Article Categories

• Advertising
• Blogs & Podcasts
• Business
• Ecommerce
• Google
• Linking Strategies
• Marketing
• RSS
• SE Optimization
• SE Positioning
• SE Submission
• SE Tactics
• Security
• Technology
• Video Marketing
• Web 2.0
• Web Design
• Webmasters
• Website Promotion
• Website Traffic
• Writing

SiteProNews Blogs

• Darren Dunner
• Jerry Bader
• Kalena Jordan
• Matt Jackson
• Mel Strocen
• Titus Hoskins

Keep on top of your website maintenance

By Andrew Plimmer in Webmasters

You’ve probably tried many times in the past to visit a website only to find that it is no longer there, filled with broken links or that the information contained is well out of date. Just like you’d put in the effort to keep your home or your business in good condition, you should practice website maintenance to ensure that your visitors see a working site with updated content.

A website which is neglected will begin to show wear and tear. Visitors will simply go elsewhere if they see your site filled with out of date content and links which no longer work. You’ll need to ensure regular website updates to keep the content fresh and ensure that everything is working properly.

Many businesses fail to place the proper emphasis on website maintenance - which is a big mistake. To many consumers, your website is the point of contact for your business and your products and services. Suppose you had a brick and mortar storefront; you wouldn’t still be advertising a Christmas sale in May in your shop window, would you? Visitors will think your website has been abandoned and they will go to your competitors - hardly the result you want from your site.

Keep your content fresh

You’ll get a higher search engine ranking if you keep your content regularly updated, meaning more visitors will find and visit your site. Google, Yahoo and other search engines keep an eye out for updated content, so the more often you add new and relevant content, the higher your search engine ranking will be and the better you’ll be able to establish a reputation as an authoritative source of information in your field.

When you maintain a website by adding new content regularly, you’ll keep visitors coming back to see what you’ve added. This will build interest in your business and raise your profile online. You can use a blog or a news page to attract and retain the interest of consumers. Whenever you have new information to add that may be of interest to your visitors, get it up there on your site! You can also keep your visitors engaged by offering a newsletter or an RSS feed for updates.

To keep your site fresh:

Maintain up-to-date information on services, products and pricing; add photos, graphics and other multimedia content to the site regularly; feature a blog, articles and other new content regularly; send out announcements via email (or an RSS feed) about any company-related news.

Check all of your links regularly

There are few things which are more annoying than broken links. Broken links are those that point to a website or other resource which is no longer there or has been moved. You can either check your links yourself or hire someone to perform this service for you. Make sure to remove or update any broken links that you find.

If you remove any pages from your site, check if these pages are linked to by other sites and let them know that these links will no longer work (if possible, provide an updated link to these other sites). When you add or remove pages, make sure to update your site map so that the search engines can update this information as quickly as possible.

Your website will grow and change over time as your business grows. Website maintenance is an essential part of this business growth; your website will keep doing its job of attracting customers and driving sales as long as it is properly maintained.

---

Andrew Plimmer is CEO of Suncoast Internet, Sunshine Coast web design, web development and search engine optimisation specialists. For a free consultation on web design and SEO at Suncoast Internet go to => http://www.suncoastinternet.com.au/

10 Tips to Keep Members Glued to Your Site

By Jeremy Gislason in Webmasters

The more times your customers visit your site, the more time they will have invested in your relationship and the more they will come to trust and rely on you. By building up their loyalty in this way, there is more chance that they will buy from you, follow your advice and buy your affiliate products, or click on ads that you recommend.

Put simply, a sticky site equals customer loyalty. Customer loyalty equals revenue.

1. Content. We can’t stress the importance of content enough. Keep the content up to date, and ‘time sensitive’. Remove out of date content so that it doesn’t affect the credibility of your site.

2. Give your site a personality. There is a huge amount of information on the internet, and you can be sure your members could find what you are providing elsewhere. What your members are really paying for is the way you present that information.

3. Remain focused on your niche. Don’t forget that your members joined your site because they had an interest in your niche. While it is fine to include content on a slightly different subject if you are sure it will be relevant and interesting. Never lose sight of your original subject. Wander too far off the subject and your may find your customers wandering off your member list.

4. Make information easy to find. Ensure the content on your membership site is organized in such a way that your members will find what they want easily. If your members view your site as a valuable information resource rather than just another website, they will want to us it again and again.

5. Provide what your customers want. Encourage your customers to ask for an article or information on a certain subject if they can’t find it. Writing an article specifically for one customer may seem like a lot of work, but if you think long term, that customer may then stay with you for the lifetime of your membership site.

6. Keep in touch with your members. Contacting your members via e-mail is essential to keep them engaged with your site. Send your members updates, informative newsletters, and reminders, and ask them for their feedback.

7. Ask them to take part in surveys. Ask your members to complete a survey about your membership site and then make sure you act on their feedback and let them know you have done so. Send out a special edition of your newsletter showing some of the results of your survey and detailing how you have responded and any changes you have made. Feeling that they have had a hand in shaping your site will really make your members feel engaged in your online community.

8. Allow customization of your homepage. Having some functions that your members personalize on your site will really make them feel involved. Even a simple message at the top of the home page saying ‘Welcome back [member name]’ will have a huge impact on making your members feel valued.

9. Build a sense of community. Being part of an online community is one of the main reasons your members will renew their membership. Here are a few additional tips on creating that sense of community.

10. Promote an active forum. This provides a place for your members to get to know each other and begin to care about each other. Stopping their membership once they have become involved in your forum would be like losing a whole group of friends. Provide a function that allows your members to send private messages between each other. If you run competitions, or encourage your members to submit content, make sure you acknowledge the winners or contributors. Nothing makes a member feel a part of your site like seeing their name in the latest newsletter.

Jeremy Gislason is a leading expert on membership sites, marketing and online business. Do you want to market and sell all of your products faster? Free how to business and marketing courses at: http://www.MembershipMillionaire.com

Websites That Squeeze!

By Mary McNeil in Webmasters

Most websites conform to the traditional ‘brochure’ style where you present your services and yourself to potential new clients, as well as asking them to sign up and give you their contact details.

* Information capture as a sole purpose

If you’re serious about growing your mailing list, though, there’s a route you can take which involves turning your home page into what is known as an opt-in or squeeze page. The one and only purpose of an opt-in page is to get visitors to sign up. Its job is to squeeze contact details out of your website visitors!

Websites with an opt-in page as the home page appear to the visitor as a one-page site. There are no links to other pages, nothing to browse, and nothing for the visitor to do but sign up. Of course, you have to offer a reasonably generous reward for them to do so, and present it with a degree of compelling urgency. As a technique for growing your mailing list, though, it really works and it sure gets you focused!

* The opt-in page strategy

The question of whether an opt-in page is suitable for your particular website depends on how far you’re prepared to go down the route of growing your mailing list, of staying in regular contact with your subscribers and of using your list as the source of pretty much every single one of your future clients. It’s a widely-used strategy that’s been proven to work over and over again, so definitely worth considering.

Oddly enough, given the website-based material that I usually write, this opt-in page strategy is in many ways more reliant on email. It only requires that you have one page on your website… an opt-in page with the sole function of creating and growing a mailing list for your business. Once you have the contact details of your potential new clients, you can correspond with them via email - they don’t necessarily ever need to go back to your website again!

Of course, you can have a traditional-style website which you direct people to only after they have signed up on your opt-in page. In reality, this is more often how website owners use the strategy.

* So what makes a good opt-in page?

Actually the elements that make up a good opt-in page are much the same as the ones that should be present on any effective home page…

1. Write the content to and about your reader, not about yourself. When your target market visitor lands on your opt-in page, make sure they know this is THE website for them. How? Empathise with their problems and grab their attention with a blockbusting headline.
2. Let them know you have the solutions to their problems. Tease their interest. Offer them a form of these solutions for free. Your free offer needs to be relevant and enticing enough for them to want to get hold of it straight away. Don’t be afraid to give away some good information… when they see what you’re giving away for free, it increases their interest in what the paid-for information or service might include.
3. Sign-up box and call to action. Make these big, bold and utterly unambiguous.

* Keep testing and measuring your conversion rate

You may have come across some much lengthier opt-in pages that include many more elements than I’ve listed here. While these longer versions may work for others, I’ve always found that the clean, clear and concise versions produce the best results for me.

It’s very easy to measure the effectiveness of an opt-in page - the number of sign-ups as a percentage of the number of visitors to the page is your conversion rate. So why not experiment with your very own opt-in page and see what works best for you?

---

Mary McNeil’s FREE bulletin: “How to Set Up Your Coaching Website AND Get Clients From It” is available right now. Click here to grab your copy

How To Analyze Website Traffic

By Nelson Tan in Webmasters

Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don’t understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let’s start by examining the most basic data-the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your website’s activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as “hits” and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can be. For example, if your home page has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic.

The more visitors that come to your website, the more accurate your interpretation will become. The greater the traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.

The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors can access the necessary information on that page.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that particular page.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.

Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice an exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or graphic may have a significant impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the wrong page.

After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it’s time to turn to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular keywords are directing a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted the visitor-meaning that they find what they are looking for on your site, and even better, fill out your contact form or make a purchase-the more valuable that keyword is.

However, if you find a large number of visitors are being directed-or should I say misdirected-to your site by a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword demands adjustment. Keywords are vital to bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you a vital understanding of your visitor’s needs and motivations.

Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success.

Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at http://www.internetmasterycenter.com

The Importance of Website Conversion

By Scott Buresh in Webmasters

Many companies make the mistake of spending money in areas where it’s not necessary. Take, for example, companies pumping marketing dollars into increasing traffic on the website. It’s great to get more traffic, but that is just the first step. Now you need that traffic to do something.

Website Conversion Defined

The percentage of total visitors who come to the website, follow through after clicking on the company’s desired point of action (POA) and submit information, download a demo, make a purchase, etc. is the definition of website conversion. In an e-commerce application, multiple visitors will add items to their shopping carts, but a smaller percentage will actually make the purchase. The percentage of visitors that completes the transaction signifies the conversion rate for the website.  In a lead-generating application, multiple visitors will follow a path that you desire for them to follow (at first), but will not complete the form, download, etc.  The percentage that does signifies the conversion rate.

In order to boost the website conversion rate, companies need to determine why potential customers drop out at certain points in the process and eliminate these roadblocks in order to increase sales. Clearly defined POAs, intuitive navigation, and simple checkout processes all make it easier for potential customers to buy, contact, download, or whatever else it is that you want them to do that will lead to a sale.

Point of Action

Basically, the POA on your website is what you want visitors to do initially. Many websites will have more than one POA, so POAs are further broken down into primary, secondary, and even tertiary POAs. A primary POA (usually the most profitable action for a user to take) might be completing a purchase on the site while a secondary POA might be signing up for the site’s email newsletter announcing weekly specials. As a general rule, the marketing department (not the web designers) in consultation with sales should decide what the primary and secondary POAs will be.

Some websites have no clear POA and mainly serve as ‘brochure-ware.’ If a website doesn’t have clear POAs that guide users toward taking specific, valuable actions, those users are of course less likely to become purchasers.

Take Rate

The number (or percentage) of visitors who show interest in your POA (i.e. click on a link to visit the site’s contact form), comprise your take rate. Say a B2B website is highlighting its downloadable demo as its POA; a visitor might click on that link to get to a download page.  Whether or not they actually follow through with the download has no bearing on the take rate - the take rate merely demonstrates that there was enough interest for them to take the POA.

On an e-commerce site, for instance, a visitor who adds a product to his shopping basket has taken the first step toward the company’s desired POA, but the potential purchaser may not complete the transaction.

There are many ways to improve the take rate of a website.  One of the biggest ways is to simply make it very clear to visitors, on every page of your site, what you want them to do.  Whether this is to purchase, to contact, to download, to sign up, or any number of other actions, make it clear and prominent for the visitor.  No matter where they are on your site when they decide they are ready to take that POA, your site should make it easy for them to do so.

Website Conversion Rate

The actual website conversion rate is the ratio equal to the number of people who actually convert on the site versus the overall number of visitors to the site for a given period.  If, for example, 3 out of every 100 visitors to your B2B site filled out a contact form (and that form was your only POA) your website conversion rate would be 3%.

Obviously, improving your take rate will also improve your conversion rate, since more people will be coming to the form, download page, purchase page, etc.  But there are many things you can do to increase the likelihood that people will convert after they have taken the initial POA.  Keeping contact forms short and only asking for the minimal information you need is one way.  Having a prominent and clear privacy policy or encryption policy can also help.  The important thing to recognize is that a large number of people who demonstrate an interest in your products or services by clicking on your POA may not follow thorough, and it is important to determine why and to remove those obstacles.

Putting it Together

There are literally thousands of elements you can change on your website to increase both your take rate and website conversion rate. A/B testing has long been used to determine how changing certain variables affects the conversion and take rates. However, this method is limited to testing one variable at a time if you want to gather the granular metrics from each slight modification. Today, with more sophisticated testing software packages available, multivariate testing, which enables you to test many variables at the same time while still seeing granular results, is becoming more common. Common tests include changing color schemes, tweaking various aspects of navigation, copy, and POAs have all been proven to maximize the take rate, website conversion rate, and subsequently, your revenue and bottom line. Website conversion is all about your visitors - appeal to their needs and desires in a logical, concise way, and you’ll see your rates improve.

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company.  His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.  He was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google for Dummies (Wiley, 2004).  Medium Blue has local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and TOTO USA, and was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world in 2006 and 2007 by PromotionWorld. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

5 Sizzling Tips For Choosing The Right Web Hosting Company

By Nathan Navachi in Webmasters

If you want to set up a personal blog, a company website, or even a multi-million dollar social network, choosing the right hosting company for your website is paramount. Without laying this essential foundation, your internet site may experience frequent downtime, or worse still you could lose all of your important data.

With the five tips below I will show you how to make the right choice when it comes to choosing a company that can responsibly manage your website or blog.

Tip #1 - What is their advertising campaign?

If you head over to your local bookstore and go to the magazine section you will probably find a few magazines targeted to the web developer crowd. Often in these magazines there will be advertisements for web hosting companies that flaunt their impressive stats such as “99.9% server uptime” and others.

If a company is not running a legitimate operation, they would likely not be able to afford this type of advertising and also the magazine would pull the ad immediately if they began to receive a lot of negative feedback about this company. Any hosting company that you find this way will probably be a very safe bet for your business, because the more customers they have the more they have to keep their servers up 24/7 and put in place proper data backup procedures.

Tip #2 - What are other people saying about them?

One of the best ways to check and see if your web hosting company has a good track record is to see what kinds of reviews other people are giving them. Bring up any popular search engine and type in your host’s name with the word “review” afterwards and see if the feedback is positive or negative.

Tip #3 - How much does their shared hosting cost?

While the cost of website hosting has gone down dramatically in recent times and you likely can find a reliable hosting company for under 7 dollars per month for a small site, there is a scam that some shady hosting companies use which is to overload the amount of shared hosting accounts.

For your small monthly fee you may get a large amount of space and bandwidth, but the host counts on the fact that you are only going to use a small percent of it, so they will put more shared accounts on a single server than the server could handle if everyone used up all of their allocated capacity.

This means that with this type of account if someone else who had a shared account went over their bandwidth limit, it could bring your website down. Not a safe bet for someone who wants constant uptime.

Tip #4 - What kind of guarantee do they offer?

Even to this day the website hosting industry remains semi-anonymous, and there are a great deal of sob stories about people who lost all of their valuable data and literally their entire business overnight. But if your hosting company has a plan to take your money and run, it is not likely that they will offer a refund policy and money-back guarantee that is fair for customers.

Check to see what your hosting company’s policy for refunds is, and if they hold themselves to strict measures of transparency and accountability than it is probably a reliable company.

Tip #5 - Do you feel safe trusting them with your business?

Sometimes the most important tip you could follow is your gut feeling about whether or not this is a competent company. If they have a poorly designed website and no customer service then maybe it is not a safe bet for you.

And even if they do have all the bells and whistles on their website, if they do not return your email requests in a timely fashion then it may turn out that they are not a safe and reliable web hosting company.

---

Nathan Navachi is a 5-year online marketing veteran who recommends http://www.NathanNavachi.com for everyone who wants to increase their monthly earnings. Go to http://www.NathanNavachi.com right now to see how a clever software program earns over $6,000 in one day!

Source: http://www.submityourarticle.com

Permalink: http://www.submityourarticle.com/a.php?a=51252

Serious Internet Business Tips for the Redundant and Jobless

By Peter Nisbet in Webmasters

Serious internet business tips are needed by people who are new to online marketing, specifically those who have been made redundant or are otherwise jobless. However, there is difference between those jobless through redundancy and for any other reason, in that the redundant generally have a cash fund with which to fund their serious internet business activities.

If you have money to spend, keep in mind that it won’t last forever, and that you will eventually need an ongoing source of income. You might think you will easily find a new job, but will you? In this economic climate jobs are hard to come by, and businesses tend to be laying people off rather than employing them.

If you were made redundant, then offered the opportunity to start up a new serious internet business, as opposed to an online business used for fun or as a source of spare cash, for an expenditure of less than $1000 of your redundancy payment, would you consider it?

That $1000 won’t last long in any case - if you aren’t at home getting immersed in your online business you would be spending it travelling around seeking work, paying increasingly larger credit card bills, or even wasting it in bars or hanging out with your friends, depending on your age and responsibility. I know, because I was in that situation, and I wasted my money on all of these until I saw the light. Here are some tips on how to approach a new business online, and to start up your own serious internet business.

What Are Your Skills

Everybody knows something about something, and there is normally somebody somewhere in the world that will pay for your knowledge. Step 1 is to make a list of what you know or can do. If you have a trade, such as carpentry or plumbing, you can offer your services from a website. Are you a good writer? Lots of freelance work is available (many like me employ article ghost writers); can you draw - lots of work in website graphic design; can you train dogs, play a sport, quilt, embroider, fish, juggle, tame lions or know a great cure for psoriasis?

Make a list of things you know or can do, and decide which of these you can market: write an eBook, provide a regular course, make a video, review products, compare prices, offer your services (online or locally), etc. Believe it or not, that is how just about every individual gets started online.

Even the late Corey Rudl, one of the internet greats who was earning $10 million a year when he died at 35 years old while racing his Porsche, started off by selling an eBook about how to buy cars at discount prices.

You Have No Skills?

If making half a million dollars a year can be defined as a serious internet business, that is what some people earn simply by selling other people’s products.

It is called affiliate marketing, and if you focus on selling electronically deliverable goods such as eBooks and software, with no replacement cost, the average payment is 50% of the sales price. If you sell $57 eBooks, you make $28.50 for each sale - and you can sell loads of different products!

Your Niche

Whether you are selling your own products or skills, or those of other people, the subject of these products/skills will be your niche. If you have a variety of different products or skills, then organize them into niches because it will be difficult to succeed unless each website focuses on only one niche. If you have more than one niche you will need more than one website, though subdomains (website directories) will also do in place of more websites or domains.

Your Online Store

You need somewhere from which you can advertise and sell your products or services. Most people use a website, but you can also use a blog or some other online platform.

A blog is OK for those wanting to make spare cash, but you need a website for a serious internet business. Don’t get me wrong - it is possible to make millions from a blog, but the newcomer that has to make a living is better with a website, and then use a blog to promote the website.

There are many different kinds of website, but each has to be set up in web space that is provided by a web host. You will find lots of web hosting services online, and you have to decide which is best for you.

Website Design and Promotion

This is where it gets interesting. Your entire website is known as a ‘domain’ and you need to decide on a domain name and register it with the DNS (Domain Name System). You then have to design your website and promote it.

Website promotion involves designing and writing the content of the site to attract search engines, so that your site will be listed on Google, for example, and to promote or advertise it in as many of the different ways available as possible.

The content of your site should revolve around your product or service, and if you are running a serious internet business then your promotion should focus on getting visitors to your site, and the website itself should have three major objectives:

1. To retain the attention of visitors with a good headline and interesting content that should be relevant to your niche. You have to keep them on your website until they make a purchase.

2. To collect the first name and email addresses of visitors so that you can keep in contact - few people will buy your products on their first visit.

3. Ultimately to make a sale, but also to keep in touch with your customers.

Every serious internet business should be based on the above factors, and if they are then they are more likely succeed than if not. These are not easy to achieve without good advice, and there is a lot more to a successful online business than just the mechanics, which is what the factors above are.

You also have to take action, don’t get bogged down by trying too many programs at once, but focus on one, and persevere. Every serious internet business is based on perseverance and carrying on when things don’t seem to be working. The light bulb will suddenly switch on, and you will succeed if you don’t let intermediate failures get you down.

---

Pete is writing through experience, and if you want his help in avoiding the traps that he fell into, visit Serious Internet Business Guide where he will help you to make the right decisions.

Source: http://www.submityourarticle.com

Permalink: http://www.submityourarticle.com/a.php?a=50078

Top 5 Tools to Analyze Your Website

By admin in Webmasters

When you manage a website there are some things that you need to know. For example, might it be a good idea to ask yourself questions such as; is the site effective and does it accomplish what it should? Getting answers to such questions is not always the easiest thing in the world. That is - at least not if you haven’t looked at any website statistics. Thankfully there are several great tools on the market that can help you understand how your website is performing. If you know this, you’ll be able to optimize and make the site more sticky and converting. To help you get started we’ll list what we believe to be the top 5 tools to analyze your website.

1. SEO Analyzer:

The SEO Design Analyzer from Raven is free to use and it will give you tons of useful information. Simply type in your URL and you’ll get the data you need to get a good understanding of what you’re doing right and what needs to be better optimized. It’s all very easy and it only takes seconds to get the results.

Some of the information that you’ll get to know are the download time, obsolete HTML, inline styles and at the end you’ll get an overall score for the design. One big plus with this tool is that it covers as good as every area of an average SEO process. If you really want the best of the best you might want to take a look at the SEO Pro version. It will cost you $100 a month but the features that are included could very well be worth it - depending on your requirements. Take advantage of this tool and create a user friendly site with top conversion.

This is perhaps not a web analytics tool in its full meaning as it’s probably better explained as a log analyzer. Nevertheless it is very useful and as it’s an open source program, it’s free to download and use. Due to, or thanks to, its popularity, it comes in several different languages, making it easlily accessible for people all over the world.

What it actually does is “generating advanced web, streaming, ftp or mail server statistics graphically” in a HTML report. AWStats surely will give you everything you might be looking for in a statistics tool. Most log file formats are supported by AWStats – such as Apache, IIS (W3C) and WebStar. Take advantage of this tool and get an easy overview of who your visitors are, what search engines they’re using and what time of day they’re visiting your site.

2. Website Grader:

The Website Grader is somewhat similar to SEO Analyzer and it will also provide you with all the necessary data you need to optimize your site. It’s free to use and we must say that we are impressed with the detailed data that appears after only a couple of seconds. Even though your site might be strong, it will always have some weak links that could be worth improving.

Some of the results that you get are heading summary, image summary, number of del.ici.ous bookmarks, on page SEO and off page SEO. Are you for example using too many images and not enough metadata? Website Grader can help you understand all these things for free and when done you can show your visitors the site’s score, with a badge from Website Grader. Try it out - we think that you might really like this tool.

3. AWStats:
This is perhaps not a web analytics tool in its full meaning as it’s probably better explained as a log analyzer. Nevertheless it is very useful and as it’s an open source program, it’s free to download and use. Due to, or thanks to, its popularity, it comes in several different languages, making it easlily accessible for people all over the world.

What it actually does is “generating advanced web, streaming, ftp or mail server statistics graphically” in a HTML report. AWStats surely will give you everything you might be looking for in a statistics tool. Most log file formats are supported by AWStats – such as Apache, IIS (W3C) and WebStar. Take advantage of this tool and get an easy overview of who your visitors are, what search engines they’re using and what time of day they’re visiting your site.

4. Crazy Egg:

The Crazy Egg tool comes in three different versions; standard, plus and pro. The standard version is free and the others cost a bit, but they are in no way pricey. With the help of this tool you’ll be able to see what your visitors are doing on your site – right down to their precise mouse movements. In fact, what we loved the most about this tool is the heatmap.

With the heatmap you’ll be able to see what’s hot and what’s not on your site via an image showing you where your visitors are the most active – every click by your users is recorded. Its simple design makes it very user-friendly as well. The standard version will give you plenty of useful info but if you really want to dig into the core of your site, we would recommend you to pay for the plus or pro version.

5. Mint:

The Mint analytics tool will cost you $30 per site but it will be money well spent. With Mint you’ll get data such as number of visits, unique referrers, most popular pages and much, much more. As this is a tool that you’ll have to pay for, you can expect a little extra – and we can promise you that it will deliver. Mint uses a plugin system, called Pepper, which allows adding extra extensibility to your base script.

We understand that it might seem unnecessary to pay for something that you can get for free elsewhere but remember that $30 is still a cheap way of getting that much data and your site is worth all the attention it can get. All-in-all, mint is a very good analyzing tool.

<!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”,”serif”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-unhide:no; color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; color:purple; mso-themecolor:followedhyperlink; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>

This is a guest post written by Chris Reynolds from Web Hosting Search. Chris is a writer, developer and an enthusiastic designer who loves to blog about the hosting industry and has a special interest for website analytics. WHS is a well respected guide on trustworthy hosting providers worldwide and their reviews range from simple cheap hosting to more advanced dedicated hosting solutions.

Does Your Web Site Have Trustability and Credibility?

By Maria Marsala in Webmasters

Summary: Want someone to purchase your terrific product or service? In addition to the quality of what you sell, offer them a trustworthy web site, too.

Have you ever visited a web site and been attacked by screaming pop-up ads, gotten lost in a clutter of banner ads, had things flash and go boom? And have you ever visited a site that was informative, easy to navigate and generally pleasant to peruse?

Which site gained your trust? Which site would you revisit? The more user-friendly building tools you use on your site, the more trust will be developed with your viewers. With this in mind, here are expert tips for making your online store trustworthy…

• Purchase an appropriate domain name Paying for your own domain name builds trust and is professional looking. Your own domain name will be - free of all advertisements (except products you sell or recommend). You want to sell your visitors on the content of your site - not the products of other advertisers.
• Use your domain name email addresses When searching for a host for your site, look for packages that include POP3 accounts and NOT alias accounts. This will enable you to send email from your site (you@yourbusiness.com), which looks much more professional than you@freeemailaccount.com. It is easier to trust someone who has evidently made an investment in his or her business.
• Include contact information Provide phone numbers, hours of operation (including time zone), a business mailing address and an email address. PO Boxes are not considered addresses. Many companies won’t deliver to PO Boxes, and many visitors won’t purchase from you if you use one. Work from home? Add a suite or building number to your home/apartment. Or use a mail forwarding service for a real address.
• Add contact links Place at least one way for your visitors to contact you on each page and place your Webmaster’s contact information on at least the bottom of the front page. This way your visitors can request information from you, and if there is a problem with your site, they can write to the Webmaster. Even if you and the Webmaster are the same person, place the Webmaster’s email address on the site.
• Watch your dates. People prefer to see a current copyright date on the bottom of sites. Some web sites also carry a “last updated” dates. Are your dates current?
• Include a personal touch Provide an “About Me/Us” page. Provide the names of the owner, president, executives, and staff on the contact page. Include individual and group pictures, small biographies if relevant, and email addresses where they can be quickly contacted. Don’t make it look as though your site’s owners want to be anonymous, which obviously generates suspicions.
• Avoid “enter”, “enter here” and splash screens Do you have an “Enter page” or splash screen on the front of your site? If so, delete it now! You will lose visitors who want information quickly because they’ll go to a rival site instead. Worse than an enter page is an enter page that forces someone to download a program such as Flash. If you want to use the option of Flash pages, fancy pointers etc., give visitors the option of
  viewing them. Don’t force them to download any programs.
• Cater to everyone Include alt = ” ” tags with your images to assist those with sight disabilities and the hundreds of thousands of people all over the world who use library-based text-only computer software and Web
  browsers.
• Make it quick Ensure that your pages load in less then 20 seconds with a 56K modem and 7 seconds using DSL. Most visitors will not have the patience to stick around much longer than that and will simply move on. A site that loads quickly and is neatly designed, will show that you are a professional company. It will also boost confidence in your potential buyers.
• Get recommendations Ask your clients for testimonials and permission to use their whole name on your Web site. If they don’t feel comfortable doing so, find others who will.
• Link it Make sure that all the links within your site or to other web sites are working. Download a links checker and use it monthly. Sometimes you’ll find that you’ve linked within your site to a page you’ve moved
  or removed. Other times you’ll find that pages outside your site have disappeared or are changed. Ask your Web Designer to design an interesting “error” page that will allow your visitors to get back on track if a page they bookmarked no longer exists.
• Spell it right If you want your site to be as professional as it can be, put each page through a spell checker or hire an excellent proof reader. Don’t underestimate the value of a properly spelled site.
• Provide guarantees If you have a money back guarantee on your service or product, say so. If you don’t, say what you do provide. Do guarantees include or exclude returning the shipping or handling fees? How about a privacy policy for your newsletter ailing list or code of ethics? Clearly place any type of guarantee on your site.
• Secure purchases The best sites provide the most secure purchase program available. This includes a secure server, secure gateway, and information that informs you that your purchase is as secure as is currently possible. Make sure you offer your customers secure purchases. If you don’t they will (and should) shop elsewhere.
• Don’t clutter the site. Use lots of white space to “break” up the text. It’s easier on the eyes that way. The only place to NOT use lots of white space is on the top of your pages.
• Watch your fonts. Save the fancy font types for special items or graphics. Arial and Veranda work well on sites, Times Roman does not.
• Drop it Eliminate the pop-ups, pop-unders, banners that wave or go blinkity-blink all the time.
• View it Ask people to go to your site. Now without scrolling, ask them how they know what your business is about. If they can’t figure it out, fix this.

Maria Marsala. As founder of Elevating Your Business, Maria helps professional service CEOs, presidents, practitioners and executives build better companies as they increase sales, improve productivity and work smarter. Receive MORE Business ezine and your free business tools at ElevatingYourBusiness.com

What About Those Zero Dollar Sale Days?

By Diego Norte in Webmasters

If you haven’t already experienced this, odds are that you will.  You sit in front of the computer, checking your email, waiting for that first order of the day to come in, but it never does.  So what do you do on those zero dollar sale days?

It is not the best feeling for a small business owner to see those numbers staying still all day long. However, there are ways to combat the negative thoughts this brings on.

1. Use that down time to update your site or catch up on your inventory.  Think of it as a work day.
2. Use it as a day off.  Sometimes you will get so caught up in this business that you may even forget it’s the weekend or that there is no more milk in the fridge.  Consider a slow business day a day to catch up on your non-business life.
3. Know that business will likely pick up.  It may be later in the day, it may be tomorrow, it may be next week.  Most small business owners would agree that slow days are typically followed by very busy days.
4. If you’re just starting out, realize that internet businesses almost always start out slowly.  At the beginning, you may get a lot of window shoppers.  As your business picks up, your sales will begin to include repeat customers and your slow days will slowly pick up too.
5. Keep the lives of your customers in mind.  It may be a holiday, or vacation season.  It may be the day of the month when a majority of your shoppers have to pay the mortgage or other bills.  There may be a reason that people just aren’t visiting your site.
6. Use this time to think of new ways to advertise.  There are always new places to promote your business.  If you are selling a product directed to parents of small children, try checking into some parent forums or homeschooling forums.  If your product is directed toward users of a certain product, do a goggle search to find message boards about that subject.  Use a slow day to get your name out there.
7. If your slow day has turned into a week or more, it may be time to start a new promotion.  Try to figure out what is preventing people from purchasing and create a promotion that addresses that issue.
8. Know that every business out there has it’s zero dollar days.  If you have friends or colleagues who are also small business owners, ask them about their own experiences with slow sales.
9. Make sure everything is working properly on your site.  This seems like the first thing most people would check, but it is often overlooked.  It may take several customers visiting before they find a way to contact you to alert you to a problem, so don’t forget to check for yourself.
10. Lastly, don’t get discouraged!  Every business out there suffers its slow periods.  You may be especially prone to discouragement from these slow days if you are in the beginning stages of your business.  Remind yourself that it will not last forever.

Diego Norte an Authority Site On All Aspects Of Male, Female and Human Enhancement: http://www.enhancementhq.com/

© Copyright 2009 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

Home Newsletter Archives SEO Forums Webmaster Tools Webmaster Resources Link to SPN Top SEO Tools Website Templates SPN Partners Contact Us Privacy Advertise

ExactSeek SiteProNews MetaWebSearch GoArticles EzineHub ISEDN DropJack NewWebDirectory.com SEO-News SEO-News Forums Blog Search FreeWebSubmission SmartWebGadgets