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Five Powerful Tips for New Webmasters Being a new webmaster can be a challenge. There are a thousand different ways you can go and a thousand different things you can do. Here are five powerful tips to help you gain a good understanding of what you really need to do to make your website a success.

Tip One: Realize that your website is not a website; It is a collection of web pages. And each web page is an individual unit that should stand on its own. This sounds funny but it is very true, and very important, particularly for the new webmaster. The large search engines have made the web one big website. People search for things and will re-search and flip through websites with no concern for website loyalty. They are looking for answers to their questions and the search engines have made it easy to use the whole web as an answer finding tool. You will, over time build visitor loyalty but it will only come once visitors develop confidence in the quality of your website.

Tip Two: People will not click on your advertisements, product banners, or other affiliate sales stuff unless you give them a reason to. No need to put up pages with lots of affiliate links in the hope of making revenue -unless you give them good content that helps them make a decision to buy. If you put up recommended products for them to buy you need to explain to them the benefits, features, and the pros and cons of the product. Web customers come in two different types. The first type is ready to buy. And they will go directly to the big retailers. The second type and this is the type you are looking for, is gathering information that will help them make a good buying decision. Give them good information and give them the tools they need to make an informed buying decision. If they want to buy something they will just go to the big online retailers. Your role as a little webmaster is to enhance their understanding and help them in unique ways to make buying decisions.

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Tags: Webmasters, website design

In today’s online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important.

In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations.

The focus of Part 1 will be with on page website optimization.

THE RIGHT KEYWORDS
This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly. If you are interested in reading more please see Keyword Research for Organic SEO.

Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still offer a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site.

Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word “hotel” would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to “Victoria BC hotel” you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings.

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Tags: Google, optimize

I love to write once and repurpose the articles I write into as many marketing opportunities as a I can that will reach the greatest number of people. While podcasting has always intrigued me, I never wanted to take the time to create additional content for an audience who prefers to listen to their information rather than read it. Then it occurred to me that I could create podcasts from my articles by simply reading them (with some feeling and inflection) and integrate that into my weekly article marketing plan.

Podcasting is the process of creating audio files (most commonly in MP3 format) available online so that users can automatically download the files to listen whenever they want. Many will listen to the file via their computer, but since the file is portable, the listener can also download the file to the mp3 player, much in the same way they would download and listen to music.

Here’s my 7 step process to creating podcasts from my articles:

1. Write article. Yes, you have to begin here, as without content, you have no podcast.

2. Create introduction. There are actually 3 parts to your introduction. In the first part, give your podcast a name and create an introduction to who you are and what you do. Here’s an example:

“Hi and welcome to the (your name here) podcast. I’m (your name and title and description). What I do at (my company name) is….(your 10 second audio commercial).”

In the second part of the introduction, I create a short sponsor message. Instead of finding paying sponsors, which is a very viable option, I create sponsors by buying domain names for affiliate products that I routinely recommend and then use that domain name and description of my product as my sponsor. In this way I leverage the information I already have at hand (recommendations of trusted products and services for which I’m an affiliate) without the hassle of seeking out paying sponsorships.

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Tags: podcast, podcasts

What is Digg?

Digg ( http://www.digg.com ) is a news-oriented, or “social news” website, where the majority of its content is submitted by its users. Digg’s users also rate the site’s content, determining what’s important enough to go on the front page, and what should be removed. After signing up for a free account, Digg’s users can submit, review, vote on, and comment on news stories and other content they find on the Internet.

The idea is that instead of searching the web for useful content, people can just make one stop at Digg and see the latest current events, feature stories, videos, podcasts, and other content ‘ selected and rated by users instead of by an editor.

Digg is an important tool in building your online presence.

If a link to your content is submitted to Digg and receives a lot of positive votes and comments, your website can receive hundreds or even thousands of visitors within a short period of time. There is a great deal of the traffic that will probably quickly read the article or post and leave but, there’s a good chance that the more targeted visitors will browse your site and sign up for your newsletter and/or RSS feed which will also help you to receive incoming links, trackbacks, and social bookmarks.

You may receive comments, earn extra income, have your rss feeds picked up, and many other possibilities may come from having your content submitted. How does Digg work? In order to make your comment live, Digg requires you to enter your name and email address, and then use a password and confirmation link they email you.

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Tags: digg, social authority building, social networking

The reason Google is the most successful search engine in the world is because they provide the best search results; pages ranked by tangible value. That tangible value is a combination of content and links, with links being the more important factor (they assume any pages linking in will only link to good content or risk their own ranking.)

Here are a few tips that will help you take full advantage of Google’s love of linking…

1.) Link Deep and with Relevance

So why is deeper better and what’s this about relevance? Google figured out that a link to a homepage is only good if that homepage has the information the visitor needs. If a person clicks a link for “amazing chocolate chip cookie recipe” and ends up on the home page, which has nothing of the sort, Google discounts it as a wasted link. On the other hand, if the link leads to the page containing info on the “Amazing Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe,” even five levels deep, the link has huge value to the visitor and to Google.

Want some proof? You already have it if you’ve ever used Google’s AdWords pay per click service. They will not even accept PAID links to pages that are not the most relevant for their visitors, regardless of what you are willing to pay per click. Now that’s saying something!

2.) Use Absolute Links Internally

It sounds complicated but it’s not. Absolute links are those with a fixed full URL. There’s another kind, called “relative” links that skip the first part of the domain and remain “relative” to the file structure. Let’s take a look at the difference…

Here’s the absolute link to the Google Ads page from Google’s homepage: “http://www.google.com/intl/en/ads/”

Here’s what it might look like as a relative link: “./intl/en/ads/”

Long story short; absolute links help your SEO efforts and relative links don’t.

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Tags: google rankings, seo

Should your SEO strategy (1) tackle the most competitive vertical keywords (2) pluck the low hanging fruit of the long-tail or (3) employ a combination of both? after deciding which strategy suits your sites ultimate objective, the mental model of the target client and amount of time and content required to accomplish the goal, what are the pros and cons of each tactic?

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Competitive Keywords

Pros: Stable traffic which eventually stems into the long-tail (semantically related phrases). Cons: The process could take up to a year to achieve saturation due to competition and search engine trust.

Also, the results you struggle to maintain are in constant flux (due to high demand), so a defensive strategy is required to maintain your position from scrolling out of the top 10 results.

Isn’t Targeting More Competitive Keywords More Difficult?

Before you get discouraged and give up before even getting started, yes the process for bagging a competitive phrase is challenging. But then again, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it and top 10 search engine placement would not be a crowning achievement, but rather a rotating free for all of inconsistency. For this reason, getting into the top 10 search results is more stringent than less competitive positions for ranking. The bar is raised, but so are the rewards, which is why relevance should not be an afterthought, but rather a central theme that consolidates your pages.

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Tags: keywords, long tail keywords, search engine optimization

Driving traffic to your site is one of the first requirements to a successful online business. Without traffic, your site may as well not exist. There are numerous ways you can drive traffic, so let’s take a look at some of them and evaluate them. Keep in mind, this isn’t a comprehensive list, but it is some of the more successful ways. . I invite you to share any other ideas that have worked for you.

• PPC
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Affiliate Programs
• Article Syndication
• Press Releases
• Blogging Banner ads
• Joint ventures
• Offline campaigns (that drive traffic to your site)
• Advertising (on other sites, ad networks and industry publications)

Let’s look at the pros and cons of a few of the methods, to help you determine what methods are viable for your business. Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3, as we work our way through the list above and determine the pros and cons.

PPC

Pros:

You can drive traffic quickly — that’s a good thing!

Your traffic is targeted if you select the right keywords — also a good thing!

You can use PPC to test things (headlines, landing page copy) — great way to use PPC, in addition to just driving traffic for sales. Be willing to sacrifice some profits and use PPC to test ideas before you fully role them out.

You control the settings and can turn it on and off any time — control is good.

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Tags: Website Traffic

Until recently, there were five major players in the search engine world: Google, MSN, AOL, Ask.com, and the Yahoo! search engine. These top Internet search engines quickly could be narrowed down to four, however; AOL uses the Google algorithm and will yield nearly identical results. Further narrowing is rapidly occurring – Ask.com seems to be stepping out of the spotlight to focus on specific markets, and in early March 2008, Microsoft began attempting to purchase the Yahoo! search engine. If there are just two top search engines with which to be concerned, what does this mean for your business and for SEO as a whole?

What’s Going On with the Yahoo! Search Engine?

As almost anybody with access to a news source knows by now, Microsoft put in an unsolicited offer to purchase the Yahoo! search engine in early March 2008. Yahoo! rejected this offer at first, saying that it undervalued its company as one of the top engines (and a provider of other services, including email and chat as well). Microsoft did not increase the offer at this point; it instead decided to enter a proxy battle.

A proxy battle would involve Microsoft putting up its own board of directors to let shareholders decide if its purchase of the Yahoo! search engine would be acceptable or not. In essence, Microsoft has decided that it will attempt to convince shareholders that their interests are better served by people who will approve this acquisition between two of the top Internet search engines. And Yahoo! shareholders have been beaten down for some time, so it is widely expected that the majority will in fact favor this acquisition.

Meanwhile, Yahoo!, on spurning this offer, began talking with other companies in order to build strategic partnerships and keep itself as one of the top engines, as it had been for so long. It was rumored that MySpace’s parent company, News Corporation, was in talks to work with the Yahoo! search engine, as was Google. However, these talks seem to have fizzled, and Yahoo!’s board of directors has begun speaking directly with Microsoft’s board. Yahoo! bought a bit of time by delaying the election of its board, but it is believed that this is all the shareholders will stand for at this point.

So I’m assuming that if the acquisition goes down, the Microsoft search engine and the Yahoo! search engine will likely be using the same algorithm, even if they remain separate sites. It just makes sense not to spend the money to have two separate research departments, especially when the Yahoo! search engine is widely regarded to be superior to Microsoft’s.

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Tags: Google, microsoft, yahoo

When somebody mentions something about a “landing page” or even a “doorway page” you immediately dismiss that as an archaic practice. But today with the search engines indexing almost every page of a website, “Every page of a site indexed by search engines is a potential landing page.”

In years past it was sometimes a tactic to create a single page for each search engine in the hope of winning top spot for a particular search phrase. This now heavily penalised practice of creating “gateway pages” was one of the earlier ways webmasters gamed the system.

But by landing page I’m not referring to a page that has been optimised for one specific keyword which would then lead you onto another webpage or even website, but rather a page that could possibly generate traffic to your website or even convert traffic. With so many pages including dynamically generated pages now ranking for search terms, each page is now a possible entry point for a search.

An important point to always remember is that each page is indexed by the search engines (or at least you hope it is if you’ve done your homework correctly). This would mean that each product in your catalogue has been indexed. While some websites simply put lists of products together many have pages dedicated to individual products. Each of these individual product pages could be a landing page for a search for that particular item.

While someone searching for “t-shirts” may find the home page of a multitude of suppliers, how many of those same sites would rank for the search “britney spears t-shirt”? This is where the optimisation of each page would come in handy. After all if your pages were optimised for their specific product they would be easier to find (and longer tail keywords do convert better). By the time the visitor reaches your website they are not only keenly looking for your product but are able to instantly find it at the page they find themselves on.

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Tags: Webmasters

Regardless of how good your website is, how good your sales copy is, how good or attractive your product is, unless you generate traffic you will never make money online. This article is going to cover some ways for you to drive traffic to your website for free.Now, if you are like many others you simply don’t have the spare cash to pay out to someone to drive traffic to your website for you. So, you must be willing to learn and put in some effort in understanding what you need to do to get traffic for free. Be prepared because it will take work and you will need to commit to it at the beginning. Once you have mastered the techniques, you can start to ease off some as many of the techniques will start to work on auto-pilot for you.

Being able to get website traffic for free will take a little time to build up. Without question, paying for traffic will get you instant results, but it is very important you learn how to get traffic for free. Believe me, it is a great feeling when you get tons of traffic to your site, and you know you haven’t paid a penny for it!

The first place you should look at to get traffic for free is in forums. Depending on what you are selling, or what your website is offering I guarantee you there is a forum on the subject somewhere. Search out and find those forums using the search engines. Check them out, see what people are writing about or commenting on. Sign up to those forums for free and start answering questions at first without blatantly advertising your website. Within a short space of time, you will begin to get reputation in the forum as being an expert. Once you are recognized as an expert, you can then start adding your signature to all your comments.

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Tags: Website Traffic