Category: website

SEO Basics – Attracting Google Bot And Other Spiders

Posted on by admin

The first part of gaining good rankings with search engines is ensuring that the search engines can find you. There are a few methods to ensure your site gets indexed and therefore listed but they can differ greatly in effectiveness, timeliness, and cost. One of the most common ways that Webmasters attempt to grab the attention of the search engines is through search engine submission, but does this really provide the results that you want? In this article we will really only be looking at the three major search engines – Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Search Engine Submission

Search engine submission is often hocked as being the most effective way of getting your site indexed. While it is possible to submit your site to the major search engines the largest flaw in this process is that you will have to wait for weeks, or months, before you can even begin to hope to see results.

Search engines prefer to work in a more natural and fluid way so this staged method of submitting your site is not the preferred solution for them. All of the big three search engines include a "submit your site" link but do have prepared to wait some reasonable time for inclusion. In the majority of cases, your site will be indexed by one of the other methods before the search engines respond to your inclusion request.

Directory Submission

Search engines tend to use a number of directories in order to bulk up their results. They find one or more directories that they trust and regularly update their own index with that of the directories. For years, gaining inclusion into the Open Directory Project, also known as the ODP or DMOZ, meant a listing in Google was soon to follow.

However, over the last year or so DMOZ has come under fire from many avenues. Some Webmasters claimed that editors were not including their sites because they were in direct competition to the editors' own sites. Exactly how true this is, I would not like to speculate but there are some factors that are certainly true.

It takes a long time to be accepted in the DMOZ directory, if your site is ever accepted at all. For many months the site submission pages and process were down, and the same was also true of the editing directory. This meant that no sites whatever would have been accepted. While this has now been fixed you should still expect to wait many months before getting DMOZ inclusion.

There are a great many directories included on the Internet, some are niche directories based on specific topics while others are general topic directories. While the search engines may not consider all of these to be authoritative links and may not use them to update their index with, you still gain the advantage of having an inbound link to your website.

Inbound Links

Inbound links are the preferred method to getting your site indexed. Spiders are deployed by search engines in …

Small Business SEO: 2 Best SEO Practices for Small Business Sites

Posted on by admin

For many small businesses just starting out, their primary startup preoccupations would include getting their website up and running. Although they realize the massive sales potential of their online presence but it will remain limited if small business SEO is not employed.

With search engine optimization, your business can gain website traffic both from visits and walk-in traffic from customers, as well as help make your site more popular and reach out to your target customers online.

If you are still having some budget issues that using an SEO company may seem impossible this very moment yet you want to know some ways to use in improving your online presence and ensuring the practices you adopt are sustainable, we have here a few SEO tips to get you started:

Quality Content

With the recent panda algorithm update, Google targets poor quality content. In effect, the search engine gives high quality content higher rank in its search pages. Again, the argument content is king is vindicated and good thing for businesses to realize the quality content is the key to sustainable success. Users are likely to bounce off when their expectations for quality content are not met after searching for results.

Metrics that search engines use when ranking pages in SERPS have also changed. Search engines look for social signals, which means they give more weight to a particular piece of content showing many likes or followerships. Other metrics search engines take into account are: bounce rate, visits and links to the page.

With tight budget, you can start focusing on quality content and researching what questions customers are searching for. With that information, you can start providing content that meets quality standards and answers these questions. Voila, you already have the foundation of your content marketing strategy.

Building Quality Links

Links are important to search engine ranking. With the penguin update targeting low quality links and over optimization, those not following Google's strict policy on link networking are bound to suffer from being penalized. Building quality links can be achieved through the use blogger outreach. Link building tactics that are no longer effective include directory submissions, low quality link networks, social book marks, and article submissions.

Blogger network is the more legitimate small business SEO that you can employ because the focus is on building relationships with other blog owners. Through such network, which are trusted, website owners can pitch content ideas for possible inclusion to the network. As a result, blog owners get content that is not only of good quality but free in exchange for a quality link back. The links are counted as votes by search engines, impressing that the pages are important and popular. Also an important tactic is link variation which ensures that a website's link profile will appear natural.

These are only two essential small business SEO practices – producing quality content and building quality links – that you can employ to have your business rank within search engine platforms. Other strategies are important …

What to Do If Your Downloads Are Taking Too Long

Posted on by admin

Slow downloads are not only annoying but can also cost you a lot of time and effort. Fortunately, there’s a very simple way to fix this problem which even a beginner can do. Here are the steps you should take to fix the slow downloads on your computer:

Step 1 – Check Internet Speed – The speed of your Internet connection is essential if you want fast downloads. Nowadays, a typical broadband connection is considered fast if it’s over 1mb/s in speed. This basically means that the connection has the ability to download files at 100kb/s (the download speed is 1/10th of your overall connection speed). To test what speed you’re getting to your computer, you should Google “Broadband Speed Test” and then click on the first link. Run the test on the website and if it’s below your expectations, you should contact your Internet provider.

Step 2 – Check Download Server Speed – If your connection is okay, the problem might lie in the “server” speed” of the download server. Whenever you download a program off the Internet, you PC is basically connecting to another PC (called a ‘server’) and downloading a series of files from that. If the Internet connection of the other PC is poor then your downloads are going to be very slow. This is a problem which cannot be fixed but you can try and avoid it by using another download server. You’ll have to Google the file name you want and it should show you some different servers (known as “mirrors”).

Step 3 – Clean Out The Registry – One of the biggest causes of slow downloads is actually thanks to Windows itself. Many computers end up making their downloads run slow because the settings inside them are unable to be read quickly or smoothly. This is a problem which even the most advanced of Windows systems cannot avoid and is where your computer will actually save many of its most important settings in the wrong way, corrupting & damaging them. This will make them unable to be read – which means that when you PC wants to download a file and it needs to read a series of settings to do that, it will end up taking a lot longer than normal.

Most slow downloads can be fixed by cleaning out the ‘registry’. The registry is where all the settings for your PC are kept, and is where Windows looks for a series of ‘download settings’ each time you want to download a file. These settings show Windows how to download files at the fastest rate possible, and its vital that they are in the correct standing. To clean out the registry, you can use a ‘registry cleaner’ which is a software application that scans through all the settings on your PC and fixes them.…

Benefits of Bing and Yahoo Pay Per Click

Posted on by admin

With today’s very competitive online marketing, it is important that a business creates a strong marketing effort to build qualified traffic to their website. Pay per click marketing is one great way of advertising on the Internet. It can bring a steady flow of traffic that can result to potential leads and new sales. Over the years, it has been proven profitable, especially if the business is targeting a segment of audience. Adding Bing and Yahoo to your Google pay per click marketing is worth considering.

Pay per click campaign is based on keyword selection specifically designed to revolve around search terms that are relevant for the site. They are normally the ads that show up at the top and right corner of a search page. Generally, search engines do not charge when displaying these ads, but when a visitor clicks on the ad or the link which lands back to the business’ site, only then, is the advertiser charged.

All throughout the pay per click marketing world, Google is leading all other search engines with their 67% market share. However, what most advertisers do not realize is that with the growing amount of traffic on Google, also comes a number of competitors, still making it hard to hit on search result targets.

So, what is the alternative? Over the last couple of years, Bing and Yahoo pay per click have emerged as Google’s number one competitor. Although, Yahoo’s market share only comes up to 11.6% and Bing’s to 16.7%. When combined, they total of over 30% and this can still make a dent with Google’s share. And for any advertisers who overlooks these numbers could be ignoring a large population of potential customers.

Other advantages of Bing and Yahoo pay per click, include:

  • Pay per click with Bing and Yahoo does not cost as much as with Google. – Many advertisers say that taking Google as their host for paid search is a complete campaign suicide, mainly because of their high costs. Relevant keywords being bid with Bing and Yahoo do not cost as much as $2 to $5 per click as with Google. For instance, one of the most expensive keywords in Google includes “insurance,” “loans,” “mortgage,” “trading,” which usually ranges from $30 to $50 per click. So, if you run a business about loans and need to bid on “house loans” keyword, a business can pay as much as $3500 a month for that particular keyword alone with Google. However, Bing and Yahoo give much more reasonable prices. They have the lowest cost per click, even with the most expensive keywords in AdWords that normally ranges from $0.10 to $2, but still lands in the first pages. More so, they offer long-tail keywords of four or more words, but still at a very reasonable price bid.

  • Bing and Yahoo have demographic advantages. – Although recently, Bing removed their feature to target ads by gender and age as they say they improve it to become more accurate. Bing
…

Eating Healthy at Work

Posted on by admin

One of the most common New Year's resolutions year after year is to improve overall well-being, which includes eating healthy and losing weight. Eating healthier can be a difficult goal to attain when the work-life balance is thrown into disarray. A hectic, unbalanced life often increases stress; and stress is known to affect your mood, energy levels, and eating habits. During the long, busy workday packed with meetings and conference calls, it's often easier to grab a blueberry muffin from the break room than it is to mix up a cup of yogurt with a grateful of fruit and granola. Unfortunately, many people are oblivious to the amount of calories that they are consuming daily by making impulsive food choices.

Here are a few examples:

· Yoplait Light Blueberry Patch Yogurt is 100 calories compared to Dunkin Donuts Blueberry Muffin at 500 calories or reduced Fat Blueberry Muffin at 450 calories

· A medium banana is 110 calories compared to a slice of Starbucks Banana Nut Loaf at 490 calories

· A medium apple is 95 calories compared to McDonald's Baked Apple Pie at 250 calories

· McDonalds medium Strawberry Banana Smoothie is 260 calories compared to McDonalds medium Strawberry McCafe Shake at 710 calories

· A packet of Quaker Apples & Cinnamon Instant Oatmeal is 130 calories compared to Starbucks Outrageous Oatmeal Cookie at 370 calories

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the suggested calorie intake for an active adult woman is 2,200 calories and the recommended calorie intake for an active adult man is 2,800 calories (both can vary based on age, activity level, and weight). When consuming high-calorie foods during one meal or snack, it does not leave much room for the rest of the meals that day. If you are craving a particular high calorie food, do a quick search for a healthy, satisfying alternative. There are countless sites to help determine the calorie content of any food item and most restaurants post nutrition facts on their website. Lastly, always remember to read the nutrition labels when available! Just because a food item sounds healthy, does not mean it really is healthy. For the purpose of this blog, only calories were compared. There are various other factors to consider when choosing healthy foods; ie fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, sugar, and protein are some of the most popular.

Help your fellow comrades stay on track to improving their overall well-being and share your favorite healthy foods with us! …

Search Engine Optimization 401- How Important is On-Page Optimization?

Posted on by admin

Search Engine Optimization provides web site users with many advantages to being located. Using On-Page optimization is important to provide an easier way for the search engines to find you and direct visitors to your site. On-Page optimization is simply an easier way to use bold your keywords for the search engines. It provides more inventive ways for you to promote the search engine without them realizing that you are doing that.

On-page optimization is the key in search engines finding you. Using the keywords and on page optimization techniques of placing your keywords in various pages provides a great marketing tool for you. Providing new information and updating your website often allows the search engine to locate you more often because they will know that something new has bee added.

If you are serious about generating traffic to your site that will benefit you and provide great revenue then you are in need of learning or gaining more knowledge on On-Page optimization and what forms of it is better suited for your website and individual web pages. Each page needs to be opimtizated to increase your search engine results. Search engines locate by pages not by the entire site. Therefore it is more important than every to understand how each page needs to be described and provided key words that match what searches will seek. This form of SEO is vital to the life of your website and the life of your internet business. I recommend using on-page optimization. The more ways to generate traffic to your site, the better off you will be in the long run! …

Online Affiliated Marketing

Posted on by admin

Online Affiliate Marketing is a revenue sharing venture between a website owner and an online merchant. The website owner will place advertisements on his websites to either help sell the merchant’s products or to send potential customers to the merchant’s website, all in exchange for a share of the profits.

Affiliate Marketing Program

An affiliate marketing program is sometimes called an affiliate program, but also may be referred to as a pay-for-performance program or an associate program. An affiliate program is a marketing tool for the e-business that operates it, called merchant or advertiser and a source of revenue for the e-business that participates in it, called an affiliate or associate or publisher.

There are three ways to earn money through affiliate marketing:

1) Pay per Click or Cost-per-click affiliate programs: Every time a potential customer leaves the affiliate website by “clicking” on the link leading to the merchant’s website, a certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate’s account. This amount can be pennies or dollars depending on the product and amount of the commission.

2) Pay per Lead or Cost-per-lead affiliate programs: The merchant pays the affiliate a set fee for each visitor who clicks through and takes and action at the merchant’s site, such as completing an online survey, registering at the site, or opting-in to receive e-mail.

3) Pay per Sale or Cost-per-sale affiliate programs: Every time a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate’s website, a percentage, or commission, is deposited into the affiliate’s account.

The Amazon Story

The world’s biggest bookstore has one of the most successful examples of an affiliate program (called their associate program). Amazon now has well over 1 million affiliates! That is over 1 million websites actively promoting their products every single second of every single day. Amazon generates over 40% of its revenue through its affiliates program. That is over $3 billion in revenue every single year! As another (somewhat humble by comparison) example, Zeald generates over 50% of its revenue using its own unique affiliates program. Admittedly, not quite billions of dollars but that is definitely millions of dollars of revenue every single year.

Thousands of diverse e-businesses operate affiliate programs: E.g. barnes&nobale, dell,1-800-flowers, rackspace managed hosting etc.

Affiliate Programs as a Marketing Tool

The two major Advantages to merchant

1. Tie marketing effort directly to a lead or sales.

2. The merchant pays only for results.

The two major Advantages to affiliate

1. Additional source of revenue for affiliate who also sells products/services

2. Primary source of revenue for affiliate who offers entertainment or information

Two Approaches to Operating a Successful Affiliate Marketing

1. Acquire a huge and affiliate membership. e.g. The Amazon associates programs have over 1 million members as diverse as:

– RVPart – Sells parts for recreational vehicles and motor homes.

– Dilbert – Site for view cartoons, play games, send electronic greeting cards etc

– Books for Managers – Site for business reviews and lists of the currant …

Why Magento Development Is Best for Your Business

Posted on by admin

The aim of this software is to provide new ways of selling products online. It also helps in the promotion and functionality of online stores.

There are many other platforms used for selling products online like WooCommerce, PrestaShop, big commerce but Magento is very popular among all. It is highly recommended because of its flexible features and extraordinary functions which this platform is offering.

Following are some reasons which will force every business to switch their business to Magento.

1. SEO Supportive:

It is one the most imperative feature of Magento Development that it is SEO friendly. SEO which makes any website more available online will definitely increase your customer for buying any digital or physical product. Magento provides the latest SEO ranking factors. It also includes analytics for tracking web visitors.

2. Advance Features:

Magento is enough for dealing your e-commerce business more effectively as it provides up to date features which give customers so many ease and it becomes a popular store among consumers. It provides advanced solutions in much simpler forms. It is a fully functional platform used by many successful businessmen.

3. Prop Up Varies Currency and Language:

Many e-commerce platforms are not friendly with all types of currency and languages. Magento supports this rich feature of supporting varies currencies and languages. This makes Magento dynamic for any national and international business.

4. Effortless Maintenance and Availability:

Magento development services ensure you provision of maintenance. They will handle all issues related to server or be maintaining website or maybe your development problems. This feature makes Magento easy to use the software. As it is open source software you can copy it to your own servers and can edit its code. It is available for the installation on one go.

5. Versatile CMS and Hosting Options:

Magento supports multiple websites and over 50 payment gateways. It is a perfect choice for product editing and proficient in handling large database smartly. Magento Development allows online stores to choose liberally any hosting company of their choice.

Ratio of Different E-commerce Platforms Usage:

Magento Development is using worldwide for any kind of business either small or large scale many industries like ford, Vizio, Christian Louboutin, Nike and nestle are some top brands which are using Magento.

Obviously, there are many reasons to use Magento for online business. Every business should use Magento as it gives best marketing strategies and easy to handle.…

Lame Excuses For Not Doing SEO That You Should not Make

Posted on by admin

In today's time, we live in the world where everything depends on the technology. However, there are so many people still afraid to be the part of this digitalization and they always try to stand away from it, which never let them, to be the part of the competition. Similarly, if you really want to get success in the market, so, you have to meet your steps with the digital world that demands an SEO-friendly website. So, instead of making excuses you should consult a reliable SEO Company around you and take benefits from their experience. Here are some silly excuses people actually make to avoid SEO that they should stop for now.

I Am Too Late To Be The Part Of The Strategy: Seriously, how can you even think like that. Have not you heard the idiom, it's better to be late than never? If yes, so, you should stop making such silly excuse and take SEO Services from any of the reliable company.

I Am Out Of Budget: Most of the small organizations always tried to avoid SEO by making an excuse of a budget. However, they have to understand that if they need some benefit, so, they have to pay something for it. If you are looking for long-term benefits without investing a single penny, so, probably you are losing more than you even think. SEO is not an expense but an investment that gives you a long-lasting result for your business, so, you should never take it for granted.

I Do not Know From Where To Begin: "If there is a will there's a way", for sure you heard this idiom million of time. And once you have decided to make some efforts for the growth of your business, so, you will definitely get the way to begin. After all, there are so many SEO Companies in all over the world, you can consult any of the reputed company, take their suggestions, tell your requirements and when you persuaded, so, you can take their services.

I Will not Be Able To Keep Up With All The Changes: No doubt, it's true that keeping up with the latest trends of SEO is quite hard but not impossible anyways. If you want to come in the limelight so making excuses should not be on your list. You have to take every challenge and win that like a pro. SEO is not as harder as you think, so, relax and invest your time, money and efforts in this strategy to get better results for your business. …

What Has Your Website Done for You?

Posted on by admin

Ever since I started building websites for businesses, personalities and other organizations, my first question to the new client is "What do you want your website to do for you?"

The most common response is a 50,000 foot overview of "growing" their business or raising awareness of a interest.

Several hundreds of thousands of businesses, both small and large have already embroidered online advertising, providing them with a new means to receiving orders as well as attracting new customers and offering existing ones access to valuable information about their services.

Moreover, a well-designed and properlymarked web site can give you the potential to reach not only your local market, but international markets and indeed the world market. The possibilities for increased turnover and business growth are there before fabulous!

Recent data reports show that with 100,000+ prospective clients going online each month there are now well over 1 billion potential customers around the world to whom your products or ideas can be offered. In addition, there are more disabled people using the Internet through advanced technology such as screen reading software, etc – it's estimated that this section of the global community accounts for approx 10% of all traffic.

Most of your competitors will already have web sites, but are they effective?

The old adage "Build it, and they will come" no longer applies to businesses who simply launch a website and sit back to expect the orders to come rolling in. The internet is a volatile marketplace, each website seeking to climb the Google ladder to get their website listed at the top, in the hopes that visitors will come to their website and buy their products or visit their store.

Today's internet marketplace simply is not that simple – because even if a website gets to the top of the search engine's listing, it still does not mean that they're guaranteed a click from the visitor's ever scanning and easily distracted eyes. Companies have dumped buckets of money into Search Engine Optimization programs, and have abandoned hope due to the lack or ROI (Return on Investment).

OK, let's say they DO click on your listing …

It's time for your website to come up. According to reports from the propeller-heads who count things like statistics and web traffic, the average visitor will give your website just 3 full seconds to capture their attention before deciding whether to hit that "BACK" button or investigate further. Sadly, it's often less than that, but I am being generous here.

If the website is outdated, or is ladened a myriad of design issues and nothing to offer the visitor except a page full of wordy descriptions and reflecting about how good the company is, then your chances of capturing anything more than a back-click is almost nil. No, it's less than nil, but again, I'm being generous.

What's really Important?

The importance of an interactive, engaging and purposeful website can not be overlooked or taken for granted. It is my personal opinion …