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Making money with adsense can be a very powerful way to earn income online. If you own a website that gets traffic then as long as you place the adsense in an optimal manner you can increase your online income almost instantly. Of course if you do not own a site yet then consider creating one and learning how to optimize it for the search engines.

The main objective with adsense is to have good click through rates which will maximize your income. The main key with increasing click through rates is to make sure your ads blend in as much as possible with your site content and also the correct placement of ads is important. The link color of the ads is important as if the links on your site are red then you will want the links in the ads to also be red.

Also make sure that the url color is either black or grey as this will make the headline more noticeable. You want visitors to notice the headline of your ads because they are usually well written by most adwords advertisers since their goal is to get more clicks.

It is also a good idea to place some ads above the fold on your site. Above the fold means the section on your site that is visible without scrolling down. Make sure to place ads towards the center of the page as this area gets noticed the most. So consider having article content to the right or left of the page with adsense units in the middle. This can be accomplished easily by making the ad units like the 336×280 or 250×250 wrap around the content.

By placing ads right in the main content of your site you increase the chances of your ads getting noticed and clicked on. It is also important to keep in mind that the niche you are in must have lots of adwords advertisers in order to draw relevant ads that also pay well. The more advertisers there are the higher the bidding will get so on average you will get paid more per click.

There are certain ad units that tend not to perform well. The banner format has a record of poor performance so try to avoid that if possible. Also make sure that your ads do not have borders otherwise your visitors may ignore them as they will obviously look like ads. Be sure to make use of the channels feature in your adsense account. This will allow you to track your ads and learn what is working well and what is not.

Also you can experiment with the new Youtube adsense units as they could be profitable. However this feature is new so it is only through testing that you will know whether or not it is worth adding to your site. Try to use smaller text size on your site that is similar to the text size of the adsense units as this will help to blend your ads in better with the rest of your site.

When you are adding ads directly in the content be sure to not squeeze your content excessively as this may turn off a lot of visitors and people will simply leave your site and never come back. One of the goals of your site should be to build repeat visitors as these visitors can make you great adsense income and also affiliate income if you choose to add affiliate products to your site. Get your site optimized for adsense and maximize your online income from this powerful program.

Author:  Jitender Zaman is an online researcher, author and a regular contributor to a site that shows people how to make money online. Be sure to visit and also learn about affiliate marketing as way to increase your income.

What is a Press Release? Press releases are among the most effective ways - if not the most effective way - to get one-way links from high traffic news sites, but you must follow a certain set of guidelines or it will be nothing more than wasted time and your press release will never be published. A press release is a statement of announcement used for publishing and distributing company information or business news throughout the Internet via web media distribution channels. General news releases, event announcements, business news, new product release announcements, and social media news all qualify as valid content for a press release.

How Press Releases can help your SEO and Web Marketing Press releases play a very important role in SEO and web site marketing. Currently, one-way links are more valuable to your search e rankings than ever before. This is due to the fact that two-way links - most often referred to as “reciprocal links” - have decreased in value with regard to Google’s “Page rank” system, with most others soon to follow if they have not already. With that in mind, playing an active role in generating news for PR web can serve as your best resource for getting one-way links and generating new traffic to your site without paying a dime. Be aware however, that credible PR web sites have strict criteria for the content that they publish. For example, it absolutely must be newsworthy, grammatically correct, without spelling errors, it must sound professional, and it must give the impression that a decent amount of time was put into it.

The benefit to you is that you may publish your company details including the services you offer, your web address and contact details along with your press release. Be careful not to make your press release sound like an advertisement though, or it will not be considered for publishing. The key here is to go into it with the objective of creating something valuable and informative for the reader. There are a lot of news websites available that provide free services for publishing your news releases. The real advantage though, is that these websites provide services for distributing that news to subscribers of their news feeds. What this means, is that while you may publish your release to five PR web sites, it will likely end up on twenty or thirty different sites if it follows the criteria stated above. The important thing to remember is that the more valuable and informative that you make your content, the more it will be picked up by additional web sites. Here are some tips to keep in mind when writing your press release:

Tips for writing an effective press release:

• The press release headline should be short, clear and to the point. Treat press release headlines and sub-heads as the ultra-compact version of your entire press release content.
• Your press release summary should be informative. Try to avoid the use long sentences and lengthy paragraphs.
• Start your press release with the “5 Ws” - who, what, when, where, why, and sometimes how. This will make your press release more enlightening and attractive to the editors of the sites you are publishing to.
• Don’t forget to include your company information below the press release content. Prepare a brief summary of your company services with the contact details, your website name, and email id for communicating. Most PR sites offer a “company bio” section, which appears under the published release.

Author:  Vision Media Corporation is a Phoenix & Las Vegas based website design and Search Engine Optimization, software, and ecommerce development firm specializing in new approaches to information technology and its relationship to mark

Trying to hide your SEO practices can get you in a lot of trouble with the search engines. It could even get you banned. At the same time, however, your SEO practices should go unnoticed by the casual visitor.

Some of the oldest and most classic SEO tricks involved “hiding” your attempts at higher rankings from real visitors. Some of these activities included keyword stuffing a page and making the text the same color as the background. Or tucking the keywords away in a div somewhere on their main page. Or making the keywords a single pixel high and “drawing” a line with them somewhere.

All of these practices are more than outdated and will likely get you banned from the search engines. Yet there are people in the unethical SEO circles who will still attempt to perpetrate offshoots of these tactics and hide certain things from normal users.

The online dating industry, for example, is one of the most competitive markets on the Internet. People will employ all kinds of SEO tactics to gain an edge in the business. Recently a certain website climbed the search engine rankings at an incredibly fast rate. In fact, they reached number one for the term “free online dating” in just one hundred days.

This was truly an impressive feat, and one that deserved a little research into how they did it.

The site was clean, efficient, and friendly. It gathered inbound links at unprecedented rates by employing viral widgets that were extremely popular among bloggers. They didn’t necessarily have anything to do with dating, but tens of thousands of links from blogs is a great thing, whether they are dating-related or not.

All that is good clean SEO practice. Where things got questionable was the amount of internal links they had on the main page. Links and the associated anchor text, whether inbound or internal, carry a lot of weight these days. And this site had nearly fifty links on its main page. Each one included the term “free online dating” in the anchor text. Of course, each link included the name of a city as well, and clicking on it would take you to a search for the members who lived in that city.

So the links were more or less valid.

The “less” part, however, comes from the fact that those links weren’t actually presented directly to the visitor. They were hidden away in a div at the bottom of the screen.

And if your links are really valid, and really there to help a user, why would you hide it?

They weren’t the only ones to attempt this new spin on an old tactic. Their competition has tried the same type of strategy. They didn’t hide their links in the div, but made certain that they would only appear below the fold. They also appeared in white text on very light blue background. Not hiding them… but not displaying them either.

That first website has since been purchased by another, but not before they removed those links from the page. Which only happened after they had secured a strong position in the SERPs. Was this a calculated maneuver? Was it meant to push the boundaries of good SEO and then dispose of the evidence before a search engine could ban them? Maybe. But we’ll likely never know.

It’s hard to say how the search engines will react to this type of behavior. Although history has shown that if too many sites begin abusing this type of search marketing, they will come down hard on the perpetrators.

Nevertheless, good SEO should be practically invisible. Have you come across pages that have proper, visible content but is so filled with keywords that it is practically impossible to read? Or a blog that is just one big advertisement? Maybe a forum post that has nothing helpful to say, but displays a big link? Or maybe you’ve come across blatant pages that offer no added value to the site and merely exist to house a few more keywords. And lets not forget the search engine results that sport nothing but keywords in the description and title.

All of these activities are based on sound SEO techniques, but there is a proper way to do them if you wish to remain invisible. And when you do things properly you won’t have to hide and you won’t have to worry about the search engines coming down on you.

Content needs to be keyword rich, but it has to be interesting, engaging, and grammatically correct. Blogs are communication devices and should be treated as such. Doorway pages can get you in a lot of trouble, but proper landing pages for your products or in your PPC campaign are extremely useful. Meta tags and meta keywords don’t carry much weight with the search engines these days. Therefore optimizing them for search engines only displays your tendency to fall behind the times.

The moral of the story is to keep your visitors in mind at every step in the SEO process. If you do this, you won’t have to hide from the search engines or your visitors.

Author:  Andy Eliason is a writer at Main10, an Internet marketing and development company. This SEO company in Utah offers a range of upfront, quality search engine marketing services.

Lets look at 2 forms of Mobile Marketing. The more traditional form involves marketing on the move like moving billboards and road shows. The second type refers to marketing on a mobile phone like cell phone. Since the onset of millennium, mobile marketing though cell phone has become very popular. Short message service popularly known as SMS has made marketing by this method a lot easier.

There were some problems in the beginning as unwanted information was being sent to people. Most of the SMS that was passed around was spam and it received negative media response in all parts of the world. This was because a sector of the advertisers bought list of mobile users and began sending them unsolicited messages. They were later stopped due to strict security measures and laws passed. The marketing industry recognized the potential of mobile marketing and utilized it to the full extent.

The mobile service providers coded guidelines and laws. It then became a legal advertising channel. The Mobile Marketing Association and Interactive Advertising Bureau also have laid down guidelines for the proper functioning of mobile marketing.

Mobile marketing has become popular in Asia and Europe as it is a novel idea and in Europe alone hundreds of millions of pounds have been investing in SMS advertising. Now SMS has become the most famous part of mobile marketing. Because of the popularity of short codes, SMSing has become a lot easier. This has created a new approach to reach out to potential customers. Now mobile short codes are looked upon as mobile domain name, by many of the brands around the world, when the customers message the brand at any occasion.

In America, the first SMS short code campaign was started in 2002. SMS containing short codes are easier to send a message with complete information. Short codes are usually numbers that are assigned to mobile operators of a particular location, which they use for brand campaigning and other purposes. They are very small, like they contain only four to five words. These numbers are always under scrutiny by the service provider and each and every message is monitored to see that they do not go against the original service description.

Like opt-in emails, customers have to opt for SMSes. This is the biggest criterion, which the advertiser has to follow in order to send a promotional SMS. Some of the mobile operators ask for double opt-in form from the receiver. At the same time opting out is made easy for the customer. When the customer wishes to terminate receiving messages, they have to send the word ‘STOP’ via SMS. All these guidelines have been laid by the Mobile Marketing Association consumer best practice guidelines and it’s a compulsion to follow those by all the marketers who wish to do mobile marketing in America.

Now, service providers have started to provide the option of sending SMS to email addresses. Other than this, other services provided are mobile games, mobile tones etc., which are used for promotional purposes. This has lead to the invention of MMS or Multi-media Message Service, through which short promotional videos and animations can be send. Bluetooth is another good technology. It started in 2003, and many companies in Europe have found it useful. When a message is send via Bluetooth, the receiver should accept request from the sender. So, sending messages by this method is legitimate. The message transfer speed is high and is also a free service as it is a radio-based technology.

The method of sending SMS advertisement to mobile phone users based on their geographical location is known as Location based service. The customer is tracked via a GPS chip which is built-in the phone. Radiolocation signals from the nearest cell phone towers are used for this purpose.

Mobile marketing follows a very safe marketing strategy, as it is customer opted. The short message sent through this method is known as mobile originated or MO message. If the advertisement is done through a call, the call is known as mobile terminated or MT message. As there is a phenomenal increase in the number of mobile phone users, this kind of marketing is a sure hit.

Author:  Terry Detty finds Internet Marketing Services and Internet Marketing Software his passion. In addition to marketing, he enjoys reading and occasionally goes out for a short walk.  His latest interest is a newFix Credit program he’s been using.

Much like those who are in the field of creative arts, web designers can also experience writer’s block. No matter how long you have been in this business or the years that you have rendered service to your web design company, there are times when you simply get stuck with no novel ideas to keep you going in your web design/copy write project. However, there are a few ways by which you can deal with these blocks. Here are six tips that I have found to be useful in generating new ideas and be of productive service to your web design company once again:

1. Be ready for procrastination to come and block you. Do you notice that when you are assigned with a new web design project and find have to start working on ideas for it, you find yourself thinking about other ideas totally unrelated? You might start to think about how much it will cost to repaint your house, or when you would like to play golf, or what car you would suggest your friend should buy. These are just some of the ways that procrastination disguises itself. However, you should also recognize that these are the things that you actually want to do. So, you can write down the other things you would like to do and schedule them or have a web design to do list. I realized that once I write down this web design to do list, I do not tend to think about them as often time and again as compared to when I simply ignore them.

2. Start somewhere in the middle. If you ask other designers in your web design company, they will surely agree with you that it feels rather intense to have to start from the top of a page and design downwards. Of course, you will still have to do it that way when it comes to HTML or CSS coding, but when dealing with web design, you might find it easier to focus on the most important part first - the one that catches the attention of an online user. I would usually think of what it should look like in the middle before I move on to navigation, advertising and branding which are found at the top, sides or bottom of the web design page.

3. Make a draft of your web design on paper first. In your web design company, do you frequently see people writing rough drafts on paper? Although this is rather uncommon nowadays, I still find it more helpful to “web design” on paper first. It can be very easy to get all hung up on the technicalities in HTML or JavaScript if you try to do your initial web design on a computer. Web designing on paper is sometimes easier to do. Also, when you “Web design” on paper, it is does not take much effort to erase them or scratch them out when you need to make changes. If you hate the idea you came up with, you do not have to feel bad about throwing the paper right into your trash bin.

4. Take time to plan your web design. Planning is very important when starting a web design project. Unfortunately, it is the one that is taken for granted the most. Most web designers proceed immediately to developing pages or generating web designs without giving the project ample though. When you do this, you run the risk of over-budgeting, you might run out of time, or end up not meeting the client requirements - all of which your web design company will mostly likely not welcome. Take all the time you need for planning the web design project (as long as it is reasonable, of course). Taking the time to plan will not hurt your web design, but lack of adequate planning will.

5. Do not hesitate to ask other web designers for help. Never be afraid to ask for someone else’s help when the need arises. Surely, someone in your web design company will be ever willing to lend you a hand or provide you suggestions and constructive criticism. However, be careful about whom you ask the help of. Be wary of those who do not find good in what you are doing, as they will not provide you the help that you need. 6. If you are really stuck, try to do something else for a while. If there is no other way to go about your writer’s block, try to get your mind off to think about something else. Take some time to stop thinking about the web design and the current problem and allow your subconscious to rest for a while. I’m sure other people in your web design company have experienced waking up in the morning with a great solution completely formed to solve the problem.

Author:  Semul Johnson is a Marketing expert with a leading SEO services company specializing in SEO web design.

Ranking high in Google’s search results can have a phenomenal impact on the success of your business. You can either engage the expertise of a Search Engine Optimization company, or if you have the time, there are some changes you can make to your website yourself.

Step 1: Keyword Research

What keywords do you think your customers would type in to search for your products or services? A keyword can be one word (e.g. “optimization”), but multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferred, because they are more specific and more likely to be what your customers are looking for (eg. Search Engine Optimization Australia).

Write down as many as you can think of. Brainstorm with your team. Think of alternative words. Consider geographical phrases if they are important to your customer (e.g. “house cleaning Hornsby”). Also, get some ideas from your competitors’ websites. Try to make a list of 20-30 keyword phrases.

Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched for the most. But also remember, the more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings. If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword “insurance”, you have a very long journey ahead. So try your best to select two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to you business but that are not vague nor competitive. It’s a good idea to have 2 or 3 words in each phrase (e.g. “wedding catering services”)

Once you’ve selected your two best keyword phrases the next step shows you how to make some improvements to your home page.

Step 2: Web Copy

Web copy refers to all the words or text on your website. Because content is king in the world of search engines, your keyword phrases need to be placed strategically on your webpage to convince Google that your content is highly relevant to those keywords. The more prominent they are, the better. (Keep in mind that as important as search engines are, customers come first, so make sure your copy also reads well.) Here’s how you can increase each keyword’s prominence:

• Place your keywords in headings, preferably at the beginning of the heading;
• Include keywords towards the top of the page;
• Bold or italicize keywords where appropriate;
• Instead of having a link to another page that says “Click here to read more “, reword it to include your keywords, e.g. “Read more about our seo copywriting Services“.

An important tip is to also include these keywords in your HTML “title tag”. Use your content management system to make these changes yourself, or perhaps ask your web developer to do it if you’re unsure how.

Once you have fine-tuned your home page, consider adding new content, such as detailed descriptions of what you offer, FAQs and informative articles about your products and services. (If you don’t want to write these yourself, they can be located for free on the internet - do a search for “articles directory”).

It’s also good to bear in mind that search engines can only read text, not pictures. Often web developers embed words in images to look better for website visitors or use Flash for animation, but this is a major impediment to search engines.

Step 3: Linking

Each link from another website to your website (not from your website) is considered by search engines as a vote of popularity for your business and will improve your rankings.

But it is the quality, not quantity, of the links that is crucial. The other websites should be relevant to your industry, and preferably highly regarded themselves. Ten quality links count far more than 500 links from arbitrary websites. In the same way your personal business network can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so too the online network you build on the internet. Brainstorm all the relevant websites that could link to you, such as non-competing companies, and industry bodies and organizations. Write a friendly email to each describing the benefit their visitors would get in knowing about your business, and request them to create a link to your website. Most people will not respond first time round, so a follow-up phone call is usually required.

How do I monitor my results? Monitor your rankings in Google over the next few months by typing your chosen keywords into the search box, and recording your ranking. Also look at your hosting reports to understand what search terms your visitors are using to find your website.

The above process can be also be repeated for each page of your website. Remember to keep updating your content, and continually increase the number of links to your website.

As you see your rankings climb you should see a corresponding increase in web traffic and a substantial increase in sales enquiries. Be sure to record the source of your customer enquiries, so you can measure the success of your marketing efforts.

Remember, if you measure it, you can improve it.

Author:  Philip Shaw is the Director of CleverClicks, a leading search engine marketing company in Australia provides ethical, result-oriented SEO, PPC and web copywriting services.

It seems as though every day we are being invited to join yet another social network (YASN). If we actually spent time at each of these social sites, participating and becoming respected contributors, we would never get anything else done. It’s just not practical in terms of time for one person to become a valued contributor at all of these sites. (If you have a large team of social network monkeys working for you, you can ignore what I just said.

Sign Up Everywhere It Makes Sense

I do, however, encourage you to at least sign up with each and every social network that you deem might be important in your niche. Immediately set up your profile page, and spend a little time participating. It probably won’t take long to figure out if you should devote any further time to each one. You should eventually choose one or two that you plan to significantly contribute to. The rest can simply exist as mere brand identity placeholders. As long as you have your profile page set up with your chosen username, no one else can grab it. And as long as you have your profile page set up with links back to your site, any stray visitors to your profile have the chance to be funneled to your site. (Your goal here is to funnel traffic to your site, not increase rankings or get link-love. External links are often nofollowed, so they are only useful for direct traffic.)

Now What?

So what do you do with the social networks you’ve decided are worthy of your time? That’s a question with a lot of possible answers, and I definitely do not consider myself to be a social network guru. There are others that are far better than I at that game. However, we are focusing on only one small aspect of this today, and that’s the profile page. That’s something I feel I can confidently address so, having said that, let’s move on.

Popularity Begins The Funneling Process

Depending upon the type of social network you are dealing with, you will likely be working to increase your popularity at the site. Generally speaking, the more active you are, or the more popular your contributions are, the more likely it is that you will be noticed. (Contributions to the site differ, depending upon the type of network, but may include articles, videos, news submissions, etc.) Some sites may feature you and your contributions prominently, often on the home page, if you are popular enough, and they will usually link to your profile page. This is great because your goal is to get people to your profile page so you can then funnel some of them to your site. Because you are popular, people will naturally be enticed into visiting your site for more information or to get to know you better.

Concrete Example

Let’s take a specific example of how you might work this. Let’s say you own a site that focuses on arts and crafts. This would naturally lend itself to having lots of how-to information, right? So you’d probably find your way to a how-to articles site, such as eHow. While eHow appears to be an articles site, it doubles as a social network, in that it functions in basically the same way. Articles and by extension, authors, are judged. The more popular an article is, the more popular the author is. The more popular the author is, the more likely he or she is to be featured on the home page.

Appetizers Lead To The Meat and Potatoes

So you’d want to create a few really good articles for the site, such as “how to create beautiful art from dryer lint”, but you don’t want to give away the farm. Don’t put all of your “how to” content on these social sites. You should have several related but not identical “how to” articles on your own site for every one “how to” article you create for the social sites. Think of your articles on these social sites as how-to appetizers. These appetizers are useful and worthy in their own right, but readers can fill up with lots more knowledge by visiting your site - which houses all the hearty meat-and-potato how-to articles.

I’ve used a how-to article site as an example, but the same principle would apply across other types of networks. When you contribute, do it well, but always have more to offer at your own site. If it’s possible to funnel people via the contributions themselves, great, but more often, the only place you are allowed links is your profile page, so use it wisely.

Work That Profile Page

I think it goes without saying that your profile page should not be blank. Well, let me say it anyway. Your profile page should not be blank. Fill it in. Make it as interesting as possible. Don’t forget to include links to your site, if there is any way to do so. Where possible, give visitors enticing reasons to click on those links. Make them want to pass through that funnel. Not all profile pages allow a lot of editing. You’ll just have to live with the fact that some are better than others for the traffic funneling process. But where extensive customization is allowed, use it to its fullest. If it allows photos or avatars, upload them! If it lets you stream your site’s RSS feed to the page, enter the feed url. Whatever options are available, make use of them in the best way possible. No matter how much time you spend at the social network, or how popular (or unpopular) you may be there, your profile page will be ready for any amount of traffic that might arrive there.

SERPs Love Profile Pages

Want one more reason to make sure you utilize these social network profile pages? They often show up prominently in the search engine results pages. If someone searches for you by your brand name, or nick, there’s a very good chance your social network profile pages will show up in the top 10 results. The reputation management / branding aspects of this alone makes the act of creating profile pages a worthwhile endeavor.

Notice how I never once mentioned Digg? Darn it, now I did. Oh well, my point is that the advantages of social networks and profile pages goes far beyond Digg. Don’t stop there. Find other sites that may more accurately reflect your niche. And then go forth and be fruitful by creating many profile pages. Your time will be well spent.

Author:  DazzlinDonna’s take on SEO news, tips and theories.

The following article includes pertinent information that may cause you to reconsider what you thought you understood. The most important thing is to study with an open mind and be willing to revise your understanding if necessary.

How can you put a limit on learning more? The next section may contain that one little bit of wisdom that changes everything.

The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you - the time has come to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage’s title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords - the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine rankings.

Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it’s worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the “view” button on the browser menu bar, and select “source.” This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta name=”keywords” content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.

If you type in “free link popularity check” in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you results of sites that will run comparisons for you and check your link popularity. A great site is http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop which shows not only your links but sites related to you and their back links. In the case that there aren’t many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.

Now you can understand why there’s a growing interest in search engine. When people start looking for more information about search engine, you’ll be in a position to meet their needs.

Author:  Matthew Faulkner - www.software100000.com

It’s recess time on the elementary school playground. A group of third graders is playing kick ball in teams on the grass. Suddenly, there’s a big argument over whether the last point goes to the girls’ team or the boys’ team.

The argument rages on for what seems like forever — almost a whole minute of precious recess time has been wasted! In third grade, wasting recess is a crime! And it must be stopped before time runs out.

One of the girls realizes, stops arguing, looks around and declares, “Do-over”. The boys accept this proposal, the last play is forgotten, and the game starts again.

The slate is wiped clean, but the play has to be repeated

When you were young, do-overs were an easy way to resolve an argument, fix unfairness or quickly change history.

Why wouldn’t you want to be able to do this with your business website? Unlike the playground game, designing a website takes a lot of time, work and money — it’s just not a task that you’re going to want to start over from scratch again!

And, once you’ve launched one website, it’s harder to get a do-over from your prospects and clients than it is to get the other team to agree to one in elementary school.

Avoiding a do-over sometimes leads to project paralysis

At this point, a lot of entrepreneurs get scared — they don’t want to create a do-over, but they don’t know where to start down the right path. So, they put their project off, and instead stress out about getting everything ready. Plus, avoiding starting means they won’t make any mistakes. That works itself up into procrastination and full-scale project paralysis — and the website project winds up never getting completed.

The reason that people get paralyzed is because they don’t know how to plan and create a website in a way that minimizes the chance that they’ll have to re-do it. But, there are a few ways to ensure that your site will be as permanent as possible, without driving yourself crazy with all the considerations.

Five Steps to Creating a Site That Will Stick

1. Decide what you want your website to do for your business. A website should be more than just something you have to create for your business. What’s your site’s purpose? What are its jobs? Who will be coming to the site? What do you most want them to do once they get there? What do your visitors most want to know?

If you create the site with the end goal in mind, then your site will be more successful. This is because you can create every piece of the site to encourage the viewer to take a certain path through the site or a particular action. Planning the experience that a visitor will have on your site can help get more visitors to meet your goal on the site.

2. The function of your website will determine the types of content you’ll need. Look at the job you want your site to perform, and who the site is for. That will start to give you hints about the types of content you should include on it.

In planning your basic content, consider the pages you’ll need to include on the site. Also think about any subscribe forms, shopping carts, audio, etc. that would help you communicate with your target audience. Lastly, think about which of these pieces you need immediately and which you can add in later. This will help ensure your website project won’t take forever to complete.

3. Don’t get hung up on writing the text. The next step is to gather your samples and write your text for the website. A lot of entrepreneurs get stuck in this phase of the project. This is because they’re not comfortable writing, they don’t have the time to write their text, or they find that it takes a while to get the testimonials they need.

This is the one part of your site that’s easy to revise later on — so don’t stress out about getting the text “just perfect” — just get the text put together and then plan on revising it shortly after the site is launched.

4. Design the site to look timeless. There’s no way to know what design trends are coming next, and what effects would make your site look like it was designed in a particular year. Sites full of cutting-edge effects and technology this year may look passé next year.

How do you design a site to look timeless? If you create your design based on your own logo and Visual Vocabulary and keep the design generally clean, the likelihood that it will look dated is lessened. Stick close to your own brand designs and you’ll have a website that you can keep for the long haul.

5. Code the site cleanly. In order to make sure that your site will work across multiple browsers and systems and will work on future versions of those browsers, make sure that your code is clean. To maximize your search engine optimization results, you’ll want to code the site in HTML instead of in Flash so that Google and the other engines will be able to read it. Coding in HTML also makes your site easier to update in the future — you’ll want to add to your site’s text and make edits to what’s already there.

Recreating your website isn’t as easy as a do-over on the playground. By following the 5 steps here, you’ll create a website that will serve your business well for a long while. And you’ll be able to avoid having to start the site all over again!

Author:  Erin Ferree is a brand identity designer who creates big visibility for small businesses. Her workbook, “Design a Website That Works”, will walk you through all of the questions that you need to answer in order to create the best possible website. http://www.elf-design.com/http://www.elf-design.com/products-webWorkbook.html

2006-2007 has been the years that online shopping has come into its own with online consumers spending a record $65.1 billion in merchandise via the web. More and more people are getting comfortable with online shopping and are engaging in online shopping, research and exploration of various membership and subscription sites.

Unfortunately, the chances of becoming a victim of Internet fraud also increases with every site where personal information is places. The Internet National Fraud Center Watch recently reported that the average loss due to fraud the first six months of 2006 was $2,579. This is compared to the $895 average for all of 2005. Complaints relating to general merchandise purchases (goods never received or misrepresented) accounted for 30% of Internet fraud complaints, and auction purchases (goods never received or misrepresented) topped the list at 44%.

One of the big scams in 2006-2007 is the investment scam. Investing has always been thought of as a good way to build a nest egg for retirement, but there are so many investment schemes offered via the Internet that you don’t really know which one is correct for you. Further, there are so many schemes that, while they appear legitimate, are pure scams. If you take your time, do a lot of research prior to signing on to something and don’t get taken in by the hype, you can make wise decisions and avoid losing your money to fraud.

Many e-commerce sites are trustworthy and have taken the necessary safety measures to shield you, but it still never hurts to proceed cautiously. If you decide to make an online purchase consider these simple steps:

1. Make all purchases with one credit card, preferably with a low credit limit. Avoid using an ATM or debit card because that’s money taken directly from your account.

2. Be wary of unsolicited offers by sellers. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. The Internet National Fraud Information Center Watch reported that email scams was up 22% in 2006.While the offer may seem legitimate, spammers and phishers like to use this tactic to side-step reputable sites that provide consumer protection for online purchases. They will send you to a site that looks just like the real thing. You put in your information and you are a victim in about 3 seconds. If you get an email asking you to confirm our Paypal, eBay or bank account information, whatever you do, DON’T CLICK ON THE LINK IN THE EMAIL. Go to the site directly by typing in the site name, and see if there is anything related to the email. In 99.9% of the time, it is not. It’s a fraud waiting to steal your personal information. You can also tell that the email is fake because it won’t have your name in it.

3. Use only reputable e-commerce websites that list a street address and telephone number in case you need to contact them directly. If you look all over the website, and you can’t find bona fide contact information, move cautiously. You wouldn’t go into a store with no sign or street address, would you? Well, this is no different. If you can’t find a number that connects to a human being and an address, keep on looking.

4. Read the website’s privacy policy. Some websites may reserve the right to sell/give your information to a third party. Check the document to see if they allow an opportunity to “opt-out” of receiving special offers from third-party vendors or for permission to share your personal information. If you want your name sold to a ton of people you don’t know, then don’t take this extra precaution. If they do it, and there isn’t a place to opt-out, move on. It’s not worth the amount of spam you will receive.

5. In the lower right-hand corner of your browser should be a small lock icon which indicates that the site is secure. Also, do not provide your personal information if the website address doesn’t start with “https” on that checkout page. This isn’t on the whole site, but wherever you are putting your credit card must have these two things in place. If you can’t find it or you see an unlocked lock icon, don’t put your personal information and credit card information in there. While the company may be completely legitimate, it is not secure. On the web, you can’t take that chance. Find an alternative way to shop with them if you really want to.

6. Choose only verified sellers. Check to see if the vendor is a verified member of a reputable third party such as the Better Business Bureau, VeriSign, or Guardian eCommerce. These third-party sites help to ensure online consumers will be protected when shopping or conducting e-commerce transactions.

Shopping on the Internet can be both convenient and fun, if you take the proper precautions. Simply know the rules of the road and what you should be looking for on websites, and you should have no trouble. If you do, contact the Better Business Bureau.

Author:  Alojate.com is the premier web hosting company in Mexico, offering a range or services for all business needs. http://www.alojate.com http://www.alojateextra.com