keywords, synonyms and keyword phrases. Now that you have understood the common practices, let us take a look at the two broad categories of SEO services. They are:

On-Page Optimization
Off-Page Optimization

On-page optimization SEO services :

Well researched keywords

Correct use of Meta tags

Keyword density optimization

On-page optimization is the most commonly applied category within the SEO services and it focuses on two elements namely, your webpage content and the website structure or architecture. The key element is your web page content and you need to take special care while writing the content. Your web page content has to be relevant and in sync with the product or services you are selling or promoting. The best way to get your website on the top of the page ranking is by using various SEO techniques. Effective use of SEO techniques can actually bring results within a short period of time.

Off-Page Optimization SEO services:

Increasing link exchange/link building/ link popularity: You can exchange your website links with another website and thus gain mileage without spending money. You can even display your link on various article directories

Using keyword rich anchor text

Submission to article directory: This is a cost free method of gaining mileage or promoting your website. There are hundreds of article directories available today for submission purposes. Most of them won't charge you anything but there are a few who would charge you a membership fee. You can do this yourself but a well optimized article will increase your relevancy thus its effectiveness.

SEO services or SEO techniques are based on certain common practices and these include:

Well researched keywords: SEO services are actually aimed at getting your site a higher rank in all search engines. To get the higher ranking, your website content needs to be keyword rich and hence you need to select the right keywords. This research for the right keywords or keyword phrase is an integral part of the entire search engine optimization process. The keyword phrase research is a process of selecting those keyword phrases, which are optimized and will help visitors to find your website. The important thing is to follow the right approach to find these keywords. If you are selling camping tents, then your keyword needs to be associated with the product and the activity for which it is used.

Heading of the web page: The heading is the most important part of any web page as it always catches the eye due to its positioning. Hence, you can always use catchy copy or tag lines to draw attention or create curiosity. Hence to create a higher visibility, you can use a primary keyword in the heading. There are two types of keywords: primary and secondary. Let's take an example: If you are offering web design, then your primary keyword will be web site design, graphic design, banner design etc. The search engines always give higher priority to the primary keyword or the keyword used in the heading. One more thing to remember is the length of text in single page. The ideal word limit is 500 because this helps to understand the keyword relevance. Not all the search engines will read through the entire page hence, try to keep the primary keywords in the beginning.

Meta tags: Meta tags, one of the SEO services, can't really be seen like the text. It is normally embedded in the code or the html. Meta tags help in letting the search engine crawler's index your website in an accurate manner. There are different types of Meta tags like the title tags, Meta description tags, Meta keyword tags and body tags.

What to avoid from a SEO company:

Make sure that the SEO firm you hire does not practice black hat techniques that can get your site banned completely from the search engine… why would they do that? To get you the unrealistic goals they set and once they have "fulfilled" their end of the contract they leave you hanging with a banned site.

Create Your Own RSS Feed And Add Fresh Content To Your Website Daily

2007-06-12T03:36:00.001-07:00

RSS enables people to have the latest information delivered directly to them. You can get the latest news, articles, photos, and videos all in one place and as soon as they are made available.

RSS feeds allow people to choose the content that they wish to view. RSS is a way of syndicating content, which means having all the information that you are interested in together in one central location.

To create an RSS feed you have two choices. First, you can code your own feed by using XML or you can consider using a software application that creates the XML for you.

You can create an RSS Feed without coding it yourself by using an easy to use software applications that can format your XML.

One example is FeedForAll.

You can also code your own RSS Feed.

Just like HTML code XML code contains open and close tags to designate the title, description and link. They are enclosed in brackets just like standard html. The close tag contains a forward slash.

The Item will contain information for each one of your listings. They contain the individual information that you are distributing, such as articles, etc.

For each item in your feed you will have:

a title

a description

a link

The title and description should describe the content of that particular item or link. The link will reference the webpage that contains all of the actual content.

The following is what an item in a xml file will look like once you remove the asterisks:

Title Here

Description Here

linkhere

It is very important that your links are fully qualified. If someone syndicates your feed then you want to make sure your links are working if your code is on another site or server.

So, an RSS feed is simply a series of items which are all chained together to create a Channel. When you need to update your feed you just add another item at the bottom of your XML code.

The Channel tag is found at the top of the XML file and explains how all the items are related. A Channel tag also contains a title, description and link tag. The open channel tag appears before the first item and the close channel tag appears after the last one.

The Channel Title Here

The explanation of how the items are related goes here

linkhere

Title Here

Description Here

linkhere

Another Title Here

Description Here

linkhere

Once you have all your items set up you then need to designate it as an XML file by inserting specific tags at the beginning and at the very end of your code.

The Channel Title Here

The explanation of how the items are related goes here

linkhere

Title Here

Description Here

linkhere

Another Title Here

Description Here

linkhere

You MUST save your file with an extension of .XML, for example UcanTo dot com/articles.xml

Do Not forget to remove all the asterisks from the code above before using it!

TIP: There is a free XML editor that will help you with creating RSS Feeds. Just Google First Object Editor.

When you have finished your RSS Feed the next step is to upload it to your server and then validate it. This step is very important, it will make sure your RSS Feed is working correctly and can be accessed. Visit Feed Validator and enter the URL for your RSS Feed, which should end in XML.

If you made it this far, congratulations! You should now let everyone know about your RSS Feed. Go to RSS Specifications for a list of sites where you can submit your new feed. Take the time to do this. I think it is much better to manually submit your feed then to use any of the free services.

One Last Tip! Now that you have your own RSS Feed you need to update it regularly. To do this just add another item to your XML file and upload! Then go to Ping-O-Matic and enter your RSS feed. Ping-O-Matic is a service that updates different feed specific search engines when your Feed has been updated. So, every time you add new content to your feed go to Ping-O-Matic and let everyone know!

The Top Ten SEO Techniques and Page Design Elements That Will Get You Blacklisted From Google

2007-06-07T15:21:00.001-07:00

The biggest search engine of them all is without a doubt Google. What they say goes, and most website owners just have to put up with it. It is always good to know what SEO techniques that Google will allow, but most of all, what they will not allow. They can blacklist your site for as long as they want, and you will never be able to get a high ranking again if you cross them once.

Knowing how important a great ranking is for your web site or blog site, here is a list of six SEO techniques you SHOULD NOT do for any reason:

1. YOUR WEB PAGE TEXT IS IN GRAPHICS FORM ONLY

Google considers "burying" text in your HTML code hides the text from their spiders that are trying to detect all of your relevant content. They feel this is manipulating their search engines and they don't like that one bit.

2. YOUR SITE HAS A BLACKLISTED WEB PAGE LINKED TO IT

A good rule of thumb regarding this issue is never to link to a "link farm" or a "Free for ALL" link page. These websites deal in every under-handed cheap trick they can find to bypass Google's strict submission rules, thereby bringing every other website linked to them down in the gutter. Make sure that all of your links lead Google and your site visitors to reputable pages at all times.

3. BAD LANGUAGE ON YOUR MAIN PAGES

This also includes using ethnic slurs of all types, as Google really looks down on racist sites that result in hate crimes or other controversial events.

4. LINK BUYING

Google really hates when you have to pay another site just to link with yours. If your site is worthy of being included in Google's main pages, why on earth would you have to buy a link? It does not make much sense from a business standpoint either, because you should put your promotion budget somewhere else entirely.

5. CLOAKING

When you present one web page to your readers and another page just for the spiders from Google to search for relevant keywords, this is known as "cloaking". If an SEO specialist says it's OK to do it his way, tell him firmly "No way!" and go with another SEO company that is more reputable.

6. YOUR SERVER IS DOWN DURING A GOOGLE SEARCH

You say that this is not your fault, but in a way it is. You cannot afford any down time as far as your main web pages are concerned, because that eats into your profits on a weekly basis if it happens too much. So always find the best server possible for your site, no matter the cost. And when Google sends out their spiders to your main pages for ranking purposes it is a HUGE error if your server is down and Google comes back with an error message. Big problem time!

7. ZERO LINKS

Your website must have a least one back link coming in from a reputable website for Google to recognize you as worth their time. So before you submit your web pages, make sure you link to somebody first.

8. KEYWORD STUFFING

I went over this is another recent article, but it is a very important technique to remember to avoid. If Google thinks your pages are filled with certain keywords that you have included over 10% in the content's overall body, you will be heavily penalized by Google for keyword stuffing that will be hard for your site to recover from.

9. COPYRIGHT VIOLATION

If somebody has reported your site as having stolen their exact wording on content pages, or have accused your website of stealing images and graphics from their own pages, Google will come after you and make sure that you eliminate the text and images from your site immediately. But just to make sure that Google never has to do this, ALWAYS refrain from plagiarizing anybody else's website for any reason whatsoever.

10. USAGE OF FLASH PAGE AS MAIN PAGE

If you really want to make your visitors pay attention to your main page, just get creative with an animated logo or put some very nice HTML coding on your front page for some really nice graphics. In other words, use every other "flashy" technique to get a web surfers attention except for using a flash page. Google's spiders cannot read the text in a flash page, so Google thinks that you are manipulating that page for their search engine rankings.

Stay away from all of these SEO techniques and page re-designs and you should be OK in climbing up the much-coveted rankings of Google's main category web page.

Targeted Rss - 4 Ways to Rss

2007-06-05T10:45:00.001-07:00

RSS is one of the most commonly used marketing tools these days. Many of the websites use this tool to market themselves. RSS means Rich site Summary and by using this technique the content of one website is placed on another website. This is a completely legal process which is mutually beneficial for both of the websites. As the competition amongst the websites is growing it is becoming really important for the websites to market themselves so as to get the attention of those who are surfing the internet in search of something related to them. This is the reason that RSS like other marketing techniques has grown in importance a lot during past few years. The text which is present on both of the websites is imported by the permission of both the websites.

RSS feeds technique is being used by many of the websites today. If you want to market your product and your website through RSS, you must select the appropriate partners for this act. The websites to which you provide these Rss feeds should be related as far as the nature of business or the kind of business is concerned. The number of Rss arrangements is also important. You must have this arrangement made with an appropriate number of websites so that it may help you in generating some revenue by increasing the flow of web traffic. If these links are properly placed, you will get quality web traffic. Thus the way you use Rss technique will decide how much benefit you can take out of it.

Chasing Down The Bogus Leads

2007-06-04T12:15:00.001-07:00

These are some of the keywords that led you to this page. This is something any online communication manager or web strategist learns first. But what's often overlooked is the importance of knowing which keywords to avoid to keep unwanted traffic away.

The subject of this article is keywords search relevancy. Most online communicators understand search relevancy as how a search engine determines whether a Web page or site is important for a particular search query. But I'm looking at it from an online business perspective.

These days, with the numerous online tools available, most business websites can quickly figure out the basic set of keywords that will drive traffic towards them. Once regular traffic has been established, the next step is in ensuring that a higher percentage of traffic results in sales. This means focusing on the quality of your traffic, rather than quantity.

As always, the first step is measurement. Which of your keywords are resulting in sales and which are not? Most good web analytical tools will tell you this, once you've set your conversion goals. But they won't tell you what percentage of each keyword is bringing in people who have no interest in your product or offering.

For example, if you're selling the Volkswagen Beetle, you may be driving a large number of naturalists to your site, who may be more than happy to fill a form for a free-test drive. But as a target they are unlikely, if ever to make a purchase. And if you're paying for every naturalist who clicks on your Beetle ad, that's just money down the drain. This gets further compounded when multiple teams are involved in following each lead up.

You will therefore need to track backwards (from your sales team, registration page or whatever your conversion goal), every bogus lead based on the keyword search. And then identify which keywords are resulting in the highest misses.

This is basically the opposite of lead conversion. By tracing bogus conversions and knowing which keywords are resulting in high misses, you can then take action.

Unfortunately, once you find the problem there's really no single way to solve it. It's often a combination of trial, error, fine-tuning and getting specific with negative keywords.

f you know of another way, do let me know.

6 Key Ways to SEO

2007-06-02T11:13:00.001-07:00

Content – Content is one of the ways to SEO. For best SEO you will need best content. Your content should be keyword rich. All the keywords should be used after proper research. Use the related keywords in your content. Keep the content relevant and make it informative.

Link – Links are very necessary for SEO. Both inbound an outbound links are useful in making the best SEO. Links will help you to get a better rank in the search engines. You should try to get more and more inbound links from other websites. Try to get quality links because the link quality also matters. Try to reduce your outbound links as less outbound links are better for better ranks.

Search Engine submission – Submit your website to the search engines available. Use only the best search engines. There are some free and there are some paid search engines submissions.

Directory submission- It is also needed for the best SEO. You should submit to the related directories only. Use both the free and paid directory submission services. Good directories will improve the search engines ranks for your website.

Site Map – Create a correct and complete sitemap and submit it to the search engines. Correct all the broken links and get the sitemap reworked.

Meta tag – Meta tag can be another great tool for the best SEO. It is a way for SEO on your pages. Use meta tags to get the search engine attention by adding keywords to the meta tag. In the description, use related and well searched keywords.

Intermediate Tips for Site Promotion

2007-05-26T19:26:00.001-07:00

Profitable site promotions can come in many forms, and range from simply making sure your content is keyword rich to RSS and podcasting. However, you may find yourself in between those extremes and just need a few intermediate suggestions. Here are a few of those to help you with your website promotions.

Blogs
Register with a blog site that allows you to post information about your business. Some even allow links. Even if they don't, you can write a blog that covers what you do and request people to email you for information.

Forum Postings
This is very similar to the blogging but is a little easier. Here you simply converse with people. It's like a cross between a blog and a chat room because people respond to your posts.

Secondary PPC Advertising Outlets
PPC through the major players--Google, MSN, and Yahoo--can be expensive, especially if you're just starting out. Try secondary PPC outlets. Kanoodle is one such secondary PPC promotional outlet. Also try FindWhat.

Develop a Mailing List
Get emails of people who want service or product updates from your site. You can set this up as simply a mass email, or start into advanced profitable website promotions by taking advantage of RSS and podcasting.

Check Your Site for Errors and Problems
While this seems like a no-brainer, sometimes sites break in other places when you add new things. Check it frequently whether you change anything or not, and make sure all your content is readable and up to date. Profitable site promotion is often times making sure it's operating to its fullest capacity.

6 Steps to Search Engine Marketing

2007-05-25T10:52:00.001-07:00

Search engine marketing can be very profitable for you and your business. Productive search engine marketing will create more customers and more business for you. You should follow 6 steps provided below for productive search engine marketing.

1. Keyword – Keyword use is the most important for search engine marketing. The more keywords you use, the more is the chance of getting more visitors. Keyword research is necessary for getting the most effective and relevant keywords. You should only use the relevant keywords not only any keyword.

2. Submission – Submit your website to different search engines for getting visitors to your website. Submission may be done in different ways. It may be done manually and it can also be done automatically.

3. Link popularity – Make your website link popular among different people. The more popular your link the more successful search engines marketing is. For link popularity you can opt for different techniques like optimization of your pages, quality content writing etc. Popular links will get you more business.

4. Paid inclusion – You can get included in some search engines by paying a fee. Search for such search engines and include your link. Use only search engines that are related to your website and content category.

5. Log file and traffic analysis – Analysis the log file and the traffic to find out what to do to increase the traffic.

6. Develop website – Develop your website well for productive search engine marketing. Correct all the problems and the broken links. Crawlers of the search engines will crawl pages. If there is any problem in a web page or there are broken links, then it will not include such pages or if it includes then also your rank will be low.

No Frills Search Engine Optimization Techniques

2007-05-24T09:49:00.001-07:00

Practitioners of the esoteric science and art of search engine optimization will often make it all sound like a combination of rocket science and brain surgery. But, the fact is that principles of search engine optimization, also referred to as SEO for short, are quite simple.

The basic idea is to get search engines to understand your site and to like it. This will lead to your site ranking high in the result pages that search engines dish out in response to a query. Here is the basic low down on what this is all about.

There are primarily two categories of techniques involved in search engine optimization. The first is called on-page SEO and deals with stuff that you do on your own site to make it rank well. The second is called off-page SEO which deals with stuff that other sites do related to your site. Let us look at the basic search engine optimization methodology involved in both these categories.

On-page SEO used to be all about stuffing keywords and keyphrases. For example, if you wanted a page to rank high for the term "red widget," you would make it a point to mention "red widget" many times on the page. However, search engines have become much smarter than they were in the late 90s. Mentioning the keyphrase continues to remain a good idea, but you need to make sure that the rest of the content on the page is also relevant to the keyphrase. Search engines can understand words, phrases, expressions and their correlations. Other forms of on-site SEO involve setting the correct "Title" tag in the code of the webpage. Further, if the page is relevant to the overall topic of the site, it has a higher likelihood of ranking well.

Off-page SEO is all about links. Links to your site from other sites. When talking about links, there are primarily four factors to consider: Anchor Text, Quantity, Importance, and Relevance. Anchor text is the word / phrase that you click to reach a site. In case of a clickable picture, the anchor text is the alt-text that is associated with the image. Having relevant anchor text is pivotal to search engine success. Quantity plays a role too -- the more the merrier. But do not forget importance -- one link from a terrific site (such as a famous news site) might be worth much more than a thousand links from lesser sites. And finally we have relevance. If the site that is linking to you is relevant to the theme of your site, the link will quite likely be worth more.

Promoting your website – The Guru's Mantra

2007-05-21T16:45:00.001-07:00

Well, so you have decided that you are going to develop a website and want to do business with it. And the questions which are tinkling in your mind are how you can promote it? Or how people will know about your website?

The first step obviously your decision to go for it, which you already have taken. The next step is to build your website and here these things you must consider. If you are developing it of your own, you must take care of these. Or if you are developing it through any vendor, you must specifically ask for these features.

1. Website title: Your website title must be dynamic, so that it can address the content of the page. Or in other words in every page a part of page title should change. Like the contact us page can have title like your 'company name – contact us' while about us page can have title like 'company name – about us'.
2. Website URL: All URL shall be search engine friendly. Avoid query string in URL. If you are using Linux-Apache, then a simple htaccess file can do the trick. It is called mod rewrite. If you are hosting in windows server, the same thing exists there too. I must give you an example for better understanding. Say you have a product listing page and when anybody clicks on the product listing page then the detail page appears and the URL which carries the product number for the identification of product. Using mod rewrite you can easily omit the query string part to pass it internally.
3. Try to make the URL always in lower case.
4. Put as much as text content as you can. All images of the page must have descriptive alternative names.
5. Avoid flash as much as you can.
6. Try to minimize number of images.
7. Avoid background pictures.
8. Use Meta tags and Meta keywords and Meta description should have higher density keywords. You can judge the keyword density using many online keyword selector tools.
9. And last but not the least. The content of your website should be rich enough to address the context. Mind it, content is what will help you to retain potential customer.

Now you have your website ready and you are ready for promoting it. Here you must know how search engine works? A search engine crawl or spiders your page and the based on site content it indexes your website against the keyword. Like if its gets any keyword mobile phone then it puts your website URL, title against the keyword mobile phone in its database. Some search engine like google, MSN crawls automatically where some needs manual submission. It is important for you to get higher ranking in search engine as generally people psychology never lets them to search more than twenty results at a time. So, if any body types the keyword mobile phone in any search engine, you must end in top twenty results in order to get him visit your website. Now search engine ranking depends on mainly two factors, namely inbound links and outbound links. That is the number of links are directing to your domain and the number of links present in your domain. With search friendly URLs you already created as many links as possible in your own website. The next step is to create inbound links. Here are the steps you follow.

1. Start visiting forums regularly and place your website URL in your comment and post. As the forum will be crawled by search engines they will get links which directs it to your website.
2. You can advertise your website there too.
3. Visit various directories listing website and submit your website URL.
4. Submit your website to all manual search engines.
5. Start writing article on your website in various article publishing websites.

You are almost done. Now the next step is for promotion. First add google analytics code at the bottom of all your pages. This will help to invite google spider on regular basis. If possible try google adsense. Try to place affiliate links if it's not harming your interest directly. If you are selling any products then I will advise you to create your own affiliate program.

Once you complete all these steps, it's the time to sit back and relax. The only job that now needs to be done on regular basis is to monitor and control. Try adding new pages, new content. Replace old content with new one. I am sure with such finer proceedings you will be able to hit the bull's eyes.

Affiliate Marketing - Why Should I Create A Mini Affiliate Site?

2007-05-20T15:42:00.001-07:00

The main reason why you want to create a mini affiliate site is so that you will be able to make sales instantly from your advertising. Although you may have heard from many people that you should as many opt in email leads as possible, it can sometime be a better method for some people to make use of mini sites.

Creating this kind of mini site does not have to be very difficult but you will have to follow some procedure. You will have to follow a proven and workable system. You will be able to find lots of free information on how to create a mini affiliate site from the Google search engine.

Making yourself to stand out from the rest of the many affiliates can sometime be a difficult task. One of the simplest ways that you can do is to treat the affiliate product as though it is your own product. What you can do is to add a additional bonus that the customer will not be able to get outside unless he buys from your affiliate link.

You customer might have already see the merchant's site before from another affiliates and they have not purchase from any of them before. So why should they buy from you? This is the question that you must always ask yourself when you are creating your own mini affiliate site.

When you are able to stand out from the rest of the affiliates and the bonus that you give is very good, customers will be tempted to buy. To improve your conversion even higher, you can also improve your own sales letter that will trigger the customer's emotion to buy the product. If you can get a lot of traffic and the website conversion is good, you will be able to earn some good profit from this model.

RSS - The Importance of RSS

2007-05-19T13:35:00.001-07:00

RSS stands for rich site summary. RSS is a technique used by the websites today to market them. It is important for every online business to be able to get noticed by the internet surfers. If a company is there producing many useful products for the market, this fact is of no use until and unless the customers know that the company exists and that the company has something which is of benefit for the people. RSS can be used as a tool by the websites to increase their chances of getting noticed by the people. By using RSS feeds the rich text of one website is also present on another website. This is a completely legal process as the text is imported by the permission of the websites.

RSS is an important tool of marketing. Actually the world of commerce online is basically revolving around the need of getting quality traffic. Web traffic generation is a matter of life and death for any and every web site. This is the reason that the internet marketers are busy in generating fresh ways of marketing their websites. RSS is one such newer and fresher means of promoting and marketing the websites. RSS is not only good as a marketing tool for the company but also as a source of making money. Many of the websites are using this technique as a revenue generating resource. This is a source of generating money for both the websites. It is a relationship which helps both of the websites in getting more traffic and revenue.

Don't Register A Domain, Register A Domain Package

2007-05-18T12:28:00.001-07:00

If you are considering building an online business then you need a domain name. For search engine marketing the domain should consist of the main keyword related to your business. It should be short and without numbers or hyphens. These are the basic rules for domains ideally suited for high search engine ranking.

Let's say you have an idea but no web site. What is your first step? Well, you need to register the domain first.

The .com ending is the preferred domain for search engine optimization, however, if you are trading in the UK then the .co.uk domain ending is the natural choice. In this case, I recommend you register both.

When you register the domain it is a good idea to use a registrar that can provide email facilities for your domain. If you are not ready to upload a web site then you can still use your domain name for your email to your new domain.

Many companies provide free email and web forwarding with domain registration. This means that you are able to register the domain and 'point' it to any website address and forward any email sent to your domain to any existing email address.

However, what you really need is a 'full' email service for your domain when you register it.

If you just use email forwarding, then you are limited to only RECEIVING email to your domain which is forwarded to your main email address. You are still unable to SEND from your new domain. So if you are marketing your new site prior to launch, you really do need a full email address that allows both sending and receiving email to and from your domain name.

A full email service is one that includes POP3 mailboxes so you can both receive email sent to your domain address and send email from your domain name. This provides a much more professional look to your email marketing as the receiver of the email will see that the message is originating from a domain name related to the kind of service you are marketing and may avoid unnecessary spam complaints.

Some companies will offer Spam filtering with the domain service. Considering that 90% of email that is sent is Spam this service is extremely useful in keeping a tidy 'inbox'

Another feature to consider when registering the domain is autoresponders. An autoresponder can be set-up to provide automatic email responses. Autoresponders reply to incoming email instantly and automatically. You can set and change the text of the reply and the trigger address whenever you like. Autoresponders are ideal for customer service or informing people when you are away.

Most companies that register your domain will offer a 'full email service' as an extra and is usually a monthly fee similar to a hosting fee.

When you are ready to upload a web site to your domain then you will need a hosting plan. The company that registered your domain may provide hosting facilities and it should be a simple upgrade of service from 'forwarding' to 'hosting'

How To Build RSS Feeds

2007-05-17T11:20:00.001-07:00

You can easily build RSS feeds if you know how. RSS is a
method that you can use to syndicate or distribute your
content. So for example if you have a web site with useful
content it is a way of distributing those links to your
content that will allow others access to it. People with
RSS readers can easily read your content without actually
visiting your web site. The way this works is that they
subscribe to your RSS feed using the RSS reader and they
view the content directly from the RSS reader.

If you know html you can easily make a rss file. Basically
a rss file consists of items. So for example if your web
page has a list of web sites that you recommend then these
would be listed in your RSS feed by title, description and
link. So all your web sites would be described in tags in
the categories listed above. In addition to this you also
need to add the standard header and footer tags for a RSS
feed.

Once you are done creating your RSS feed you need to save
it as a xml file. After this you need to validate your xml
to ensure that it meets the standards of a RSS feed. You
can use the Feed Validator service which is free on the
web. However, you can save yourself a lot time by using a
professional RSS feed creator like Feed Editor and automate
the entire process.

After you have completed your RSS feeds you need to let the
world know about it. You need to visit the most popular RSS
directories and submit your web site to their directories.
It will also be useful to ping the major services and
inform them that your weblog or RSS feed has been updated
with new content.

Get Innovative by Adopting Social Media Optimization

2007-05-16T10:16:00.001-07:00

Social media optimization is the different strategy that is adopted to make a website more visible and accessible on all social networking platforms. The different strategies if implemented in the correct way can bring about huge amount of traffic to a website and make it popular pretty soon. The idea behind social media optimization is to drive a large amount of traffic and these results in great amount of exposure and visibility among people who are interested in whatever that site is offering them. There is not a huge amount of difference between social media optimization and search engine optimization. However before implementing social media optimization or any other strategy one must be clear about the very concept.

Today social networking is the most popular means through which people stay connected with their family and friends. Gone are the days when one actually had to travel to long miles to meet their childhood friend or college friend. Now with the wonderful innovations made in the world of internet staying in touch has become extremely easy. The ideal platform to be in touch on the web today is trough the social networking platforms. A study has indicated that more then 80% people have an online profile of some kind or the other. So now if you have to optimize your site on the web, these social networking platforms are the best place to do it. Social media optimization has immense potential if used in the right ways.

Having great content on the site is one of the benchmarks of doing good and successful social media optimization. There has always been a scarcity of good content on the web and if you have that on your site, you are already ahead of your competitors. Earning profit and being ahead of competitors is what all business aims at doing. It is another matter that only few of them actually manage to be successful and implementing social media optimization strategies can surely help a business in becoming a success story. Another thing which you can implement for social media optimization is to make your content in the form of audio and video files. Being innovative and different is what attract people these days and if you can incorporate your content in the form of audio and video files you can go ahead in the market really soon.

Change is the one thing which you need to bring about in your business. So whether it is social media optimization or any other new business strategy, as the owner of a company or business, you have to make a wise choice about this. Remember that every strategy will not be successful and just because one technique is very popular does not mean that you have to use this or that it will be perfectly suitable for your business. You need to analyze the market thoroughly and determine what you need to do for your company. The call is your and make sure that you make a wise move and do not get swayed by anything and everything that you come across.

AirNet 1Q profit grows

2007-05-15T05:05:00.001-07:00

reported Monday a 10 percent gain in first-quarter profit, despite a slip in revenue in its bank services division.

The Columbus-based express-cargo carrier said it earned $1.9 million, or 18 cents a share, compared with $1.7 million, or 17 cents a share, in the same period a year ago.

Sales slid to $41.5 million, from $42.7 million a year earlier, largely due to a 6.4 percent decline in revenue from transporting canceled checks and other bank documents to $26.5 million. A year earlier, bank services brought in $28.3 million in revenue.

The decrease is from what AirNet (AMEX:ANS) has called accelerating trends toward electronic alternatives for transporting time-sensitive bank documents.

A modest 1.5 percent gain in revenue from AirNet's express services division to $14.2 million, from $14 million last year, partially offset downturning revenue from bank contracts, the company said.

Quick Search Engine Marketing - Best Ways to Earn with SEM

2007-05-12T14:48:00.001-07:00

Marketing your website through search engines can potentially provide you a lot of profit. Most people market their businesses in the Internet so more people can reach them. But since a lot of people use these techniques, you should always think about what you can do to have an edge over other competitors out there. So here are some advanced ways to search engine marketing.

To get more attention your site has to be included in the top 10 search engine results. To do this you can so the SEO or Search Engine Optimization strategy. With SEO, the ranking of your website can be improved through the use of keyword in the content of the site. With SEO, you would be able to get a higher ranking in search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

You can also include pay-per-click advertisements to attract more traffic into your website. With this method, search engine sponsored listings are added to the website which allows visitors to earn some cents by clicking them. On the other hand, you would get more people to visit your site.

You can also invest in paid inclusions. This is a method where you pay search engines to include your site in their search index. This might need you to shell out a little money but the revenue you can get from it will be worth it.

So now that you know some keys to advance search engine marketing, be searchable. You'll surely earn a lot of money following these few simple steps.

Rising in Google's Search Results

2007-05-11T13:48:00.001-07:00

The Googlebot has found your site, you and Google are becoming fast friends, and your site has just entered the PageRank popularity contest. How do you become a rising search-engine star, reaching one of the coveted top spots on the first page of search results?

The secret to pleasing Google turns out to be rather straightforward: please your visitors. Happy visitors lead to inbound links, because when people like a site, they link to it from their own site. And where there are links, Google rankings follow. That’s it.

Here are some suggestions for pleasing your visitors:

Keep things fresh, focusing and fascinating. Outdated material can be a real turnoff, while nothing keeps visitors coming back like fresh, hot-off-the-keyboard prose and links.
So take the time to update your site when appropriate. And when you’ve got fresh reading material available, make it immediately obvious by maintaining a ‘What’s New page’, adding new items to the top of the home page, or listing the latest additions in a sidebar. You can’t expect your visitors to remember what they read last time and hunt around for the new stuff.
Also, provide new links whenever you can. While some Web sites believe that every link provided to other websites offer another reason for visitors to leave, in practice the opposite is true. If your site is a rich resource of what’s happening on the Web, your readers will come to see you as a trusted friend, putting you on their virtual speed-dial and visiting more frequently.

Be responsive. Keep watchful on your server logs to learn what’s popular. If you discover certain sections of your site or particular articles draw the most visitors, consider filling out those parts of your site with more stories. If you find that a lot of people are coming to you through certain search engine queries, you have some great hints about what they’re looking for and whether they’re finding it on your site – or finding something close at least. And if you know they’re searching on your site itself and not finding what they want, respond to their wishes by providing just what they were looking for. Give each page, article or product its own permanent URL. When people want to send their best friend the URL for your page about family eggplant recipes, they really hate adding: “Click on the third link don in the What’s New section, below the picture of Barney’. They hate it so much that they stop bothering with your site at all.

There are two ways you can make your site harder for people to use. First, if you put a lot of articles on one page, you force people to say, “It’s the fifth story on the page”. It also forces you to keep the article in that slot if you want people to find it. Second, using frames for whole pages causes your visitors to see the same URL in their address bar no mater what page of your site they’re on, which means they can’t send friends a link without also providing a roadmap to find the page in question. Yet another excellent reason to eschew frames.

Let them share. Go a step better and let them hang a hot on your site through forums, feedback forms and customisation. Read the feedback channels on a regular basis and become an active participant in discussions of your site.

Plain and simple wins the race. Keep your web pages as lightweight as possible. Just because you’re at the end of a high-speed broadband connection doesn’t mean your visitors are. In fact, the majority of web surfers still poke along at 56K, not to mention those visiting from their mobile phones and PDAs, who often have very slow connections.

Don’t annoy your visitors. Nothing screams “Go Away” like in-your face Flash animations, ads strewn all over the place, pages that link to nothing, and dopey gimmicks. It’s all right to have a long article span multiple linked pages, but be careful about how much content is on each page, and avoid click-through pages set up solely for advertising impressions. Whilst you’re at it, provide a Print view for those who want a story all on one page for a manageable print job.

Keep busy trying to please your visitors, and don’t spend time trying to fool Google. The Google folks are smart, and they have set up all manner of checks and balances to make sure the sites they index are on the up-and-up. Indeed, Google considers the following practices unfair – so much so that if they discover you engaging in them, the Googlebot may stop visiting and including you in the index. Google doesn’t say how it’ll keep you out in the cold, but anecdotal evidence suggests the icy treatment may be permanent.

Don’t misrepresent your site to Google by feeding different content to the Googlebot than you do your regular human visitors. This trick is known among web-masters as cloaking. It entails manipulating your site in response to User-Agent identifiers, which are signatures associated with every request from a web browser or robot to view a site. Some sites use this identifier to show different content to a bot than to your garden-variety web browser. It’s a nasty business, and a good way to draw Google’s ire.

Stay away from HTML shenanigans intended to confuse the Googlebot These tricks include: giving your page multiple titles, embedding enticing though inappropriate keywords, stuffing your page with repetitive keywords and so forth.
Steer well clear of so-called link farms and link-exchanges that exist to boost your Google ranking. They’re an investment in trouble.

List Yourself Everywhere

While Google is the undisputed champion of search engines, people will find you most readily if you’re listed everywhere – on Web directors, on the other search engines and on other sites related to yours. If your site sells specialty knitting needles, for example, you want knitting resource sites to include you.

First and foremost, be sure to get yourself into the two grandfather’s of directories, the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org), which is the directory behind the Google Directory, and Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) . Not only do these directories help people find you when they’re browsing the listings, but they increase your chances of being spotted and indexed by Google in a timely manner.

A large number of other search engines live on the Web. AltaVista, Hotbot and Ask are among the most popular. Introduce yourself to each by finding and filling out their respective URL-submission forms. You can also use a service that goes around listing you anywhere and everywhere you’d like to be found. These services, which can be a good timesaver, range from free to rather costly, depending on breadth and depth of feature.

For sites you want to exchange links with that aren’t directories or other types of search engines, choose wisely. Linking randomly so that lots of other sites will link to you can decrease your PageRank (because PageRank evaluates the quality of sites linking to you). On the other hand, exchanging links with rich sources of information is actually useful to readers and beneficial to your PageRank.

In short, list yourself only on good, clean, well-known, legitimate sites – both general and specific to your topic of interest – where you think it’ll do some good. Then stop.

Website Optimization Services and Your Business

2007-05-09T11:19:00.001-07:00

Having your own website for the purposes of boosting your business sales is not enough to make it really happen. You may have followed all those guidelines in creating a website, but that does not guarantee you the increased traffic that you need. If you want for your business to be known, then maybe it is time to utilize the website optimization services.

What are Website Optimization Services?

Potential clients usually type in the keywords, then the search engine gives them a list of the top 10 in the industry he is looking for. What these services do is put your website in the top lists of almost all search engines, thus, giving you more traffic.

Benefits of Website Optimization Services

These firms make your processes more efficient for you so that it saves you more time and money to focus your attention in your business needs. You do not have to worry about website designing and website developing since these firms will do them for you. We all know that a good website usually makes or breaks a business in the Internet, but you can be assured that the professionals in these services know what they do and will only give you your money,s worth.

If you created your website yourself, they will review your site and advice you on what needs to be done for it to be more professional looking.

If you opt to utilize the website optimization services, they give advices on what your website should contain since they know what works. They teach you what keywords to use that are most effective for your type of business.

These firms also give you a monthly report of your ranking in search engines, and because it is their business to put you at the top of the list, they will be the ones who will be submitting your website to the top search engines.

Disadvantages and What You Should Be Aware of

Although these website optimization services guarantee you a spot in the top 10 in search engines, it is still and always will be the search engines themselves who can give you the guarantee of a top spot.

For the promise of submitting your website to top search engines and the promise that it will be in the top spot, most of these firms require a great deal of money. Plus, there are bogus services also that take advantage of ignorant website owners, so it is always advisable to research about a firm or read through their testimonials to somehow get to know them. Ask former customers how the service was for them as customers are a greatest basis.

Finding Keywords

2007-05-08T10:16:00.001-07:00

The purpose of searching keywords is to find out the exact phrases that are requested by people in the searches carried in the major search engines. If your website has the relevant information about the most searched terms and keywords, your website would be rated higher by the major search engines. The entire process of improving search engine ranking for a website is a wide process and is called search engine optimization. Finding keywords is one of the most important parts of search engine optimization.

To start the keyword search for your website, make a list of the keywords related to your website. You can easily find the keywords by using online keyword services. One popular keyword service provider on the web is word tracker. Using word tracker tools and services, all you have to do is to type a keyword and wait for the list to appear on the computer screen. And you will you have a direct access to hundreds of keywords related to the keyword you have typed in the box.

For instance: your website is a website that markets and promotes skin products. Type the word "skin" and you will have all the top keywords related to skin. The keywords will be something like: skin care, oily skin, skin diseases, skin products, animal skin and so on.

Now you have to select the relevant keywords for your website. You cannot choose animal skin for your site which caters specifically to the human skin cosmetics and skin care. Yes you can include the keywords like skin care, skin cream, dry skin, oily skin and many others.

You have a number of keyword services and tools that can help you find the most searched keywords for your website. While you select the keyword with the help of these tools, you will also come to know how many number of times the keyword has been searched on the internet.

Let us go back to skin example: suppose you select dry skin, you can also track the exact number of times "dry skin" has been searched on the internet. The number can be some thousand times. In case you choose "dry skin type", the number of searches can be less. So, you are suggested to select the keyword with a higher search count first.

Another tricky method of finding keywords is to keep an eye on your competitors. Look at the meta-tags of your competitors' website. The meta-tags are a good source of significant keywords. You can also seek help from your customers regarding the keywords they use in their search.

Having a weblog page in your website is also helpful in tracking the keywords. Each weblog page has a link which shows the keywords being used to search your page. Once you have the right keywords in hand, you can hit the market with the most relevant and desired information on your website.

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Researching for Link Partners for Search Engine Optimization

2007-05-07T09:14:00.001-07:00

• Link Partnering is a strategy developed to boost ranking and focus on good organizational scheme to exchange links that brings more traffic to your website. And increase the number of visitors, provided your website is made accessible to other sites. That's why it's important to get the right resources and the right knowledge, to get people to link to your site. The links pointing out to your website. That's why it is a vital factor in web marketing to give higher importance to incoming link.. Incoming links are out side link from other websites.

• Link Building is a relationship building and it is considered the most important in search engine optimization. In order to help small business owners web sites rank better on the search engine it is important to build quality incoming link. It is important to keep in mind that there are some links that are good traffic that provide ranking boost. The number if links pointing to your site from other popular sites and the amount of traffic coming to a site helps the engine determine just how popular your site is.

• In link building we have a free editor based categorized directory also called reciprocal linking that provides an exclusive editor based resources for easy locating websites that trade relevant links. Link partners have been reviewed and approved by human editors to ensure quality. Link partners is a continuo's resources helping you increase link and help increase website traffic and expose the web through natural reciprocal linking The ethical way that actively encourage webmasters and site operators to link for the end user and create organize categorized link. Therefore, a well connected link partner is an effective marketing strategy. Keep this in mind that when you are reviewing the site of a potential link partner take a look on the site on how they display the link. Is the link page visible and link to the other pages to the website Also if the link is haphazardly arranged your chances of getting traffic are also reduced. Because website goers judge it from the stand point of visibility and capacity to generate traffic.

Reality Internet Marketing: XML Sitemap in 4 Steps Ensures Page Indexing in Google Yahoo and MSN

2007-05-04T18:15:00.001-07:00

Is an XML Sitemap effective in getting your website Page Indexed on Google? Or indexed on any other Search Engines?

Creating and XML-based Sitemap and FTP'ing this XML Sitemap to the lowest directory on your website does alert the Google spider robot to review your website. It is an effective way to get more of your web pages indexed for your website. It is also effective, when you add new pages/content to your website, to:

1) regenerate a new XML Sitemap file, FTP it to your website

2) alert Google Site Maps to look at your site AGAIN NOW.

And now XML Sitemaps have just become even more important!

Google, Yahoo and MSN have all announced that by January 2007, they will all standardize on the use of one common XML Sitemap file to index your website! All three mega search engines will now use the same XML Sitemap file to index your website. Great news!

So what are the steps in creating and getting the Google XML Sitemap file to your website directory?

These 4 Steps will get your XML sitemap file created and registered with Google:

(1) use a software tool to create the sitemap in Google's designated XML format. You can create a Google Sitemap for FREE (maximum 750 pages per website) at Sitemap Generator. Be patient with this FREE XML Sitemap file generator. It sometimes reports URL breaks (likely timeouts) when there are none. I found using it off peak hours (late at nite) generates cleaner files.

ADDED BENEFIT: The Sitemap Generator also creates HTML, ROR and Text Sitemap Files, which are used by thousands of other search engines and web crawlers to index your website.

(2) upload the XML file (and HTML, ROR and text files) to your website. You want to FTP the XML sitemap File created in step (1) to the lowest level directory on your website. There are many FREE FTP programs our there. Download the latest version of Filezilla. It is one of the easier FTP programs to use.

(3) Verification - notify Google of the existence of the XML sitemap file. This is done by registering at the Google Webmaster Tools. Follow the steps at Google Sitemap to Verify your website by FTP'ing the Google Verification file to your website and then requesting Site Verification. You need only do this verification step once. Under the Webmaster Tools Dashboard you will see a check mark for each of your sites that have been verified.

(4) Submit XML file – once Verification is confirmed by Google Webmaster Tools click on the appropriate listing under the Sitemap heading. Highlight the box next to sitemap.xml and then click on Resubmit Selected button. Your sitemap.xml file will now be submitted to Google for indexing.

From this point forward, whenever you change/add/delete links or add/delete pages on your website you repeat steps 1, 2 and 4 so that the Google, Yahoo and MSN web bots can re-index your website.

While you're at it, create a specific HTML Sitemap Page on your website to be used by other search engines and directories. This will help their BOTS and Web Crawlers migrate through your website. This Sitemap Page also acts as an index for your customers helping them migrate your website. Here is a sample Sitemap Page.

Bottom line: XML Sitemap files are an important ingredient in getting your webpages indexed in Google as well as Yahoo and MSN. It is equally important as the top two SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies, Keywords and Inbound Links. No excuse now. Just Do it.

Web Address Domain Icons

2007-05-03T13:18:00.001-07:00

Want to make your online business look more professional and standout from the rest of the domain names saved in a web browser favorites lists?

Now, adding an image to the URL domain name listed in the address bar is easy and will help your website stand out from the rest. The hardest part of adding a web address icon to your domain name is choosing the image that you want to use.

Many of the most reputable and large web domains use this simple tactic of placing an image in the web address bar to help their sites stand out. Look through your favorites menu you may already have some websites bookmarked that are displaying a nice little image next to the name. Notice how those URLs stand out and draw your attention from the default icons used by all the other sites.

What is a Web Address Icon?

The image you see is a page or URL icon commonly called a favorites icon or "favicon" for short and is commonly associated with a particular website. Many (if not all) of the popular web browsers used today, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and above and Firefox will display these favicons. The icons will be shown in the browser's address bar next to the URL, next to the page name on the tab (if you are using IE-7) and next to the name of the website if you saved it in your favorites list.

Creating a web address icon and getting it to display is very easy and only takes a few minutes. You can have a web designer create the icon but it is not necessary since the process is very easy, you can do it yourself.

How Do I Create a Favicon?

The process for creating and setting up you very own web address icon is very simple consisting of four main steps:

Create an image to use

Transform the image into an icon

Edit your website pages with a few lines of HTML code

Upload the image and edited web pages to your domain

When you create your very web address icon, the most difficult part you may face is deciding on the image to use. A note of caution here, be sure to avoid using any copyrighted images or logos that are already in use – especially if you are running an online business. For example, sites like Google, CNN, and eBay all use a favicon so using theirs on for your site would be a big no-no.

How Can I Use a Web Address Icon?

Think of a favicon as a form of avatar, similar to one you may use in online forums or chat rooms. If you run a personal web page or blog, you can use a picture of yourself to place alongside your domain name. That way when your friends and family bookmark your site, your picture will be displayed alongside the bookmark to your personal website or blog in the favorites menu. If you are using a "free website", you may not be able to use the favicon feature - check with the site provider first.

If you running an online business, what better way to start promoting your brand or logo than by having your very own web address icon. The image you use can be your business logo, or an image of a particular product or service you are promoting.

Whether you are an individual looking to make your personal website look better, or an online business that wants to look more professional and stand out from the rest, using a web address icon can do that. So, take a few minutes today to create an icon that you can use alongside your domain name to help make your website stand out.

Serach Engine Optimization (SEO) - How to Start

2007-05-02T12:11:00.001-07:00

Being Found - How Effective Is Search Engine Optimization? For most business owners and managers, SEO or Search Engine Optimization - SEM or Search Engine Marketing, does not mean much – except more expense related to their websites. The reality is that SEO is the most cost effective, online marketing tactic with the highest Return on Investment (ROI) compared to any other type of Internet marketing. It is also the most effective sales tool to bring you quick results.

Internet searches are common practice around the world today and the Internet has brought us an amazing evolution in the way information is marketed and shared. Driving that evolution are search engines. They have completely changed the way we search for information about all kinds of things in our daily lives. We depend on them for maps, as email providers, to interact with friends, to find a phone number, the best cat food and online garage sales.

Approximately 75%-80% of website traffic comes through search engines. Also, research has shown that most users don't look beyond the first 3 pages of search results. This means if your website doesn't rank in the first 30 results of the major search engines, it might be receiving less than 10% of its rightful traffic and revenue. Also, it is important to rank well for your company name as prospective clients might not know your website address.

My experience has shown that if a website is positioned on top organic results will double its exposure, increasing traffic and therefore having a higher conversion rate (if the site is well developed). Taking some of my clients' studies, the first three months after positioning, site visitors through search engines rose 57%, client revenue double with 50% of revenue coming through website.

The effectiveness in Search Engine Optimization comes from experts doing their job. Search Engine Optimization is a complex process that requires maintenance over a long period of time, and close tracking as the industry develops. SEO is an industry that changes on a daily basis and a knowledgeable SEO company will stay on top of current trends. Since search engines change their algorithms frequently and search behaviour changes, SEO companies can do the monitoring for you and offer you the best option at the best price. Good SEO companies will also advise you on layout changes on your website to increase traffic, visitor retention and increase conversions.

Remember, with the professional guidance of a knowledgeable, reputable company, SEO/SEM is the most cost effective, online marketing tool you can use for your website because it brings back the highest ROI of any other type of Internet marketing.

Carla Reis

President

Quest Quality Solutions

http://www.questqualitysolutions.com/

Getting Website Traffic - Google AdWords - A Beginner's Introduction From a Recent Beginner

2007-05-01T09:19:00.001-07:00

Like almost everyone who is anyone getting into Internet Marketing we had done it all – searching Google for instruction, buying DVD courses, going to seminars, you name it, we'd done it – looking for the "insider secrets" that would make our Internet business fly.

We got some good stuff, too. Particularly some of the DVD's recorded at Internet seminars, like the Entrepreneur's Bootcamp, the 2006 World Internet Summit or the Internet Superconference. Lots and lots of good ideas from lots and lots of "serious" Internet gurus, ranging from Ed Dale's Underachiever system through Armand Morin's systems for trading property on Ebay, and all of them looked good ways to make money. However, all of them had a flaw: in every case we looked at, there was detailed explanations of the system right up to the point where you had the system set up and in place, you had the website up and ready and the key was all set to be turned, and the next instruction was "…and then you drive the traffic and watch it happen!"

But here's the snag – no-one ever said how you drive the traffic. Sure, we all know there are ways to get instant traffic, like pay-per-click, and we all know that search engine optimisation is either a black art or a breeze, depending on who you listen to or who you believe. We all know as well that there are any number of websites and internet publishers/marketers out there who will be only too pleased to take your money, and you never really know whether or not the website or the manual or whatever you have paid for will do the business for you.

I have to say we were becoming cynical. We were downloading more and more stuff and becoming very jaded with looking at similar stuff over and over again. Eventually, however, we found the "nuts and bolts" information we needed to get going - and without it we would still be struggling to understand what to do.

So, having struggled so hard to find the information needed to get going, I decided to create a short ad-hoc series of articles about "Getting Started for Beginners" from a recent beginner. Although I don't claim to be an "expert" (yet!), having just gone through the process of getting started there doesn't seem to be much for the newbie - plenty if you want to refine and hone your skills, but not much for people like us!

So where did we start? The obvious place to generate quick results - Google AdWords. And this in itself became clear that it is anything but simple! I found that I had to study the Google tutorial videos quite carefully to begin understanding the system. This is how I tackled the problem:

I began with a product the I felt was likely to be a good seller, Michael's Traffic Videos, for the simple reason that this was the first product that had given me the basic information I needed to get started. Having gone through the product I felt that this was a worthwhile project that even as an affiliate could earn reasonable money. Why go for an affiliate product to begin with? Simply because when starting up there is a ready-made reservoir of products already created and available at sites like Clickbank that the authors/creators will pay commission on when you make a sale for them. Commission rates vary from 30% up to around 75% of the sale price, and if there is a market for the product this is a good way to get started with no product of your own - exactly like us! However, identifying the market is crucial - if there is no market then the product is unlikely to sell!

So the next step was to research the market, and the easiest way to do this is to research the keywords that relate to the product. There are any number of sites available to do this research, probably the best-known being Overture. This tool allows you to enter a word or phrase and will return the number of searches per month on the Yahoo search engine for that word or phrase, and will show suggestions for related words and phrases, also with the search numbers. From this I identified some possibilities that were refined further using the free trial at Wordtracker, which has the added functionality of showing the competition for each word or phrase you check, and arrived at a list of 20 keyword phrases for my ad. The objective was to find keywords and phrases that looked highly effective, ie had good search numbers and predicted searches and few competitors.

The charging and ranking system within Google AdWords is very complex, and is partially reliant not only on how good and relevant your ad is (what Google refer to as the "Quality Score") but is also related to the Quality Score and highest price ("bid") from other advertisers using similar keywords to your ad. Unfortunatley Google don't tell you what your Quality Score is so it can be difficult to assess why or how your ads are ranked and charged!

Following on from that, the next step was to set up an autoresponder to capture subscriber data to build a mailing list. There are any number of autoresponder sites available that offer more or less sophistication and functionality at a variety of prices, and the cheapest doesn't always mean inferior and expensive doesn't always mean best! I recently changed autoresponders because I found a far better service at a lower cost! The autoresponder will generate an HTML form (sounds scary but isn't) to incorporate in a website or "squeeze page" to enable the prospective subscriber to enter his/her details, typically just a first name and an email address. The good autoresponders will operate a "double opt-in" system where the prospect has to confirm his/her subscription after the initial data submission. This is not only to comply with US and other countries' anti-spam laws but is good practice to make sure that the people on your list really should be there. This "squeeze page" is important as this is how we will build our list, capturing data as people pass through the site.

Having got the HTML code from the autoresponder for the subscription form, the next step was to create a simple website using Dreamweaver and inserting the autoresponder code into the web page form and uploading to the server. I had previously registered a domain name and set up hosting for this particular campaign. The web pages were very simple: one landing page with the signup form and another confirmation page after the prospect has confirmed his/her registration. Simple! The landing page forwards to the affiliate link for my chosen product once the form is completed and submitted. One important point: there is a link on the landing page to allow the prospect to continue to the affiliate page without being forced to sign up. Having noted the URLs of the two pages it was back to the autoresponder to enter the relevant page URLs and then TEST to make sure the whole process works as it should!

OK, checklist time: I now have a product, a market, keywords and phrases, an autoresponder, a domain name, hosing and a website, fully tested and working. The next piece of the puzzle was to create the ad and get it out into the market.

To begin with I created an AdWords Starter Account, which is a simplified system that allows one ad campaign with simplified pricing and setup for the campaign. I needed four things: a headline, body copy (very short on two lines), display URL and a destination URL. These last two confused me to start with - I had always assumed that the web address you see on the Sponsored Links ads was the actual web address you were taken to, but this isn't the case. Google will allow you to have a different destination address (the "real" address) from the address you see, provided they are closely enough related. However, in my case the two were the same - I had enough to worry about without complicating matters even further! Next, copy-and-paste the selected keywords into the ad and then submit the ad to Google for approval. Once approved, continue on to the payment and billing sections and the job was done! So now, I'm monitoring the performance - early days yet.

So that was my introduction to Google AdWords. I hope this article was of interest to beginners in Internet Marketing like ourselves!