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Assuming your website is successful, what will it have accomplished?
read the complete article at
http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2009/june/201650.html#ixzz0KwSI80ix&D
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Website Maintenance Musts
Keep your online business running smoothly with a monthly check-up of these crucial areas.To read the complete article,click on the following link.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/ebusiness/ebusinesscolumnist/article202322.html#ixzz0KwQ3jMGy&D
http://www.entrepreneur.com/ebusiness/ebusinesscolumnist/article202322.html#ixzz0KwQ3jMGy&D
Friday, July 10, 2009
Skyrocket Your Traffic With Satellite Sites
by Edwin Huertas (12/20/2008)
The more traffic your website gets, the greater your chances of making sales. It’s a simple precept of Internet marketing. Today, I’m going to show you how setting up “satellite sites” can skyrocket your traffic… and boost your sales in the process.
These additional traffic-building sites aren’t as complex as your primary website. In fact, they are often very simple - targeting one specific aspect of your business.
Think of your primary website as a storefront on the Net. If you have multiple storefronts (i.e., satellite sites) - each with unique content - you’re likely to get more “eyeballs” in front of your products or services. And, as you know, the more eyeballs that read through your sales copy, the more sales you’ll make.
One reason that satellite sites help draw more traffic is that you can submit them to the search engines separately. This means that more of your pages will show up on the search results pages when Web users type in your keywords. Just think - if one of your satellite sites AND your primary website rank highly for the same keyword, you could dominate that search engine results page!
I’ve been setting up satellite sites for ETR’s website. Right now, we have eight of them. Each of these sites is averaging about 30-40 new visitors per day. As time goes on, this traffic will increase. My goal is to have 100+ new satellite sites finished by the end of next year.
Imagine if you had 100 satellite sites, each bringing in highly targeted traffic. Even if each site brought in only 20 or 30 visits per day, that would be an extra 60,000 to 80,000 visits per month!
Now before you start throwing up satellite websites, you need to know that there’s a methodology to setting up good ones. In fact, doing it the wrong way can hurt you more than help.
Satellite Site Set-Up Guideline #1: Make sure each satellite site has unique content.
Search engines are smart. And they do not like sites that have identical content. They consider websites like these “cookie cutters.” If you have cookie-cutter satellite sites, the search engines may punish you by not giving those sites any priority. Even worse, you could be blacklisted and not show up in their results at all.
To avoid this, you have to make sure that each and every satellite site has unique, distinctive content.
At ETR, for instance, we sell a program that teaches people how to make money by importing goods from China. So I created one satellite that was optimized for “China importing secrets” - and I filled the site with content relating only to that aspect of the program.
When you do a Google search for “China importing secrets,” this satellite site will usually be within the top 10 positions. It is bringing in 20 to 30 new visits per day, and each visit comes in via a targeted keyword search performed on a major search engine.
Satellite Site Set-Up Guideline #2: Make sure your site is “big” enough for the search engines to find it.
It’s easy to toss up a single-page satellite site - but don’t expect it to attract any traffic. Search engines (especially Google) love sites that have plenty of pages - and content - for them to index. How many pages will depend on your business - but sites with 100+ pages tend to do better than those with fewer pages.
If you’re thinking, “Wow, that’s a lot of pages!” don’t worry. You will begin to see additional traffic with 10 or 20 pages (sometimes even less). And then, as you add more pages with new content, you will see more traffic.
To get that content, I like to hire freelance writers to create articles for me. I ask them to base those articles on information that has been posted by respected publications. For instance, if I need content relating to the medical industry, I might ask them to visit medical journals and government sites to find studies or news releases that they can comment on or summarize.
Satellite Site Set-Up Guideline #3: Each site should have a unique IP address.
A website’s IP address is a numerical identification (like a telephone number) that allows people (and search engines) to connect to it. Most hosting companies provide shared hosting accounts that use the same IP for all satellite sites. This is bad for your traffic-attracting efforts, because the search engines will recognize those sites as being related to one another.
If the content on each site is completely different, you won’t get flagged - but it’s much better to have unique IP addresses for them. That tells the search engines that they are separate websites. Contact your hosting provider to find out how you can do this.
Satellite Site Set-Up Guideline #4: Optimize each satellite site properly.
One of the best - and easiest - ways to optimize your satellite sites is to make each one focus on only one aspect of your business. Let’s say you have a primary website about pets. You could make a separate satellite site for each category of products that you offer: pet food, pet medication, grooming, training, etc. That way, each site stands a chance of getting more targeted traffic.
If you plan on putting up multiple satellite websites, follow the rules. Make sure that each one has its own individual IP address and at least 10 pages of unique content… for starters.
You can also link to your primary site from each satellite site for extra “link juice,” but that’s an entirely different subject. For now, just get at least one satellite site up and running using the guidelines above… and watch the traffic begin to flow in.
(This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.)
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Protecting Your Business Name Online
Someone just registered a domain that's awfully similar to your business name. Are they cybersquatting?
To read the complete article,please visit the following link.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/startupbasics/namingyourbusiness/article49040.html#ixzz0Jeoen7Ws&D
To read the complete article,please visit the following link.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/startupbasics/namingyourbusiness/article49040.html#ixzz0Jeoen7Ws&D
Choose the Right Domain Name
It's going to be your identity in cyberspace, so make sure it's a name you can live with.
To read the complete article,click on the below link.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/websmarts/article199478.html#ixzz0Jemq6i7r&D.
To read the complete article,click on the below link.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/websmarts/article199478.html#ixzz0Jemq6i7r&D.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
SEO: Essential to Survival
Companies that rely on the web for sales have two choices. Embrace SEO or don't embrace SEO. And one's not really a viable option.
To read the complete article,please visit the following link.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/onlinemarketing/article199906.html#ixzz0JLMG67Kv&D
To read the complete article,please visit the following link.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/onlinemarketing/article199906.html#ixzz0JLMG67Kv&D
Make 2009 Your Best Year Ever - Resolution #5: Become a Killer Link Builder
by Alexis Siemon (12/26/2008)
A link is a shortcut to quickly get you from one website to another. If you can harness the power of the link, you can make your website a force to be reckoned with. That means higher search engine rankings, more traffic to your site, and, eventually, more customers and more money in your pocket.
That’s why one of your New Year’s resolutions should be to become a master link builder. Today, I’m going to show you just how to do it.
Link building is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization (SEO). When you attract links from other relevant websites, that tells the search engines that yours is a site to be trusted, and, therefore, displayed for relevant keyword searches.
The process of building those connections can be tedious. First you have to find sites in your niche, determine whether they’re relevant and of respectable quality, and then figure out the best way to contact the people behind them. It can be overwhelming. But I have three simple steps to get you started.
Link-Building Step #1: Link Research
The first step is to do a bit of research. What kinds of sites do you want to get links from? How do you go about finding them? There are several strategies, but one that will get you going in the right direction is to research your competitors’ links.
Let’s say you just launched a new site selling homebrew supplies. You would likely know that a popular competitive supply shop is NorthernBrewer.com. By finding the sites that link to the Northern Brewer website, you would instantly have a list of relevant sites that would potentially be willing to link to your site as well.
And you don’t need any fancy software. Both Google and Yahoo provide ways to perform this link research right from their websites:
• Link research on Google. To research the sites linking to your competitor, Northern Brewer, on Google, you would enter the following in Google’s search box:
link:http://www.northernbrewer.com
• Link research on Yahoo. To research the sites linking to your competitor, Northern Brewer, on Yahoo, you would go to a special section of Yahoo’s site called Site Explorer (https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/) and enter Northern Brewer’s URL in the field at the top. Make sure to click the “inlinks” tab to get the list you are looking for.
Now Google is a little stingy with their information. They will typically display only a portion of the links that they have in their database, which is why it’s a good idea to use Yahoo’s Site Explorer as well. In our example, you’d see that Google shows only 352 links for Northern Brewer while Yahoo shows 62,810.
Any way you slice it, that’s a lot of links. Now the hard work starts. You have to go through all those sites and determine which ones you want to have link to your site. Why not just pick them all? Well, just because a site is linking to Northern Brewer doesn’t mean they were asked to do it. Remember, any website can link to any other website for any reason at all… and without the site owner’s knowledge. There can be some link farms and other dubious low-quality sites in the mix, and you definitely don’t want to get links from them.
Link-Building Step #2: Link Quality
You want the good links - the high-quality, relevant, highly trafficked websites. So how do you weed them out? There are a few online tools that can help you make the distinction between a good link and a bad link.
• Alexa.com and Compete.com. These websites give you a general idea of the kind of traffic a particular site gets, and that can help you determine the quality of the site. High traffic typically means high quality.
• Google Toolbar PageRank (PR). Always controversial in SEO circles, many debate whether this particular little number means anything at all. Whenever I mention it, I always recommend taking it with a grain of salt. But a site with a higher Google PR is seen by Google as a higher quality site with a respectable number of links. In other words, a website you would want a link from.
These are good tools to have on your side, but not the only ways to determine the quality of a potential link. You can also use a kind of website common sense.
• Does the site have quality relevant content?
• If the site makes it possible for users to leave comments about its content, are they participating? This can be a sign of how active the site’s community is - a sign of quality.
• Does the site consist of nothing but links to other sites? If it’s not a known directory like Yahoo, etc. it’s likely a link farm - so stay away.
• Does the site have good design and navigation? Or does it look like it was patched together with FrontPage in 1998 and left to die?
Once you’ve identified the websites you definitely want to target for links, you have to determine the best way to approach each one.
Link-Building Step #3: Link Request
Gone are the days of the generic link request form letter. E-mails addressed “To Whom It May Concern” are usually deleted automatically by website owners
Link requests are now a request for a kind of partnership. That doesn’t necessarily mean reciprocal linking, but it does mean that site owners want to know that you have a genuine interest in their sites, not just in the “link juice” they can pass on to you.
Try to get familiar with the sites you want a link from. If you are targeting a blog, read it. Make some non-link-related comments. If you become part of the blog’s community, you’ll find the site owner much more receptive to a follow-up link request. You may also find that other commenters on that site have their own sites – and they may be willing to link to you.
If you find that you have no choice but to send a cold e-mail, try your best to find the e-mail address of a person to send it to. Not just a webmaster@ or info@ e-mail address. And when you write to that person, make it personal. Talk to them about why you like their site and why you think a link to you would be a fit for their readers/customers. Spouting off stats about your PageRank and traffic could be a turnoff for the site owner. If those things are really important to him, he knows how to do his own research (and will).
Link building may be a slow and tedious process - but it’s an absolutely necessary part of a successful SEO initiative. Knowing how to get started will make it much easier for you to build the links you need. And once you start acquiring some really solid quality links, you will no doubt begin to see improvement in your search engine rankings, your website traffic, and even your sales.
( This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/. )
That’s why one of your New Year’s resolutions should be to become a master link builder. Today, I’m going to show you just how to do it.
Link building is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization (SEO). When you attract links from other relevant websites, that tells the search engines that yours is a site to be trusted, and, therefore, displayed for relevant keyword searches.
The process of building those connections can be tedious. First you have to find sites in your niche, determine whether they’re relevant and of respectable quality, and then figure out the best way to contact the people behind them. It can be overwhelming. But I have three simple steps to get you started.
Link-Building Step #1: Link Research
The first step is to do a bit of research. What kinds of sites do you want to get links from? How do you go about finding them? There are several strategies, but one that will get you going in the right direction is to research your competitors’ links.
Let’s say you just launched a new site selling homebrew supplies. You would likely know that a popular competitive supply shop is NorthernBrewer.com. By finding the sites that link to the Northern Brewer website, you would instantly have a list of relevant sites that would potentially be willing to link to your site as well.
And you don’t need any fancy software. Both Google and Yahoo provide ways to perform this link research right from their websites:
• Link research on Google. To research the sites linking to your competitor, Northern Brewer, on Google, you would enter the following in Google’s search box:
link:http://www.northernbrewer.com
• Link research on Yahoo. To research the sites linking to your competitor, Northern Brewer, on Yahoo, you would go to a special section of Yahoo’s site called Site Explorer (https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/) and enter Northern Brewer’s URL in the field at the top. Make sure to click the “inlinks” tab to get the list you are looking for.
Now Google is a little stingy with their information. They will typically display only a portion of the links that they have in their database, which is why it’s a good idea to use Yahoo’s Site Explorer as well. In our example, you’d see that Google shows only 352 links for Northern Brewer while Yahoo shows 62,810.
Any way you slice it, that’s a lot of links. Now the hard work starts. You have to go through all those sites and determine which ones you want to have link to your site. Why not just pick them all? Well, just because a site is linking to Northern Brewer doesn’t mean they were asked to do it. Remember, any website can link to any other website for any reason at all… and without the site owner’s knowledge. There can be some link farms and other dubious low-quality sites in the mix, and you definitely don’t want to get links from them.
Link-Building Step #2: Link Quality
You want the good links - the high-quality, relevant, highly trafficked websites. So how do you weed them out? There are a few online tools that can help you make the distinction between a good link and a bad link.
• Alexa.com and Compete.com. These websites give you a general idea of the kind of traffic a particular site gets, and that can help you determine the quality of the site. High traffic typically means high quality.
• Google Toolbar PageRank (PR). Always controversial in SEO circles, many debate whether this particular little number means anything at all. Whenever I mention it, I always recommend taking it with a grain of salt. But a site with a higher Google PR is seen by Google as a higher quality site with a respectable number of links. In other words, a website you would want a link from.
These are good tools to have on your side, but not the only ways to determine the quality of a potential link. You can also use a kind of website common sense.
• Does the site have quality relevant content?
• If the site makes it possible for users to leave comments about its content, are they participating? This can be a sign of how active the site’s community is - a sign of quality.
• Does the site consist of nothing but links to other sites? If it’s not a known directory like Yahoo, etc. it’s likely a link farm - so stay away.
• Does the site have good design and navigation? Or does it look like it was patched together with FrontPage in 1998 and left to die?
Once you’ve identified the websites you definitely want to target for links, you have to determine the best way to approach each one.
Link-Building Step #3: Link Request
Gone are the days of the generic link request form letter. E-mails addressed “To Whom It May Concern” are usually deleted automatically by website owners
Link requests are now a request for a kind of partnership. That doesn’t necessarily mean reciprocal linking, but it does mean that site owners want to know that you have a genuine interest in their sites, not just in the “link juice” they can pass on to you.
Try to get familiar with the sites you want a link from. If you are targeting a blog, read it. Make some non-link-related comments. If you become part of the blog’s community, you’ll find the site owner much more receptive to a follow-up link request. You may also find that other commenters on that site have their own sites – and they may be willing to link to you.
If you find that you have no choice but to send a cold e-mail, try your best to find the e-mail address of a person to send it to. Not just a webmaster@ or info@ e-mail address. And when you write to that person, make it personal. Talk to them about why you like their site and why you think a link to you would be a fit for their readers/customers. Spouting off stats about your PageRank and traffic could be a turnoff for the site owner. If those things are really important to him, he knows how to do his own research (and will).
Link building may be a slow and tedious process - but it’s an absolutely necessary part of a successful SEO initiative. Knowing how to get started will make it much easier for you to build the links you need. And once you start acquiring some really solid quality links, you will no doubt begin to see improvement in your search engine rankings, your website traffic, and even your sales.
( This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/. )
