Staying Well Informed about Traffic Will Help Online Results

Site traffic really is a saying used in order to identify a technique for gauging the amount of users browsing a specific web-site. Even more precisely than this, it shows at which internet pages in that website are visited, who by. All of the related facts is recorded inside a data file referred to as the web server log. As a result of reviewing this particular record it is possible to become familiar with a number of things related to the site under consideration, from such straightforward factors as what number of consumers have viewed it, to how long each person remained on the site, which web pages these people stopped at along with what sequence.

But why is this level of detail helpful? Well… by keeping such a record of web site traffic, it can be used to ascertain whether there may be one particular area of the internet site that’s getting traffic, or if there are many of returning viewers. This stats are next on the whole utilized to help to improve this website, should there be one particular page on the website which is generally being unnoticed, it may reveal that the page is possibly not really of great interest, or maybe difficult to access. This would help the web-site manager recognize that either the web page subject material should be examined, or the site structure permitting easier accessibility to that specific webpage.

Understand that website traffic is always the biggest problem for most web entrepreneurs – where to acquire it, whether to pay for it, ways to increase it. So check this process out! Get Traffic

The server log essentially lets you reproduce each website visitors experience on the website, starting from how they discovered the site, exactly which web pages these people visited, the things they looked at on each web page, as well as what it was that led them to leave the web page. This will let the people managing the website when there’s some specific feature sending away viewers, or if a specific advert on another web page is bringing in a greater than ordinary number of viewers. Generally the greatest method to boost the flow of traffic on a website is simply by spending to promote your opportunity on another site, because this provides a straight hyperlink from their web site to your site. As a result, in the event that you are able to purchase your advertising on a particularly effective site, like a web 2 . 0 site which has a high number of daily guests, your chances of someone clicking on that website link and viewing your web site greatly increase. Even so, this operates in reverse as well; if someone pays to publicize on your own web site, in that case although you gain the earnings from the advertisement, it increases the odds of your visitors hitting that advertisement and leaving your webpage. Still in case individuals started to do that, a track record of it would naturally be maintained within the server log. So if one special advertisement was stealing too many of your website visitors, it wouldn’t be outside your capacity to get rid of that ad to stop consumers following that specific hyperlink.

To conclude, web traffic logs provide a method of tracking how effective your site, although generally the greatest attention is paid to the amount of viewings the site has received, regardless of whether they be views of thirty seconds or thirty minutes. Though with careful examination, web traffic data is an invaluable resource to a web site manager.

Dot Com Not Listed in Regional Yahoo? Don’t Despair!

If you’re a non-American business with a .com web address, and your regional Yahoo ranking is important to you, then my story might interest you.

Recently my copywriting website dropped out of Yahoo’s Australian rankings. For quite a while, it had been at number 1 for my primary keywords “advertising copywriter”, “copywriter”, and “website copywriter”. But then it suddenly disappeared. I clicked through about 10 pages of results, and it was nowhere to be seen. I then searched for my domain, and Yahoo couldn’t find it.

Something smelt fishy.

I’d done nothing ‘naughty’ to my site to warrant a ban, and I still had heaps of links to my site (actually, I had more than ever before).

I’m an Australian advertising copywriter. I’m based just north of Sydney and I host my website with a major Australian host. But my web address is a .com, not a .au. I started thinking this might be the problem.

So I emailed Yahoo support, explaining the problem, and sharing my thoughts on the cause.

And all of a sudden, nothing happened.

So I waited. And I waited. And I waited. And finally, after about a couple of weeks, I received an email from a Yahoo support representative informing me – incorrectly – that my keyword wasn’t featured in my page title or description. I should remedy this shortcoming and re-submit my site to Yahoo.

Frustrated, I replied. I repeated the important facts from the first email just to ensure they’d listened. They hadn’t. They hadn’t even searched for my domain to confirm that Yahoo no longer recognised it.

When they got back to me this time, they had started paying a bit more attention. The support rep confirmed my suspicion that Yahoo had excluded my site because of its .com URL. Her very helpful solution was that I should change my domain to .au! She included some ridiculously complex instructions for how to do so, and sent me on my merry way.

As you might expect, I wasn’t satisfied. Nor was I merry. I explained to her that this was not an acceptable solution because all the links to my site on the internet are pointing to the .com and my email address uses the .com.

She was unmoved. She asserted that this was the best and only way to solve the problem. Oh… and it might help if I added my primary keyword to my title and description.

My laughter was not good humoured! I wrote back expressing my displeasure at this “solution”. I painstakingly explained how Yahoo had made a mistake, and that if Google was capable of recognising my Australian business despite its .com addresses, I would think it’s technically possible. I also cited several other .coms in the first couple of pages of Australian results.

No response.

The situation didn’t look promising…

If this sounds like a familiar story to you, don’t despair. A week or two later, I searched Yahoo Australia for my primary keyword, and surprise, surprise… My site was ranked number 1 again!

The moral to the story? Don’t be intimidated by Yahoo. Trust your instincts and don’t give up. If you’re an Australian business with a .com, and you’re not listed in Australian searches, this might be why. In fact, I would think this story is relevant to all regional Yahoos. (Of course, before making any accusations, it’s a good idea to make sure your site is properly optimised and that you have plenty of inbound links.)

Anyway, that’s my story. I hope it helps someone.

And they all lived happily ever after. So far at least…

Yahoooooooo!

The End.

* Glenn Murray is a website copywriter, SEO copywriter, and article submission and article PR specialist. He is a director of article PR company Article PR and also of copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit www.DivineWrite.com or www.ArticlePR.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.

How to Create Your Own Link Campaign

There are many different reasons out there fore creating a link campaign; after all, it can benefit you in so many different internet marketing strategies. In fact, links – especially one way links, but all links do count – are among the most determining factors for your rank among search engine spiders and indexers.

Since links are one of the vital components to the algorithm used by Google and the other big search engines, the creation of links for your website should be a major part of the efforts that you put forward.

The first step to accomplishing this is to understand that there are different kinds of links, all with their own values, strategies, and uses. While all links do have their importance, some create better results than others. By understanding them, you’ll be able to ensure the right kind of link campaign is working in your favor.

• Reciprocal links – these types of links occur when two sites exchange links so that each one has a link to the other’s site.

• One-way links – also known as inbound or in-bound links, these occur when a site links to another’s without receiving a link in return.

One of the most common strategies for links is reciprocal linking. When done correctly, however, this link strategy can be extremely time consuming. It has to do with searching throughout the internet for sites that are relevant to your own website’s cause, and then contacting their webmasters to request an exchange of links.

This communication has to be a personalized e-mail to each and every one of the webmasters, not just a spam-style form letter. Naturally, they will all have the same elements to them, but they all need to be geared directly toward the site in question, or no webmaster will even consider it.

An example of a successful reciprocal link request email can be as follows:

Dear Mr. Doe, webmaster of gwidgetsRus.com,

As I searched through quality sites with topics relevant to my own for a link exchange, I came across your Gwidgets R Us website. I am writing to request an exchange of links between your site and my own. Below is my site’s information. Please feel welcome to have a look at what we are all about before making your decision.

Title: Online Gwidgets
URL: http://www.onlinegwidgets.com

Description: Online Gwidgets provides educational information about gwidgets to its visitors, and sells both gwidgets and their parts for fair prices.

If you are indeed interested in this link exchange, please reply with the precise information you’d like me to post on my site, and where you’d like it placed.

If you are not interested in this link exchange, your lack of reply will be enough to make your intentions known.

Thank you kindly for your attention and time.

Bob Smith

bobsmith@onlinegwidgets.com
www.onlinegwidgets.com

When and if you receive some replies to your email, it is important that you add their links as quickly as you can, and confirm this addition by sending them another email with a link to where they can find their addition.

Of course, you will need to check the sites of your partners as well, to make sure that they have added the link when they said they would. Furthermore, you’ll need to check up on them frequently to make sure that they continue to link you, and that they have not dropped your link over time, or closed down altogether. While the majority of webmasters are completely honest individuals, there are those out there who will try to take advantage of your partnership to create a one-way, not reciprocal link to their own sites.

In-bound or one way links are the most coveted links as they give the best results with search engines. However, many people find them too daunting to try to achieve. The truth about inbound links, however, is that they’re not at all difficult to obtain.

The easiest source of inbound links is by using directory submissions. There are a large number of free directories out there where you can submit your site. This submission is worth the time and effort for as many as you can.

There are also fee-based directories out there. Depending on your budget, this may be worth your while as well, as long as they have categories relevant to the subject of your website.

Press releases and articles that mention your site are also valuable sources of exposure and one-way links. Find free submission sites all over the web and start writing!

Copyright 2006 Mark Nenadic

Mark is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North http://www.15dn.com, where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.

How to Pull in Free Traffic and Delight Your Visitors

Content is king and keywords count when it comes to attracting search engines but any old content will not do if you also want to keep your visitors coming back for more (more clicks on your Adsense adverts, more opportunities to buy your products…).

The typical content you get from many sites selling articles (the so-called Private Label Rights or PLR article sites) will have your visitors clicking away from your site faster than the speed of light.

What keeps your visitors on your site and turns them into repeat visitors is quality information.

Can you achieve that without

* toiling for hours researching and writing original articles

* using content from article sites which you pay for with the author’s link (leading visitors right out of your site)?

Yes you can, if you choose your PLR articles with care

1. Use quality articles

Make sure that the articles you select impart useful information. Did you learn anything from reading it yourself? Will your visitor find it helpful or get annoyed at the time they wasted clicking on your link?

2. Keep keywords natural

It’s a good idea to “seed” your PLR article with the keyword or keyword phrase you are trying to target with your web page to attract the search engines. But don’t add so many keywords that the reader thinks you don’t know how to write and the search engines suspect you of spamming them.

3. Add your own ideas

There are a number of dubious utilities around which will automatically add content to your articles “to make them unique”. Actually many add words which make no sense at all in the context of the article. All that means is you can kiss goodbye to your visitor – they won’t be back. If you use these content generators make sure the article still makes some sense.

Far better however is to actually take a couple of minutes to read the article and add to the information given if you can. If it’s a subject you’re not familiar with try and combine your articles in a different way or do a little research to add a new point. Then you really are providing value to your visitors with just a little extra effort.

4. Pay only for what you need

You will generally find that PLR articles are for sale in membership sites where you get hundreds of articles each month and thousands of members have access to the same articles. Unfortunately the vast majority of articles are poor quality and cover subjects which have no relevance to your websites! Instead use a PLR site which offers packs of quality articles to a limited number of people and will let you pay only for those packs you choose to use.

Copyright 2006, Janice Small

Janice Elizabeth Small - EzineArticles Expert Author

Janice is a regular contributing author to http://www.realcontentclub.com where you choose only the quality content you want that is relevant to your niche. Take a look today and download packs of quality articles for a few cents each.

How To Get At Least 50 Visitors A Day Free

How To Get At Least 50 Visitors A Day Free!

Every eBusiness owner is constantly looking at ways to get free traffic to their site. After all, if you have no visitors you will never have any sales. So getting visitors to your website is the first major step to get underway in your marketing campaign.

Pay-per-click search engines are one of the most highly recommended ways to get immediate traffic to your site. However, there are times when eBusiness owners – particularly newbies – don’t have the cash needed to continuously run pay-per-click traffic campaigns.

I have discovered a little known traffic generating technique that could seriously result in more profits in your pocket with extremely little effort on your part. In fact, you’re not going to believe how easy this really is.

If you’re serious about your Internet business then you must be using a truckload of products and services on a regular basis. The $60,000.00 question is – Do you spend time giving testimonials for the many products and services you use in your day to day life? If not, then you could be missing out on an incredible stream of no cost traffic to your site on a regular basis.

Writing testimonials is a relatively easy task. Just write one as if you were simply sending a short note of appreciation to someone you know.

EXAMPLE:

“I’ve been a member of Profits Vault Monthly for the past year and I have increased my profits streams by 300% in the seven months I’ve been promoting these products. Not only that, but I continue to enjoy $200.00 profit a month on my products already in circulation. I would highly recommend Profits Vault Monthly to anyone.” Karin Manning http://www.reprintrights4u.com/profitsvaultmonthly.com.

TIP: You don’t have to link people to your main website. You can link to anything you like – an affiliate program, a free report, a fr** download, just about anything you like…this is your chance to have your say.

Don’t be embarrassed to say that you’re not earning $100,000.00 a year with one product. There are thousands of people online who are happy to earn a few hundred dollars a month to help cover their car payments and house payments so don’t think your testimonial won’t be featured if it doesn’t include six figure digits. In this instance I believe credibility is far more important than inflated dollar figures.

Copyright 2003. All Rights Reserved.

If you find a particular product or service helpful, then give a testimonial about it to the website you purchased it from. Include your full name and url and you’re in business. Now of course this is no guarantee that your testimonial will be spotlighted on the website, however, the more credible and specific your testimonial is the higher your chances.

Now one website alone could be providing you with 5 unique visitors to your site every single day. Now that isn’t a big number by itself, however, in a month that adds up to 150 unique visitors to your site. And that’s just for one website.

If you offered 10 quality (and genuine) testimonials to 10 different websites they could send 50 unique visitors your way on a daily business.

1500 Free Unique & Targeted Visitors Every Month!

ADDED BONUS: Not only do you receive free traffic through this marketing strategy but this also helps your link popularity with search engines. Link popularity is proving to be the next best thing when it comes to ranking high on search engines so this is money in your pocket for virtually nil effort on your part.

Take a minute to make a list of all the membership programs you belong to, the affiliate programs you’re a member of, the products and services that you promote on a regular basis and I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with at least 10 testimonial targets easy.

3 Quick Ways To Effective Testimonial Marketing

  1. Give Powerful Testimonials.

    The more credible your testimonial the better chance you have of having your testimonial published on a site and featured in a better position. Be specific in your testimonials, just like you are in sales pages and your ads. For example, “I earnt $187.00 in my first 10 days of using this product” etc is much more effective than “I made some sales in the first month”. The more specific you are, the higher your visibility will be.

  2. Be Choosy With Offering Testimonials.

    You’re probably thinking I’ve had a bit to drink since I started writing this article and coming up with this point because haven’t I just defeated the whole purpose to my article? I don’t think so. If you offer testimonials to every person with a website you’ll lose all credibility. Make your opinion matter by only putting your name to products and services that really deserve it. A bit like athletic sponsorship deals. You are going to be endorsing a certain product people will associate you with…so make sure it’s worthy of your acclaim. If in doubt, don’t put it out.

  3. Make Your Testimonials Sell.

    Make sure you take the time to promote yourself by signing your full name and website address on the bottom of all your testimonials. Even better do what one noted internet marketer did and give yourself a label. The Fr** Ad Guru may be taken but can you think of a nifty name to brand your own identity? If so, throw it in and your testimonial may just get featured just because they like your name – for example, Cheapskate Suzy, Future Internet Millionaire etc.

About The Author

Karin Manning is the publisher of Net Wealth, a newsletter filled with up to the minute tips and techniques for growing your business online plus your free subscribers club. Subscribe by visiting http://www.reprintrights4u.com/earnprofitsmonthly and filling in the ePackage popup on entry.

karin@reprintrights4u.com

The Traffic Generation Breakthrough That Will Blow Your Mind

Does anyone really enjoy the tedium of spending hours upon
hours searching for quality link partners? I know I don’t.
That’s why I’ve devised a free and incredibly easy method
for generating thousands of incoming links to websites that
takes the hassle out of getting other sites to link to you.

The number of incoming links you will be able to generate is
directly proportional to the number of hits on your website.
The good news is that even if you have only a small handful
of visitors coming to your site daily, you still have the
potential to generate a substantial amount of links pointed
your way.

Here are the two simple steps required to start generating
your free incoming links:

1. Carry this article on your website and feature it prominently. The more people who see it, the more incoming
links you’ll potentially receive.

2. Create a “featured site” link that creates a new window when clicked on. This “featured site” will be the website where you originally viewed this article. The original window containing your website will stay open, so your visitor will eventually return to view your page.

That’s it! Now compare that to conventional methods of finding sites that will link to you. A quick word to the wise: I recommend that you only link to sites with themes similar to yours. If you own a fishing website, for example, and link to a music website, you may potentially damage your Google page ranking. At the same time, by linking to websites with similar content, in many cases you will improve your Google page rank.

If you don’t have a “featured site” link on your website, people will be less likely to link to you. Do the person who put this article in front of you a favor and send them some traffic, and you will be rewarded more than you can possibly imagine, provided you have a website that generates a decent amount of traffic.

If your website receives ten hits a day, or 5000 hits a month, you stand to gain mightily by using this innovative incoming link-generating tool. Even better, this article does 90% of the work for you! Have fun, and enjoy your extra traffic!

**Attn Ezine editors/Site owners**
Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your site so long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the content and include our resource box as listed below. Feel free to substitute your referral link in place of ours in the resource box. Thanks!

Wanna learn how to generate thousands of highly targeted visitors, absolutely free? => http://www.iwantchoices.com

Got Traffic?

Everyone wants a web business. Well, not everyone, but a lot of people want to quit their day job and be able to work at home in front of their computer and make their living while being able to spend time with their families.

But how does that happen? Of course you have to have a website. That’s a start. And of course you need something to sell there. That would be a good step. But once you have a product and a website, the people will start coming to your website and buying stuff right?

Well, not exactly. The “build it and they will come” philosophy only works in movies about baseball. You have to do a few things to get customers. Of course you can submit to the search engines for traffic, but that takes time and is never guaranteed to send your website traffic. You aren’t even guaranteed to be indexed when you submit your website. Although this is a necessary step, it may not answer all your traffic needs.

You could trade links with other websites to get traffic. However, you need to trade links with a website that is already getting a lot of traffic for enough people to go there, then a few of them click your link and go to your website. Most websites that have a lot of traffic don’t want to trade links with someone with a website that has no traffic.

You could buy advertising on other websites. Again, you need to buy advertising on a website that is related to your topic and one that has a lot of traffic. Most webmasters are very proud of their traffic and charge a lot of money for you to advertise there. So unless you have a pretty hefty budget, you may not be ready for buying advertising just yet.

So, how do I get traffic for my website? I’m glad you asked. Again, you do need to submit your website to the search engines. That will probably get some traffic to your website in the long run.

But in the meantime you may need to purchase bulk traffic from a good source. There are several companies out there who offer to sell you traffic, but you need to be smart about it and not buy just any traffic. If the traffic you buy for your website is not geared or targeted toward your topic or product, then all you will do is spend money and get no one to buy your product or service.

Some websites sell popup, popunder, or exit traffic. What that means is they have websites out there that whenever someone goes to the website, a popup or popunder is sent to them advertising your website or it can be an window with your website actually inside of it.

If you purchase this sort of traffic you will definitely see hits to your website. The question is which popunder or popup traffic to buy. You need to make sure the company you are buying from is reputable. The wrong traffic to your website can penalize you with the search engines and hurt you in the long run.

In addition to that as I said above, the wrong traffic will not convert to sales anyway so it is a waste of your money. You need to find a company that is selling you targeted traffic. You need to be sure they have the type of traffic you want for your website. If one company does not have traffic that is specifically targeted toward your topic, product, or service, find another one.

However, keep in mind that you need to know who you are targeting. You need to understand who your buyers are. Many times your buyers may not come from a website that is related to your topic. If you are offering a general service or product, you may only need to make sure the traffic is coming from the countries you want it to come from. If your website is all in english, you might not want 100,000 visits from people in China.

Do your homework to make sure the company selling the traffic is legitimate, that the traffic is from the right countries, and that the traffic is traffic you can convert and popunder or popup traffic can get you started making sales in as little as one day or one hour!

D. David Dugan personally helps to maintain the DD&C Spyware Information site http://spyware.dugancom.com and often uses traffic from http://www.acceleratedtraffic.com.

Thinking of using hit exchanges to boost your Adsense earnings? Think again!

So, you’ve added Adsense to your site and you are getting a few clicks. You could be thinking to yourself, How do I get a massive amount of visitors to bump up my earnings? If you’re anything like me, you hear those stories about webmasters that have added Adsense and are already earning five figure incomes per month, and you start to see the dollar signs.

So you start brainstorming. You come up with a few ideas: email marketing, ebooks, trial software, etc. The thirst for Adsense dollars (and maybe a few affiliate dollars) is your main drive. Pushing massive amounts of traffic through your site can give you quite a thrill ride.

Then along comes the well known email that markets the traffic exchanges. If you aren’t familiar with traffic exchanges, it’s really very simple. You see, you sign up for their service (which often times is free) and your website is put in a list. The way the free traffic works is that you surf the web using their browser, browsing sites that are in their directory (or list) and every 30 seconds you can refresh to a new site. As you continue to do this, it builds up credits for your account that you use for other people who are using their browser to see your site.

It’s a cyclical service. You see their site, they see yours. And since you can have as many browsers going (among the many traffic exchanges) as your computer can handle, you can theoretically build up a large quantity of hits on your site in a relatively small period of time.

It seems like a great thing, and for many it fills a very necessary niche, so I can’t say that the traffic exchanges are a bad service. I would use them in anything else that I am doing. I would, however, make a very big distinction.

First, I know and respect the tech’s at Google and I know that when they make a new program for their visitors and webmasters to use, they make it for the benefit of everyone. That is the case with their Adwords and Adsense programs, both targeted to helping webmasters make money through advertising (albeit the opoosite ends of the scale).

So when I put an ad on my website, I know that I am offering a service to the advertiser (through Google) to reach their target market. And ethically, I should only be paid when I provide that service (someone clicks through that ad to their site). There are extreme ethical problems if you were to use traffic exchanges with the Adsense program to try and cheat the advertiser out of his hard earned dollars.

Plus, if you haven’t figured out by now, Google knows what you are doing. They have specific ways of knowing what is a legitimate impression, versus what is a hit generated by a traffic exchange. Your numbers quickly dwindle if you use a hit exchange and you run the risk of being kicked off the program.

Plus, often times you have to go through two websites wasting a full minute of your time before you get one hit directed to your website. Building up over time, it eventually it all adds up.

Take, for instance, the “surf contests”. This is where they tell you who has racked up the most surfing in the week. These numbers are huge… up to 10,000 page loads. When you add it up, that’s over 84 hours of one week that is taken up trying to earn an extra 1,000 hits on your site. Not very worth it to me.

The best way to use the Adsense program is with a website that you have that is established and has a constant stream of visitors going through it. That’s the goal of the program, make money off of an existing site and its content.

Hints for Sorting Transfers to Chamonix for Your Skiing Holidays

Our Geneva airport minibus service service includes skiing transfers to Serre Chevalier, Megeve, Verchaix, Les Gets, Isola 2000, Val-d’sere and without forgetting Les Deux Alpes and Portes du Soleil and and we can supply personal trips to various snowboarding resorts if required.

With the professional fully equipped eleven people minibuses and Suzuki, Mercury, Besturn, or Chevrolet cars we can drive as many people as 18, or 20 plus should your group ask this. And our staff are inordinately experienced in challenging driving conditions for your comfort. Of course we are completely indemnified and licensed.

The company also do provide mountain bike Geneva transfers during Apr to Nov and have transfers to ski areas like the favourite 10: Flaine, La Grave, Chastreix-Sancy, Tignes, Les Orres, Montgenevre, Plateau de Beille, Grand Massif, Montroc, Risoul, Bessans, Avoriaz.

Driving to Chamonix, Courchevel or Meribel from your flight couldn’t be easier. For luxury ski holiday transfers from the airport to your luxury ski chalet in Chamonix village ring Geneva Chamonix Ski Transfers right now, afterwards relax and relish in your skiing holidays. So why not give us a call, or send us an email, today and a member of our team will be more than happy to offer you help and advice.

Nine tips You Can Use to Attract Customers to Your Website

Is your site designed to appeal to your ego – or is it designed to attract customers and make it easy for them to BUY?

If you have an existing site, or if you are just getting your business onto the web, here are some simple steps you should take to ensure you have a successful e-Commerce website.

Tip 1:.

Get your content right. When a prospective customer goes to your website they are expecting to find expert information and useful content that will help them make a buying decision.

Think of it this way, if you ring up a business or walk into a shop to buy something, you expect the salesperson to know what they are talking about and to give you helpful information.

If the salesperson doesn’t know their product and can’t give you helpful advice, you are probably going to walk out and check the competition.

Did you know 80% of people surveyed use the web for comparative shopping, or to gather information that will help them make a buying decision. They do this prior to ordering online or visiting a bricks and mortar shop.

If your site doesn’t give them the information they need they go to your competitor’s website – its as simple as that.

When you design your site forget the hype, instead be information generous.

With an editable website you can upload new information and create informative web pages without any programming knowledge. This is extremely important if you want to get your site into the top listing on the major search engines, and it’s even more important if you want to be seen as an expert in your field.

But remember, when writing content use short sentences and short paragraphs to keep your content scannable. Most web users scan copy – they don’t read it.

Tip 2:

Keep your website simple and keep the ratio of text to HTML content high by staying away from too much Flash, DOM, Java, and JavaScript.

Moving icons, flying pigs, ding-dongs, and music drive most people crazy when they are browsing your website. It drives search engines away too because the robots ignore content utilising the above technology.

Flashy sites are great for some owner’s ego, but you won’t be able to count the sales lost because you drove your customers away.

The choice is yours – big head or more sales! Simple sites attract business; complicated, flash filled sites could drive business to your competitors.

Tip 3:

Make sure your site loads quickly – within 3-4 seconds – longer and you lose 10% of your viewers for every second it goes over 4 seconds (10% can mean the difference between profit and loss for many businesses).

Tip 4:

Spell-check your scripts and make sure your grammar is correct. You won’t get any brownie points for mis-spelled words or bad sentence structure. In order to build trust with your audience you need to look and act professional at all times.

Tip 5:

Stay away from virtual hosting. The cost of quality hosting and professional support is nothing compared to the cost of your site going down or having broken links and not knowing about it.

Just about as bad, is having to pay $80 – $120 per hour for technical support to fix broken links and other problems because your host does not have the skills to provide in-house technical back up of your site, and believe me the best of websites get glitches all the time.

Tip 6:

Talk to your web developer about optimising your key pages for the search engines and how you can add quality out-going and in-coming links to your site. It can be expensive, but for some organisations it will pay off in a big way, particularly if you use professional real-time web tracking to analyse your marketing activity.

Tip 7:

Keep adding informational content to your site. New content keeps your site fresh and interesting for people who re-visit your site…and a big bonus is it stimulates the search engine spiders. When they see fresh content on your site they automatically make a note to return soon and spider the site again. They absolutely crave new informational content.

Tip 8:

Beware of turning your site into an online brochure – viewers get annoyed by online brochures, they may be interesting in print, but they just don’t work online. When a client insists on having brochures on their site, we normally place an icon on the page enabling them to download the brochure in PDF format.

Tip 9:
Make sure there is provision on your site to gather names and email addresses automatically. Building a list of opt-in names of people interested in your products or services, and keeping in regular touch with everyone on your list, will pay HUGE dividends in the medium to longer term. You can get further information on building a profitable list at http://www.sitedesignnow.com/

Mike Greenfield is Marketing Director, SiteDesignNOW.com and NOW Technology Systems, an Australian and Brisbane Web Design company specialising in ONLINE CATALOGUES and NEWSLETTER HTML Marketing Systems. You can contact Mike@SiteDesignNOW.com

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