Become a Blogger & Do it Often!

If you want your website to rank well in search engines you must have a blog on your website.  Blogs create fresh content and add pages to your website.  You are probably already an expert in your field and everyone has a story to tell.

If you’re passionate about what you do and your business, then it shouldn’t be hard for you to think of a story to tell your customers on a
regular basis!

Here is an example of a Real Estate Blog.  There are numerous sites that provide suggestions for topics that you can write that are relevant to your business.  No matter what line of business you’re in, customers will appreciate hearing your story!  Another interesting blog I found was this Bean Bag Blog.

Make your content interesting and unique.  Try to avoid copying other people’s content, as this will not assist you!  There are numerous stories about bloggers who are now enjoying substantial income from their blogs.  They have done this, simply by writing regularly on a topic that interest them and they are knowledgeable about.

Once you’ve written a blog post, then you should bookmark it on sites such as Stumbleupon - Linkedin - Diigo & Digg

You can also ‘tweet’ it on Twitter  and add your link on your Facebook page!  You do have a Facebook page don’t you?

Within your blog, you can create links back to other pages on your website.  For example, have you seen our article on SEO for beginners?

Make sure you add an image that will grab a reader’s attention.  A blog post is like an advertisement.  It may be seen by thousands of potential customers.  When you upload an image make sure your image has ‘alt image tags’ that are relevant to your post.  Search engines can’t see
pictures, only the file name or the ‘alt image tag’ you add to the image.

And last but not least, add a link back to your posts from your newsletter.  If you’re sending a regular e-newsletter to your customer base, are you linking back to your website in order to increase traffic?  Or are you simply writing newsletter content in an email with no links and hence
no benefits to your website traffic?

I hope you enjoyed this post!

SEO for Beginners

Perhaps you’ve already used a Search Engine Optimization Company, and you’re not happy with their results?  Or you’re receiving endless emails from companies making promises to get your business on page one of google?

Now you realize it’s time for you to gain a basic understanding of what SEO is and how you can do it for yourself?  Unless you have a big budget, or you own a big company, paying someone to do your Search Engine Optimization may not be practical.

Many SEO companies charge thousands of dollars and cannot guarantee their results.  They will leave out the most basic things and instead do what is easy or profitable.

Our aim is to assist you to learn how to SEO yourself!

Here’s a few basic tips, that won’t cost you much at all.

1.  Ensure you are listed on DMoz.  is a free directory.  Being in it is important to search engines.

2.  Add your listing to the Yahoo Directory. While there is a small fee involved, it’s important that your website is listed here

3.  Submit your site to as many directories as possible.  You can do this yourself (which will take a great deal of time) or you can use a Directory
Submission service that will do it for just a few cents per directory)

4.  Last but not least, consider using a link building service.  We recommend Links Management for PR4-PR8 Contextual Links

SEO is a complex science that takes months if not years to master.  However, using the techniques you find on our website, you are well on your way to mastering the science yourself!

Adding your Site to Directories

You can search for information online not only with the help of search engines, but also with the help of directories. A directory is a huge structured collection of links. They are in a great variety of networks.

Since directories are perhaps the most common type of source for information in the Internet, there are special services and programs that record your resources instantly in multiple directories. The optimal method of registering a new resource is the allocation of link at the most famous directories, manually.

Adding a site to directories is one of the most effective ways of link building. This method allows increasing the credibility of the site, without a substantial financial investment. This method of increasing the reference weight is suitable for both commercial and non-commercial resources.

Choose a directory to add site your site to

However, it should be mentioned that not all directories as they are not all yogurts “are equally useful.” Link from an unmoderated directory with questionable content may significantly stain the reputation of your site. So, before you add site to directories, you should learn what the directories are and how to select from a variety of highest quality directories the most suitable that will positively affect on your referential weight.

We should distinguish moderated directories from unmoderated directories. Unmoderated directories accept all sites without exception, including the questionable subject matter. We do not need such a neighborhood, right?

Another important requirement to directories is the availability of a direct link to your site. Links through a redirect or JavaScript will not be beneficial to your link weight – although visitors will be able to come to it.

And the third point – make sure that the directory does not require the placement of your site’s back links (links to a directory on your site) or a monetary reward. Directories that satisfy all these requirements are referred to as “white.”

Directory Submissions

Benefits of Domain Parking

What is Domain Parking
In simple words, it is a process of putting a reservation on a domain name for future use, to protect from cybersquatting or to engage in cybersquatting. You need not place any content on a website and can display a simple ‘under construction’ page.

Domain parking can be done in two different ways – monetized and non-monetized. Monetized domain parking is done to earn money by showing advertisements to visitors. Non-monetized domain name parking is to reserve the domain name while the website is getting ready for launch, by showing a ‘coming soon’ or ‘under construction’ single page.

Benefits of Domain Parking
Following are the main reasons why domain parking is practiced these days:

1) Placeholder for an actual website: A domain holder might choose to redirect traffic coming to one domain to another one it has registered. For example, consider a case where a company has been acquired by another one. And that new company doesn’t have an online presence yet in that business domain. So, they can register a new domain name and redirect all the traffic coming to them to the existing website, until they come up with a new website. This can be done using URL redirection or domain cloaking.

2) Maintain inbound links of an expired website: If your current domain name is expired but you still want to keep the back links to that domain website and redirect them internally to your new website, then you can keep that domain parked for some time. Having more back links also helps in increase in PageRank.  Your domain will increase its Page Rank over time and with more links pointing to it – something that won’t happen if it is not parked!

3) Sell them to future trademark holders: Registering and owning a trademark on a business name takes time, so if someone knows that a brand is going to have a website in future, then that a domain name based on that brand could be parked. Later on this domain could be sold on an inflated price to the brand owner when he gets the legal rights on that domain name.

The Definite Article

There is no better way to attract people’s attention to your knowledge of a subject, and the value of your opinion on the subject, than by writing about it in an informed and intelligent manner. One of the increasingly popular ways of doing this is article writing.

In the past, the world of writing was in the sole command of people who had jobs in the industry or were published authors. Becoming a published author is one of the most difficult things to do in the business world, because there are so many people who want to do it, and relatively little money to hand out to authors. However, the Internet has kindly played a part.

These days it is very easy to set up a blog, and write about the subjects you read other – often less talented – authors writing about in the press every day. If a blog is good, it will pick up a readership. You can promote it, too, by submitting your writing to an article bank site like Ezine, which will publish it if it meets their standards, and often propel it to a high level in Google’s rankings.

If you have a website to which you are looking to drive traffic, then writing articles and submitting them to online publishers is an excellent idea. It gives people something to base their visit on, and demonstrates that your site is worth visiting. It is easier to get published online than in the often conservative world of print writing, and it can be a valuable step on the road.

Do You Have A Newsletter I Could Subscribe To?

One of the most important aspects of attracting people to try out, and continue using, any product is to give them a constant reminder that it exists and it is enjoyable. If you have a website to attract people to, then this can provide a challenge. People have to take the decision to visit a website, and this makes for a tough conundrum. There are certain things that you can keep in people’s affections simply by putting it in front of them – but whether it is by clicking a link or typing a URL, people have to decide to visit a website.

One of the best ways around this is to have a regular newsletter. When a newsletter is sent to your inbox then, as long as you are interested in the subject matter, you are liable to open the email. Once you have opened the email, you are likely to keep reading as long as the content is brief enough to be read in the time it takes to read a standard email. However, if you want people to keep reading those newsletters, it is worth giving them a reason to do so.

Keeping the reason to open and read that newsletter in people’s minds is your challenge – many people choose to do so by continually having special offers. If each newsletter contains an order code that allows the individual to get money off a product, or tips to work on a specific problem, people will keep reading it – and if you include a link to your site, they are liable to continue visiting.

Incentivizing Traffic Every Way You Can

Many human instincts hinge on one phrase that we have probably all used and have certainly all heard – “What’s in it for me?”. This question is a powerful convincer. So many people are reluctant to do something unless they know it will be somehow rewarded. Indeed, most business training in this day and age for sales or customer service professionals is built around convincing the customer that there is a reason for them to do something – that they will benefit directly from doing it.

One of the major ways to attract people to a website is something that might be considered a “secondary layer”. That is to say, you are already promoting your site by requesting that people visit it. Conscious of the fact that people might not want to do something just because you say so, you may benefit from adding a reason for them to want to. This can be something as simple as offering a free ebook to everyone who fills in a form.

The importance of working to satisfy people’s instincts is a factor that is often overlooked. Of course you want people to be visiting your site on its merits but there is no harm whatsoever, and a lot of common sense, in backing this up with an appeal to their personal interest. Countless people have taken a decision to cash in a freebie and have stayed on board when they realized that they liked the product on its own merits. Playing the percentages – in this case, giving people more and more reasons to say “yes” – is sound business.

Traffic No-Nos: Spamming

If you have a website, it stands to reason that you will want people to know about it. There is no way they can visit a site they don’t know about, so it is important to promote your site well. The problem for many people is one of practicality – how do you let people know about your website, and do so without spending too much money?

For many, the obvious answer is to use free sites with user-generated content such as online forums. If you are a member of a forum, you can contribute to discussions on the topic of the board and read what others are contributing, too. It is a reliable and often fun way to exchange opinions and just chat – and it allows you to create a signature as your message to readers. This is an excellent place to put a link to your site.

Additionally, you can place links in the contributions you make to the forum – but this is where you have to be careful. A lot of people make the mistake of simply “spamming” the forum by placing links in every post – often without contributing anything original to the discussion. This is a huge mistake. A forum will allow you to post links in context, as long as the post is not solely an effort to place a link.

If you have a reason to post a link – for example, another poster has asked for help which you can illustrate by pointing them to an article on your site – then you can generate traffic by doing so. What you cannot do is simply put a link in a post without any reason or context aside from promoting yourself. This will get you banned, and your posts removed.

Traffic No-Nos: Comment Stuffing

It is well-known by most people with sites to promote that you can easily get a bit more traffic by being a contributing member of an online community. A forum or a social networking site would be one example – as is the readership of a blog. Most blogs on the internet allow commenting on posts, which allows you to discuss matters raised in the post and – hopefully – receive feedback from the blogger.

It is not rare to see comments on some blogs which contain a link (usually in the commenter’s name) and have no useful contribution to make. It may well be something along the lines of “This is a great post – I like when you talk about this!”. More often than not, this will be spam – the comment has no point to make, it exists solely to be there. The commenter hopes that people will click on his link and read his site. Chances are he hasn’t read the post, and his comment certainly does not show any sign that he has.

Bloggers are increasingly becoming wise to this – they have comments enabled on their site so that their posts can be a source of discussion – and this kind of comment will more often than not be deleted with little fuss. The shame is that if you just take time to read and make a valuable contribution, your comment will stay there, be read, and give you an opening to make further contributions. And if people like those, they will click the link.

Mailing Lists – A Reliable Source Of Traffic

The old saying “leave no stone unturned” is one with a lot of relevance when it comes to website promotion. There are so many things you can do to put your website in the mind of individuals, and it is wise to do as many of them as you reasonably can. For any webmaster, it is common knowledge that giving people a chance to get interested is the first thing you must do. Thus you must provide good content. If you do, people will want to come back and read again. However, if your site is a blog, it will be frequently updated, often at irregular times.

In order to ensure that people come to see the changes when they are still relevant, it is beneficial to have a blog mailing list. Thus, when people read your site and enjoy it they can sign up for the mailing list – which will see them get an email every time you update the site, and carry a link to the update so that they can go there directly. When people receive a welcome email – say, for example, one from a favored blog – they are likely to click the link, and come through to your site.

Setting up a mailing list is not a perfect system. Not everyone who likes your blog will want to join a mailing list – it’s nothing personal, but some mailing list software will mean that their email address is shared with more than just yourself. A lot of people simply have an aversion to giving out their email address. However, enough people will use it to make it worthwhile.

Traffic No-Nos: Black Hat SEO

A fair number of people would stop at nothing to make their website popular, up to and including visiting numerous internet cafes and visiting the site from as many different IP addresses as possible. While that is an extreme example – it does happen, though – there are other things that people will do under the impression that it will get their Google hits skyrocketing – only to find out in the fullness of time that this really is not the case. So what are these traffic mistakes – and why should you avoid them?

Among the most common things that the uninitiated try in order to up their traffic, black hat SEO is a fairly new one, but has already come to the attention of the search engines, who have marked it out as a bad idea and something that will get you falling down the list of rankings quicker than you can say “persona non grata”. Black hat SEO – the name comes from the old-style Westerns in which the “good guys” wore white hats and the bad guys wore black – is a style of SEO that tries to trick Google and other search engines.

How do you trick Google? Well, the theory goes that you can place articles which are artificially stuffed with keywords on a site, so that it looks like keyword relevance is high. In some cases, the site will then redirect you to another page which has the actual content on it. This, along with other black hat tricks like “hiding” text by writing it in the same color as the website’s background (and just writing lists of keywords), will not work – Google know every trick in the book, and will downrank people who use them.

Controlling The Traffic

A good build-up of traffic is important for so many reasons if you are a website owner. You can have all of the best content in the world, but if you can’t get people to see it then there will be limited reason to bother. You can spend a lot of money getting a website that looks good, but you may be throwing money away if you don’t have anyone visiting the site. It is important to get good traffic to your website, if you want to get the best out of it, but this isn’t always easy.

By far the main sources of traffic on the Internet are the search engines, particularly Google. If you can get a ranking on the early pages of a Google search for a particular term, then you can have a powerful flow of traffic to your site. The most effective way of doing this is through using SEO – Search Engine Optimization. This is a system whereby you use the most popular keywords used in Google searches on your particular topic often enough to make search engines take notice.

It is important to be conscious that Google will not put you at the top of its rankings if you simply post articles on your website that contain the word over and over, with no context linking the usage. It means that you need to concentrate on providing quality content that is readable on its own merits, while also including the right keywords often enough.

Next Page »