Posts filed under 'Web Of Websters'
iPod do not have much to sound off about. However, one thing people sometimes mention is the inability to transfer iPod music, video and other files from an iPod back to an additional computer or laptop. Though the iPod has no issues moving music from a PC or laptop to iPod with iTunes, the opposite is disallowed. If you do not have iPod Transfer Package, you cannot transfer your iPod songs to an extra PC. This subject sometimes happens when people get a new machine or have to reinstall the OS on their old computer. Apple forbids this process because it doesn’t want unauthorised sharing of bought songs from the iTunes shop. All The Same, there are multiple honest scenarios that iPod owners require the ability to transmit from iPod to computer. If a personal computer goes down and you need to reinstall the OS, you may need iPod to Computer transfer software to retrieve your priceless music. Differently, the fresh installment of iTunes will wipe clean your iPod, potentially costing you hundreds of dollars in unrecoverable data. Another common situation iPod owners need these types of computer software is when they buy a new PC and want to put their existing library of iPod music and videos on the new machine. Again, if you don’t have this type of computer program, you might possibly lose your valuable data. You can find many companies that offer programs to fulfill this project. A quick visit to software download websites will bring out a bunch of selections. You can also just type the phrase ‘iPod to computer copy software’ into Google.
June 10th, 2008
There are many factors involved in choosing the right web hosting plan for your new website. The trick is to weight the cost against the features provided. Of course it is easy to get the cheapest price web hosting plan with a XYZ company. But this plan does not have SQL or PHP functions, it has limited traffic bandwidth etc. So, really it depends on what your web site needs are.
To select a good web hosting plan, I recommend that at least the following features are included:
1. Big traffic bandwidth.
2. Supports SQL and PHP.
3. Supports sub domains.
4. Cpanel for easy control.
5. At least 5000Mb storage space.
6. Auto responders.
7. POP email accounts.
8. FTP accounts
9. Backup support
Then from all these features, select the price that is within your budget. Some hosting providers charge a one time setup fee, and some charge less if you pay one year fees in advance. Also look out for incentives like free domain names provided, this is a powerful draw which is quite common nowadays.
If you are planning to host multiple web sites, you need to choose a plan that supports multiple domain hosting on one single account. Some providers do support this and it is mostly 2 or 3 domains. I heard of others that support unlimited domains, but you need to analyze the price factor against this option.
The downside is that if the hosting provider server goes down, all your web sites will be down as well. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket so to speak.
Probably there are many other considerations before you decide on the web hosting plan that is most suitable for you. But time and effort spent on getting the right plan the first time round is worth investing in.
More information available at http://cheap-host-review.com
The author runs a website cheap-host-review.com.
May 30th, 2008
Want to see an excellently constructed website? As a writer I found one of my favorite writers: (Paulo Coelho) has a site that could inspire anyone who wants to create a more humanistic presence on the Web.
Being a writer, when I was asked to do some research into what makes a good website, of course I straightaway went to check out all of my favorite authors. After sifting through a few standard sites I remembered to look at one of my all time respected writers-Paulo Coelho. Judging by how many books he has sold he is obviously a lot of people’s favorite, and his website is exactly what you’d want to keep the fans happy.
If any of you are familiar with Coelho’s work you will know how prolific he has become all over the world. People love the simplicity of his stories about the spiritual quests of all people and the idea that the magical happens in everybody’s lives, even the so-called ‘ordinary, normal’ person. He to me comes across as a perfect example of the power of human connection, his books having affected millions across all national boundaries. As an Internet writer, to me he symbolizes the possibilities lying in the future of the Web. Like a good book, the Internet too can cross all imagined ideas of separation bringing people from all walks of life together in the context of positive thought and action.
Coelho’s website’s homepage starts off with a simple black screen, and a large photo of the man smiling-a very humanistic approach to this new medium. It then has many different sections as well as links to relevant sites, even his own web log (on-line journal) entitled, ” Warrior of the Light Online”. I think I could spend innumerable hours reading over his personal thoughts and pieces of information he has integrated from elsewhere. Having this added website of an on-line diary gives the site even more humanistic qualities, as any person can truly connect with Coelho’s innermost feelings and thoughts.
The sections on the main site are separated into categories like: Biography, Paulo Coelho Institute, Photo Gallery, Road to Santiago, Agenda, Books, Editions, Free downloads, Meditation, TV on-line (videos), Warrior of Light, To journalists, FAQ, Message for the author, and Recommend this site. We are talking about a very extensive and well thought out site. Any type of individual or business, especially writers, could learn a lot from this example.
Just to touch on a few aspects of the site’s categories I’ll focus on the one’s I had a good look at. The biography was excellent, an extremely in-depth look at Coelho’s life from childhood until present day. No holes barred, he’s not ashamed to tell of all his low points as well as the usual list of one’s achievements. It is very honest, he tells of how his parents institutionalized him several times thinking he was crazy, as well as stories of being tortured as a political prisoner and of his ‘dark’ experiences with drugs and black magic. This humanistic perspective gives the site a much more personal feel as well as eliciting reactions in readers, much more powerful than a bland website that solely focuses on a writer’s books and how to purchase them.
The photo gallery is another dimension I have not witnessed on many other sites. He again gives vision to his whole life with photos included from areas entitled, Childhood, Transition, The crazy years, 2000/2001, 2002, and Today. You see, this website isn’t just a shop front or a facade for a business. It gives the individual an opportunity to share his identity with the whole world, a courageous act only taken by people who aren’t afraid to put themselves on the line, sharing their spirits with all of humanity. This is the key to why the website is so powerful, one needs to take risks to achieve success in life.
I could write extensively on the other categories of the site but I think you could just go and check them out yourself. Me telling you what is a good website isn’t going to teach you much, you’ve got to experience things for yourself to truly gain the knowledge you are looking for. Maybe you’ll be so inspired, one day it’ll be your website I’m writing about!
About The Author
Jesse S. Somer
M6.Net
http://www.m6.net
Jesse S. Somer is a human who wants to help uncover the underlying unifying power that lies in the future of the Internet.
May 21st, 2008
MisterHub was created to help small to mid-sized businesses easily manage projects, people, and electronic assets.
Continue Reading May 19th, 2008
You have put a lot of time, effort and expense into building your website and the result is that you have a fantastic site, very professional, beautiful images, great copywriting and your products are second to none. You are also getting good traffic as a result of your marketing efforts.
But did you know that it takes on average 7 encounters before someone will buy something from your website. So not only do you need good marketing efforts to get the traffic, but when the visitors arrive at your site you need something to keep them coming back. The aim is not necessarily to keep them surfing on the site for half an hour, but to make sure that they come straight back to you next time, through your direct URL, without clicking on expensive adds. Remember these visitors will work as your personal marketing team if they keep coming back to the site, they will recommend it to others.
Here are 7 ways to help you get 7 encounters.
1. Content
Keep the content alive. New and useful content should be published frequently. If your site is exactly the same each time they visit, why should they come back? Studies have shown, that people return more often to sites that are updated regularly. Just because you are a product based site and not an information based one, doesn’t mean that you can’t include beneficial information for your visitors. Whatever products you sell you should have a target audience, find content and information that may be useful to them and use it.
2. Capture Them
Capturing your visitors email addresses is a great way to keep in touch with them. If you can provide a free report or an interesting newsletter it will remind potential customers to come back and visit you. People want to get to know you better so they can trust you. A friendly, informative newsletter is the ideal way to build the relationship. But remember don’t overdo it with the volume of mail you send them, that will have the opposite effect. Don’t send a newsletter for the sake of it, you must include information that is of value.
3. Competitions
Who doesn’t love to win something in a competition? You can have anything from vouchers to spend on your site, to complimentary products from other websites. Ask other sites to donate and you do the same for them. Cross promotion between complimentary sites is a great traffic generator also.
4. Blog blog blog.
A blog is a great way to add new content easily and frequently to your site. Visitors can subscribe to it and be automatically informed when there are changes. They can add comments if you allow it, and it’s also a great way to build a relationship with your potential customers as they get to know the person or people behind the products
5. Website specials.
Announce your special offers in a particular place on the website and update it often, perhaps on a set timescale such as; “special of the week” or “special of the month”. This will get the visitors coming back to see what may be on offer this time.
6. Interact with your visitors.
Website visitors love to talk and interact with others who have the same interests. Consider starting a message forum or review section on your website. Potential customers can leave reviews or talk to others and will come back often to check on replies or to give their opinion.
7. Serial Content.
Just as TV viewers tune in each week to see the next exciting episode of their favourite Show, you can do the same with your website visitors. Put just one part of an article or review or excerpt from your new product range on the site at a time and encourage visitors to come back next week, or next month for the remainder.
The world wide web is evolving very fast and to keep on top of the game you will need to evolve with it. Not only do you need to keep your visitors coming back through useful and relevant content, but you need to consider upgrading your appearance and style at regular intervals. Creating a website is the exciting part, the “fluffy” part. But you must put as much effort into maintaining it and keeping it alive, don’t forget that!
Darina Loakman is the host of HBW talk Radio. The internet radio show and podcast for women with home-based businesses in Ireland http://www.hbwtalkradio.ie She is also a partner in TeamWAHMonline the website that is helping Mums in the UK and Ireland get online and earning http://www.teamwahmonline.com
May 16th, 2008
Optimizing photos of your products for your web page. How to
make the most of your photos.
Taking Photos:
Composition:
Zoom in on the product. Make it center stage. Whatever the
product is, you don’t need a lot of walls and floor. If you need
a horizon in the picture, have it either one third from the
bottom or one third from the top of the picture. A horizon
dividing a picture into two halves makes it boring.
Background:
The subject in your picture should contrast and stand out from
its background. You want the visitor to focus on the product,
not the background. Your web designer can display the product
with the same background color as the web page, provided the
background doesn’t contain colors also in the product. (We’ve
seen a product with things accidentally growing out of it).
Focus:
Sharp pictures are usually needed to sell products, unless you
are selling a misty holiday location.
Images to computer:
Digital:
Copy images from your camera via USB cable and ‘paste’ them to a
folder (say \Photos).
Film:
Scan prints to a folder (\Photos).
Copies:
Copy the images from \Photos to another folder (say \Images).
You can edit pictures in this second folder safely knowing you
still have the originals.
Preparing for the web:
Graphics Software:
Adobe’s Photoshop and Corel’s Photopaint are good. A low cost
easy to use program is Jasc’s Paint Shop Pro 7 or 8. (9 is now
Corel’s). There are many shareware programs.
Format:
JPG and GIF are normal formats for images on web pages. Not all
browsers display PNG and BMP. Use GIFs where colors are flat and
JPG for most photos. Every time you save a JPG the image quality
degrades. Open original JPGs and save in TIF format. Edit in TIF
and make just final save as JPG.
Crop:
With graphics software, you can ‘crop’ your picture leaving out
unwanted areas. It’s your product that’s for sale, not walls and
floors.
Quality:
There are graphic tools to increase or decrease contrast or
brightness, or edit colors, edges and backgrounds. The original
picture must be good, or you will waste hours editing.
Size:
Resize the final image down to the size you want on the website.
On 800×600 screens the browser margins leave only about 762
pixels of viewing width, and the viewing height is reduced by
the size of the tool bar of individual visitors. Your 2400×1800
pixels picture may end up 400×300 which is why cropping is
important to show the product as a big part of the picture.
Compression:
To enable fast loading on the web, JPGs can be compressed.
Compression by 25% to 35% can display good pictures, depending
on the original. GIFs can be faster loading if the number of
colors is reduced from 256 to 16, or whatever number keeps the
desired color quality. Keep the image file on the graphic
software screen, while viewing the effect in your browser in
another window. Use trial and error.
Thumbnails:
A large number of images can be displayed as thumbnails on one
page, which can be clicked through to the full picture on
another page. You can have two files for each picture, small and
full size. The page with thumbnails will load faster. Or the
thumbnail page can display the full size image in thumbnail size
by specifying smaller widths or heights in the HTML code.
May 13th, 2008
I have found my dream job. I am not going to get rich, but I can work at home and always be available for my children. I write website content and do search engine optimization (SEO ) for a law firm. To get the job, I had to send in a sample Web page. I did not see the other applicants’ pages, but I think mine looked far different than theirs. Mine had notes within red brackets throughout explaining what I had done and why. Here are 10 SEO tips that could help you write a killer sample Web page:
- Choose one key phrase for your sample Web page. If you do not have WordTracker, which you don’t if you have not been doing SEO, go to http://inventory.overture.com and type in a key phrase. Work at it until you have a fairly well-searched phrase. In an introduction to your sample Web page, explain what you have done to find a key phrase. You will also need to explain that having one key phrase per Web page is the ideal for SEO purposes.
- Use the key phrase near the top of the page, preferably in the title. Make a notation in red by the title (or wherever you first use the key phrase), explaining that search engines give more relevance to keywords near the top of the page and even more relevance to keywords in the page title.
- Place the key phrase in headings. Make a notation in red by the first heading that you have your key phrase in explaining that search engines give more relevance to keywords in headings.
- Highlight your key phrase with bold and/or italic. Again, make a notation in red explaining that search engines give more relevance to keywords that are in bold and italic. Using bold and italic is also good, user-friendly website content writing.
- Use your key phrase multiple times. There is no magic number, but you do not want to go overboard. Explain in your introduction to the page that the key phrase should be used at least three times. You will not want the key phrase to be more than 5% or 6% of the content on the page.
- Use your key phrase in lists, either ordered (numbered) or unordered (bulleted). Make a notation in red the first time you use the key phrase in a list explaining that search engines give more relevance to words in lists.
- Have links (at least one) between pages within the site contain your key phrase. Give your links in your page a different color and/or underline them. When you use your key phrase in one, make a notation in red that search engines give more relevance to words in a link.
- Put your key phrase around links. If you cannot have your key phrase in a link, put it near a link. When you do this, make a notation in red explaining that search engines may be give more relevance to words around links.
- Scatter key phrases throughout text. In the introduction to your page, explain that if a link is scattered throughout a text, it convinces the search engines that the page really is about the key phrase. The result is greater relevance for your key phrase.
- Make the words around your key phrase count. Search engines may pull content around your key phrase for a description of the Web page. The ultimate goal is not to get high ranking with the search engines. The ultimate goal is to get customers or clients. To do this, the website has to rank high with the search engines and appeal to potential clients.
There is a lot more to SEO than the 10 tips I have given you here. If you do land a job writing for the Web, you will have to learn all that you can about SEO. I would suggest reading Search Engine Optimization for Dummies by Peter Kent. Although anything published on computers is generally obsolete by the time it is published, this book is still relevant and will give you a good idea what SEO is about. I would start with the book and then look on the net for additional, updated information.
If you are a freelance writer hoping to make a decent living, writing for the Web is a wonderful option. Using your skills as a writer and the 10 tips for writing a sample Web page, you should be able to get work writing website content. Happy job hunting.
You are free to publish this article on the internet. You must, however, give the author credit, provide a live link to the website I am working on, http://www.pritzkerlaw.com/, and not materially alter any of the content.
© 2006 Kathy Will
Kathy Will is a freelance Web writer who can usually be found shivering at her computer in Minnesota. Her current project is http://www.pritzkerlaw.com/, a legal resource for injured people.
May 10th, 2008
Some time ago, a person asked me to develop some software for his company. He needed a management system. He didn’t want an out-of-the-box system, he wanted something that resembled perfectly the way his company worked. The sales process involved salesmen travelling different states. I still remember his surprise when I suggested implementing the system over a web based platform. He had never before thought of the company using the web for anything else than email and the institutional website. As he wasn’t totally convinced, we decided to implement one online module first, and then gradually move the rest of the operations online. He agreed, and it worked great. However, it does not mean that it will work great in all cases. It is necessary to analyze the company business process, and consider whether moving the systems online will be beneficial or not. In business, as you know, it is essential to make the right moves.
Let’s have a look at the advantages the web offers:
1) Reach your systems from anywhere in the world
It doesn’t matter if you are at your office or travelling far away. If you have Internet access, you can login to your company system and work or check reports. This is very important if you travel often, or some employees do. In the case of the salesmen I mentioned before, moving the system online provided a way for them to directly load the sales sheets from their home or a hotel.
2) Easy to use
If you know how to use a browser, you know how to use the system. The system is easy to learn, using it is much like surfing the web. It is an advantage when new personnel needs to be trained.
3) No infraestructure needed
All you need is a web server where to locate your system, and computers with Internet access. For small businesses, even the same hosting package you have for your institutional website may be enough. Your online system will be a private, password protected area of the website.
4) Modular development
It is easy to develop systems in a modular way, adding new pages gradually.
5) Different technologies available to build your system
Nowadays, there are many different programming languages and database engines you can pick from to implement a web based system. You can go with an open source solution, for example using Php and MySQL; or you can decide to implement using ASP.NET and SQLServer. Which configuration you choose will depend on your particular needs, personal preference and budget.
6) Centralized updates
When the system is updated, all you have to do is upload the changed or new pages to the server.
7) New services for employees, customers and suppliers
The online system allows you to offer new services to your employees, like distance training. You can also add services for your customers and suppliers, incorporating them to your business process. You could allow customers to view their bills online, for example, or query the status of their orders. You could allow suppliers to view their payment status or you could even implement a way to load orders to your suppliers systems automatically. The possibilities are endless.
When you suggest an online system to a company, the typical drawback is about security. There are ways to make the system safe. Sensible data can be encrypted in the database. The system scripts can be encrypted themselves. The whole system must be password protected, and passwords should be stored encrypted. So only someone knowing the right combination of user and password would be able to get into the system. Users should be instructed to change their passwords every now and then, and never write down their username and password together. If you are highly concerned about having the system on a remote server, you could even have a server in-house. Although this will imply you need to have someone able to manage and maintain this server working.
Should you move your business system online? Well, this is a question that can’t be answered without knowing your particular needs. But it is highly probable that it will be beneficial for your company if you at least move certain parts of your business process online. If you are not sure, try picking one aspect of your business and implement it. You can then check how it goes, and decide if you will keep moving more processes online. My experience tells that more business aspects are being moved to web based systems every day.
Sergio Roth is an experienced freelance web programmer. You can contact him for web hosting and online systems development at http://www.ayreshost.com.
April 20th, 2008
Content is king. Without content your website is an empty shell, a skeleton with no flesh, an empty vessel. Content can redeem the worst designed website. The right content can make your phone ring off the hook and flood your inbox with people wanting your product or service. Content is the most important ingredient in the recipe for your website’s success. If you have engrossing, valuable and relevant content you are onto a winner..
Tip 1 - Keep It Customer-Focused - What You Like Is Irrelevant
I land on the homepage. I want to buy a bathroom from this company. I want to know what bathrooms they have available. I want to know how much it will cost, when they can deliver, if they have any special offers and what their previous customers have said about them. Instead, upon landing on the homepage I get the following all-time classic;
“Welcome to ABC Bathrooms. Our company was formed in 1985. Our Managing Director John set up the company at the age of 25 after spending thirty years in the position of..”
Who cares?! I want to know exactly what you sell and how much it will cost me. I have 10 spare minutes today to find this information out and if I don’t see it on your site in a few seconds I will click off to your competitors so don’t bore me with the life story of your managing director. I do not care. Give me content that I like - not what you THINK I would like. Key difference.
Tip 2 - Sell Benefits, Not Features
Potential customers do not want to know how your product was built, how old the production manager is or what colour the wallpaper is in the production plant - they want to know how buying it will enrich their lives. They want to see evidence for the benefits of owning your product or using your service. People don’t buy things - they buy benefits and they buy feelings. People buying a Ferrari are not buying a mode of transport they are buying prestige, luxury, envy, success - they are buying a symbol, a way of life.
Think about your product or service from a customer’s point of view - what are the real, measurable and provable benefits to them of buying from you? Include these over and over in your content and it will bring more sales for you. Don’t be afraid of blowing your own trumpet - stick the benefits right on the homepage for a start!
Tip 3 - Include Calls To Action - Everywhere!
Excellent - you’ve written killer content and people are coming back to your website time and again for the information. Your traffic figures are shooting through the roof. It’s brilliant! You can’t believe you’ve cracked it. And then you look at the number of orders placed last week - zero. Oh. What happened there? Better to have one person visiting your site each month who actually places an order or produces a sales lead rather than have 1000 people who do neither.
If you don’t have clear benefit-focused calls to action peppered throughout your content people will not get in touch with you or place that all-important order. You hook them in with the winning content and then you offer them more information vial email or a free quotation if they phone you - anything! You must have calls to action present throughout your site - combine this with the other two tips and you are on the way to having content that actually makes you sales.
Michael Cheney is Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM. Take the Free 7-Part Course “Internet Marketing Made Easy” and get your free sampler of ‘The Bible’ here: http://www.websitemarketingbible.com/marketing/
April 15th, 2008
Most sites have a links page - why? Well, there are two very important reasons why a web developer should consider having a links page.
1 Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is only one way of getting the search engines to pick up that you are there. Something else that you must not neglect if you want your website to be noticed is obtaining links.
2 Your website is offering a service to your visitors - links provide them with other sites of interest which they may want to visit. Although the retail industry might say they want people to stay on their site, rather than going anywhere else, carefully chosen links may be able to get people even more interested in the product you are selling! You may have to think laterally!
In the eyes of a search engine there definitely seem to be good links and bad links. Good links will get you higher up the page rankings and onto the top of the listings, bad links at best will be ignored and at worst could actually could against you and your site be listed much lower.
- A good link is one from a site which has high relevance to yours, and which is has a good page rank.
- A bad link is one from an obvious link farm, and has no contextual links to your sites.
Before we go further, lets talk a little bit about page rank. Page rank is the ranking that Google gives to website pages and shows their importance as Google sees it. The Google Toolbar, which can be obtained from http://toolbar.google.com for free, is a useful tool as it can display the page rank of any web page you are looking at. The page rank (or PR) of a site ranges from 0 to 10 - 0 is where you start, 10 would be exceptional! Although Google keeps the algorithms for working out PR very close to their chests, the progression through the numbers is probably on a logarithmic scale - that is, a site ranking 2 is many times more important than that ranking 1, not just 1 point.
When you are link building you should be trying to get links to your site from sites with a higher page rank than yours. Links from sites with good PR will immediately signal to the search engines that yours is a site worth indexing! The more links the better!
So should you only link with sites with higher PR? Well, if everyone practised this the chances of you getting any links for your embryonic site would be zero! A site may be 0 today, but that site may also be working hard to increase its rankings and you may benefit from their progress. Also, do remember your human visitors, a site may be useful to them, even if not for your purpose of increasing your rankings! So golden rules to remember:
nnAim to get links from high ranking pages
nnPut up links from any site which has high relevance to yours.
First think of sites which it would be useful for your visitors to be able to go to from your site. For example, if you are a specialist site, are there some national organisations that promote your sport, hobby or industry? Your first step will be to email these organisations and ask if you can have reciprocal links with them.
Now this may a little bit of a David and Goliath situation, and many people feel put off because they think their new immature website is far too small. You may not get any response to your emails, you may get a response refusing you, but you may find a national organisation with good page ranking agrees to link to you! Be very pleased with this!
Immediately someone agrees to have a reciprocal link with you, put up their link on your website - just in case they decide to check!
Now, think again about your customers or visitors - even if the big organisations have refused to put a link to you on their site, it may still be useful to put a link to them on yours for your visitors information. Always remember the whole goal of getting website traffic is to get and keep loyal customers or visitors - not just to attract search engine bots!
Now the hard work starts. Search the web for sites on the same subject matter as yours, but which are obviously NOT competitors. Keeping an eye on the Google Toolbar look for sites which have a better page rank than yours - ideally the websites you are looking for will be ranked about 4 or 5 (higher ranking sites may be a bit snobbish towards novice sites).
What about people who supply goods and services to you - can they link to yours? What about customers? Try and think outside of the box here - if you have a sporting site how about a link to a local photographer?
Sometimes you can do good research away from the computer (yes, you can turn it off sometimes!). Trade magazines are often a good start - write to any email addresses and ask for a reciprocal link. You may find even if they do not have a links page already they may decide to add one! It never hurts to ask!
When you are looking at websites check that they have a links page. If they do you may find there is a form on which you can submit the details on your website asking to be added to their links page or a suggest site add new link button so that it is simple to add your site. You may need to email a website if they don’t seem to be canvassing links. Dont be too put off if there isnt a relevant category for them to list your site in - they can always add more categories. If you don’t ask you don’t get! If you do ask - you may well succeed!
So dont be worried about emailing and asking for reciprocal links - but do make sure you put up the links you promise! This may lead you to think a little about your site - some people dont want to have their link at the end of a very long page. You should consider rotating banners so you can display more links, but keep the page simple. You make also need to restrict non relevant links.
If you know your subject show it! And one of the best ways is to join a forum. When posting or answering a topic on the forum always use a signature with your website address on it - if the forum users like what they read about you they will click on the ljnk to visit your website, and hey presto - you have more links coming into your site! If your hosting company has a user forum, there may well be a section where you can showcase your new site - if so, you will get a number of visits through this. Lovely links for search engines and fodder for the link spiders!
Also, if you visit the Guestbook of a relevant site you can also leave your website address there. BUT PLEASE ONLY IF IT IS A RELEVANT SITE!
Article writing as a technique for building links and traffic is a less obvious area which a lot of people dont know about or understand.
Presumably you are an expert in your area - or at least have useful information to share with others. So write an article! Not sure if you can? Well, start with the content of your site as a basis - you may already find you have done the hard work. Cant think of a subject? Well think laterally again. If you are selling artistic candles, for example, what about an article about the history of candle making? If you think hard enough there probably is something you can write about! You made need to do a little research, but articles will really help build your traffic and ranking. (And of course you can use them as content on your own site!)
Articles do not need to be lengthy - in fact shorter is better. Probably no more than 600 to 1000 words. What you want to do in your article is write about something related to your site.
Now there are a number of websites that you will publish your article for you. Other websites can use your article for free, but they HAVE to include the author details - which off course means your website details. People using your article will form links back to your site - the more different sites using it, the better the links!
Better still you can submit your article to any number of article sites. Ezine Articles is one of the biggest, but any search on Google will reveal a number of others.
Now, no one can pretend that this is an easy activity - it does take time. No one is going to use your article if it is not well thought out and tells them something new. It must not be boring either. But article submission is a really excellent way of improving your websites position in the search engines, and should not be ignored.
Of course articles are also important resources for Webmasters in another way - free content for your site! There are sites out there which cater for an amazing number of subjects, and in themselves can be very useful and informative! Free articles for web designing, for example, can bring you other hints and tips for making the best of your website.
If you use an article you must put on the full authors bio and a link back to their site. But the benefit to you is ready made content hopefully keyword rich which will attract the search engine bots like bees to honey!
Web rings are another way of building links - again, check the page rank of the web ring you are joining. Web rings give you links, and also provide your human visitors with other sites of interest which they may wish to visit.
Lets face it - website design and publishing is actually a lot harder work that you probably first thought when you started designing your home page. But there is nothing more demoralising that having designed a wonderful site which you are extremely proud of - only to find you have no visitors at all!
You probably do want to spend all of your time fine tuning your existing pages, and putting up new ones, and anything which drags you away from this will be resented, but if you want a successful website link building is something which has to be done.
The best advice is to put one day a week aside for what we should call your marketing activities. Link building, along with SEO, are activities are extremely tedious. Build SEO into the way you construct your pages from the beginning (or in other words, consider not only the impact on the human eye as you design your page, but consider the spiders and bots at the same time!). And use your day a week to build links.
A tip from experienced developers in this area is not to aim to get hundreds of links in a short space of time - this will again make the search engines suspicious. Instead just aim to get one quality link at least once a month.
Website marketing is not a short sprint - it is more like a marathon. Many will start the race, but a large number will fall beside the wayside. But if you acknowledge it will be hard work and keep slogging away you will get to the end. There will come a time when you will receive a request from a reputable, well ranked website, asking for a reciprocal link from you! That may not be the end, but be assured that will give you a real buzz, and you will know then that most of your hard work will have been worth it!
Pat Ransom has worked in the IT industry for 15 years and is experienced with local government and company websites. Having designed and published a successful and acclaimed website in her own right the secrets of website design and publishing are now shared at http://www.webmasterproductions.co.uk
April 7th, 2008
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