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7 Free Lessons from the Teachers of The Secret

How to Buy Web Space and Domain Names

Does the length of your website's domain name registration affect search engine optimization and results?
Should you renew your domain name for a long period of time? And if so, how long is long enough? If you want to stay ahead of your competition, then you might consider looking at the length of time your competitors have registered their domain names.

If your competitors have generally renewed their domain names for one or two years, you might consider registering your domain name for 5 or 10 years. While putting off your domain name's expiration date might help your search engine rankings, keep in mind that this may be only a small victory when it comes to search engine rankings.

Its good business sense to register a domain for at least 10 years. You don’t want to deal with the process annual process of renewing them every year. It’s best to obtain the domain names that you want to keep for a while and renew then on a 5 to 10 year plan.

If your domain name expires, there's a good chance that someone will register your domain name immediately after it expires. If, for whatever reason, you don't renew your domain name, someone watching a 'watch list' of expiring domain names will try to capitalize on the online business that you've built over the years. They know that there is potential website traffic they can have simply by renewing your old domain name. By renewing your domain name for several years, your domain name won't expire for a while, and it won't be opened up to expired domain name buyers.

If you really want to stay ahead of the competition, you might consider registering or renewing your domain name for 100 years. Currently, Network Solutions (www.netsol.com) is the only registrar offering the 100 year option, which costs $999.00. GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com), currently offers to renew or register a domain name for 10 years, at a discount of $6.95 per year.
Yes, you can lose critical positioning in the search engines if you don’t reregister your domain name in time. You may have to start the SEO process all over again!

Popularity: 9% [?]

Filed under Buy Web Space by Andrew M Harvey.
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October 27, 2007

Make Money Web Site Designer

Making Money as a Web Site Designer

For those of you who are a liittle more creative out there then making custom web site Designs could be one of the many ways that you can enhance your income.
If you enjoy creating websites then becoming a web site designer could be for you.

A web designer may do several different types of work, including consulting with clients to determine what type of website will fit their needs, designing the website, customizing blogs, and even designing graphics.

In the past, a web designer needed to know HTML, the language that websites are written in. Today, there are many software choices available, enabling people to design websites quickly and easily, without knowing any HTML at all.

To begin working as a web designer, you will need a computer with high speed internet, an HTML editing software, such as Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver, such as and your own website which will allow you to connect with clients and serve as your portfolio. Working knowledge of HTML tags and a graphics editing program such as Adobe Photoshop would also be helpful.

There is a strong demand for web designers these days and a lot people have dreams of starting their own online business, but they do not know a thing about how to build a website. They turn to web designers to help them get set-up online as well as maintain their sites.

If you visit a work at home forum, you are almost guaranteed to find someone asking how to get a website started or how to make their website look better, work better, or something of that sort.

Web designer jobs can easily be found online through job boards and freelance work sites, such as elance.com. You may also want to visit some of the forums we mentioned above and network with people just starting out, as they are your target market. Don’t forget about targeting local businesses in your own neighborhood, as they need web designers, too.

You may even want to start a website that teaches some basic design principals and offer one-on-one coaching or group coaching to individuals who want to try designing their own website, but need a little encouragement along the way.

Some web designers charge their clients by the hour and some charge by project. If you decide to charge an hourly fee, you can expect to earn anywhere from $15 - $40 per hour. If charging by project, you can expect to earn between $20 - $50 per webpage or logo.

Web design can be a great career for those that like to be creative and design layouts. The internet is growing larger each day, and there will always be a demand for this type of job.
This is just one of the many ways that you can earn an extra income online.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Filed under Web Site Designer by Andrew M Harvey.
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October 25, 2007

Home Business Work at Home Online

There are Many of opportunities for you in creating a work at home business that concentrate on the Internet and online. You'll want to spend a good deal of time visiting various websites and doing some research because you can find many ideas and affiliate programs that you can market in several different categories. Some of the categories that you can market include finance and investment, food and beverage, automotive, and health and fitness.

It's also worth taking time to read because each affiliate program will list their website as well as a small description on what they do and you'll want to visit the website as well. If you're going to be spending a great deal of your time promoting a particular website and program, you'll want to make a point that this is worth your while. Also, with each of these particular programs, you should consider how much money you would be making by selling each of these. You'll probably find several programs that seem interesting to you so see which one peaks your interest and pays well and head for that opportunity.

If you decide that you want to do business to business selling, figure out how you can provide benefit to the particular market that you want to go after. Many people work online as freelance writers and you are able to do this and potentially differ yourself from the competition if you market to one particular niche. Business-to-business selling is similar to the retail strategy in that you want to focus upon a niche and try and dominate that niche.

Let us focus upon people who decide that they want to sell to a targeted audience. This would fall under either selling products or services to a retail customer. If you find this is the route that you want to take, then you will want to find a particular segment of the Internet audience to focus upon. To do this, do some research into finding a niche that doesn't currently have their needs being met. This seems like a very difficult task but if you use some these following resources you should be able to pinpoint an audience which is not being served well.

If you use either groups.google.com or groups.yahoo.com, look through their groups to see which one of these groups could be of interest to you. If you spend time around these particular segments and listen to it what they have to say about their needs and concerns, you'll be gaining information into how to sell to this particular audience. This could allow you to gather information such as what competitors are out there and what competitors are doing well and what they are not doing so well. By doing this you are developing an idea on how you can reach this particular segment so that you can position your website so you can also get some big sales. This is just one way to help you in creating online business opportunities.

One great way that you can bring about more traffic to your website is through Adwords. Adwords is a form of advertising that is run by Google where you are allowed to bid on certain keywords that people search for. You can run your marketing using a budget and you'll know that you're getting the target audience that you want towards your website. One of the ways that you can work at saving and maintaining a budget using Adwords is to log into your Google account every day to see how much it is costing you to use your keywords. By looking at how much it costs for keywords, you can make sure that your marketing budget is right on track with what you should be. You can also get an idea as to trends developing with the costs of Adwords.

Finally when you are looking at creating online business opportunities, you have to keep your eyes and ears open and be constantly on the lookout for new information that you can use in promoting a product in a segment of the audience that you want to hit. This is the fundamental key thing for Internet business as well as any other business.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Filed under Work at Home Online by Andrew M Harvey.
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Hi everyone,

Just a quick heads up on a new free resource that i just discovered online the other day.

Now for those of you who were looking for a way to make money by creating your own pdf ebooks and documents for free then i can definately recommend the Openoffice.org free office suite which is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project.

The good thing about this product is that it's also compatible with all other major office suites, and is free to download, use, and distribute.

Now the main components that are included in the office suite are a word processor -very similar to microsoft word ( called simply-Writer) it's within this component that you can create your very own pdf ebooks and files .

Once you have written your document or ebook content all thats left to do is to simply go to (File) then scrolling down and clicking ( Export as PDF ) and hey presto -your very own pdf files and ebooks are created!

The other components included in the free office suite are a vector drawing tool, a spreadshhet,and database program -all free for you to download.

As an added bonus theres also a presentation tool called(Impress) which again will give you very similar features that you would get with Powerpoint.(also file compatible)

I know there are other products out there that are capable of creating your own pdf ebooks
but if your just starting out or just decided you would like to make and create your very own digital product without the added expense to begin with then i think this would be a good place to start if your watching your initial Marketing budget at the moment an i believe there has been a major update to the program also with some improvements.

If you have already used this program your self and have found it quite useful please leave a comment for me to publish. Here's to your Success. :)

Popularity: 8% [?]

Filed under Create PDF Free by Andrew M Harvey.

October 19, 2007

Social Bookmarking For Your Online Business

Social Bookmarking For your Online Business

Have you ever visited a site and thought you might like to come back to it, so in order to find it again, you saved it to your browser’s “favorites” or “bookmarks” category? “Social bookmarking” is a term that describes a method in which Internet users can store, classify and share their Internet bookmarks.

There are many sites that allow users to share the sites they feel are useful and want others to know about. Other users can view these sites by category, topic or randomly, if they choose.

While this concept actually began in 1996, it started to get very popular in 2005 and 2006 when sites such as http://del.icio.us, http://simpy.com and http://furl.net started to take off.

As more and more of these websites pop up, new features such as allowing users to rate and comment upon the bookmarks, add notes, receive RSS feeds and even create social networks have popped up. The RSS feeds in particular allow users to receive up to the minute information on certain tags that they “subscribe” to. They are able to receive up to the minute information and resources on any given topic.

Since the information is being ranked by humans who are reading the information, the web pages with the most helpful content are receiving higher rankings. This is in comparison to a search engine’s spider that crawls the Internet and has its own way of measuring what pops up in the search engine results.

If you were searching for information on planting soil in a social bookmarking site, you may have very different results than which would come up in a general search engine search.

What does all of this have to do with your business? Basically, social bookmarking is the new “word of mouth” advertising. The more people that bookmark content on your site increases the chance of new users finding your site as they search through various users’ bookmarks.

If a site provides quality content that users find helpful and a little time is spent networking within these social bookmarking sites’, a site could have a much higher ranking within the social bookmarking site than it does in general search engine traffic.

Social bookmarking is another avenue of receiving web traffic. With many people taking hits from the search engines, this is another way to receive traffic. This doesn’t mean to ignore search engines or discontinue any search engine optimization efforts. This is simply another method that can increase traffic flow.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Filed under Internet Marketing Online by Andrew M Harvey.
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October 18, 2007

Learn Forex Currency Trading Online

Forex trading is all about making big money. Some investors have found it quite easy to make a large amount of money as the forex market changes daily. Forex, is the foreign exchange market. Online and offline you will find references to the forex market as FX as well. Forex trading takes place through a broker or a financial institution often where you are able to purchase other types of stocks, bonds and investments.

When you are thinking about getting involved in the forex markets you should know you are sending money to be invested with other countries. This is done to prop up the investments of people involved in certain types of hedge funds, and in the markets overseas. The forex market could have your money invested in one market one day, and the next day your money is invested in another country. The daily changes are determined by your broker or financial institution. When reading your statements and learning more about your account, you will find that every type of currency has three letters that will represent that currency.

For example, the United States dollars is USD, the Japanese yen is JPY, and the British pound sterling will read as GBP. You will also find that for every transaction on your account listing you will see information that looks like this: JPYzzz/GBPzzz. This means that you took your Japanese yen money and invested it into something in the British pound market. You will find many transactions from one currency to another if you have money that is scattered through out the forex markets.

Forex markets trading by investment management firms are the companies you can trust with your money. You want to find a company that has been dealing with forex trading since the early seventies, and not someone just new on the block so you get the most for your hard earned money. It is important that you beware of companies that are popping up online, and often times from foreign countries that are stating they can get you involved in the forex markets and trading. Read the fine print, and know whom you are dealing with for the best possible protection.

If you are interested in trading on the forex market, you will find limits for investing are different from company to company. Often times you will learn that you need a minimum of $250 or $500 while other companies will need $1000 or $10,000. The company you are dealing with will set limits in how much you need to open an account with their company. The scams that are online will tell you, that you only need a $1 or $5 to open an account, but you need to learn more about that company and where they are doing business before investing any money, this is for your own protection while dealing in forex trading and markets online.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Filed under Learn Forex Trading by Andrew M Harvey.
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October 17, 2007

Making Money Online World

Always Learning: Free dinner can cost you - Florida Today

17 Oct 2007 at 1:28am

Always Learning: Free dinner can cost you
Florida Today, FL - 21 hours ago
Our fast-talking presenter in the $1000 suit told us inventors, craftspeople, hobbyists and writers can make money online .. Writers can make money? ….

Get Paid For Surveys | Make Money Online - PR-GB.com (press release)

9 Oct 2007 at 5:55pm

Get Paid For Surveys | Make Money Online
PR-GB.com (press release), Bulgaria - Oct 9, 2007
Quite simply this is the easiest way for anyone to make money online .. Survey companies will even pay for the opinions of teens as young as 13. ….

Always Learning: Free dinner can cost you (Florida Today)

17 Oct 2007 at 1:22am

Internet marketing seminar offers little more than a free meal.

LiveGamesNetwork Sets Out to Combine Casual Games and Social Networking (PR N…

17 Oct 2007 at 2:20pm

LiveGamesNetwork is combining the addictive nature of casual gaming with social networking to create an online adventure games site.

Information provided by Google and Yahoo

Popularity: 5% [?]

Filed under web Marketing Tips by Andrew M Harvey.
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How Using CSS Makes Life Easier

Cascading Style Sheets, also known as CSS, is a computer language that describes how the website should be presented. It shows what the background color is, what size of font is displayed and so forth.

CSS is designed in a manner that makes it easier to define how text should look. If you are familiar with HTML, you will know that it was designed as a structural language. When the web was in it’s early development stages, websites were not “pretty”. In fact, HTML didn’t contain bold or italics tags until the mid 1990’s.

When someone uses CSS to build their website, they do not have to include a bunch of opening and closing tags, as would be needed with HTML. With CSS, not only can the website designer have the ability to set the colors, text and the background of any element, they can also create borders around images and define how much space these borders contain.

Another advantage of using CSS is that it centralizes all the commands for a specified visual effect. If a web designer wanted all of the headers on a website to be blue, they can simply create one rule in CSS that defines what each of the headers will look like.

If that same web designer were using HTML, they would have to add font tags around each header. If the website contained 40 pages, the designer would need to add 40 font tags around each header. As you can see in that example, creating one simple rule in CSS was a lot simpler and less time consuming. If the web designer wants to change the heading color from blue to red all they would need to do is change that one CSS rule, versus changing each font tag again.

The “cascading” part of CSS comes into pay when a web designer wants to add a specific style to a web page. To maintain a common theme throughout a site, the designer could save the style sheet to it’s own document and import it on any page they want to carry the theme to. If the web designer wants one page to stand out against the others, they can create another style sheet on that page. The two style sheets would cascade, and the web browser will display the style sheet that is specific for that page.

Some browsers allow the reader of the website to change the CSS of a page. This is called Reader Style Sheets. The reader could set all links to a special, pre-defined color. This is a great tool for color-blind web surfers.

Another bonus to CSS is that, when implemented, it creates smaller file sizes. Your pages won’t take as long to load as those written in HTML.

A good way to practice working with CSS is through a blog. It doesn’t matter if you use Blogger, WordPress or TypePad because they are all written with CSS. These sites also have CSS tutorials to help along the way.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Filed under Website Design by Andrew M Harvey.
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October 16, 2007

Tips for Creating Videos for your Website Online

Tips for Creating Videos

Ever visited a website that offered a tutorial on something such as creating a website or customizing a blog? There are plenty of tools to help create that in a website.

To create a simple montage of photos, words and music to commemorate a wedding, birth or even a weekend barbecue then might be the helping tool. It is also free.

For those that just want to have some fun on the web, digitalfilms.com allows you to create short animated films where you can choose the background images, create the characters and more.

To get more technical and provide some instructions and how-to tutorials, products such as Camtasia and NetPlay allow recording of what is happening on your desktop. For instance, a Word document can be open and then it can record how to select text, change the font, change the color and insert a picture.

To make the most of videos, start with the end in mind. What should this video capture and convey to an audience? Create a simple script to use as an outline to make sure you cover all of the key points.

If you are demonstrating something for your own target market that will be displayed on your website, feel free to get into technical aspects and make a longer video. If it teaches the audience what they want to know, they will be glued to the screen.

On the other hand, if the video is to go “viral”, meaning that it gets passed around on the web with a service such as YouTube.com, a video should be short and to the point. People have short attention spans and don’t want to spend too much time on anything. Create a series of several short videos to convey the message and viewers can choose to keep going on to the next video if they wish.

When uploading a video to a video sharing site, be as descriptive as possible when filling out the information about the video. This will help viewers find it. Other people will be able to rate it, and if you get a bad rating from someone, try to think of it as constructive criticism or just shrug it off altogether. A lot of people are bored with their own lives and have nothing better to do than post disparaging comments on others’ videos and blogs.

A better source of advice is from a sites own target market. Ask website visitors to view the videos and give some feedback. To make this easier, create a form for visitors to fill out. Offer them a small thank you gift, such as a free report upon their completion of the form.

Receiving feedback will ensure the videos are on the right track. This will only help create better videos in the future.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Filed under Video Tutorials by Andrew M Harvey.
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October 15, 2007

Account Pay Pal Set Up

How to Set Up a PayPal Account for Your Business

One of the easiest and best ways to make and accept payments online is to use Paypal.

So For anyone who is just getting started with their online Business here's a quick rundown.

PayPal is a one of the more well known ways to accept and make payments for your online business. The process of setting up an account is fairly simple and you'll see all the steps required below.

Step 1
Type the URL (https://www.paypal.com) into your browser.

Step 2
Click the Sign Up link!

Step 3
Follow the prompts and answer a series of questions about you and your business, including demographical information, annual sales, bank account information, etc.

Step 4

Once your account has been set up PayPal will make 2 small deposits into your bank account on file. Once you receive those deposits you will need to return to the PayPal website, sign into your account and confirm the amounts of the deposits.

Step 5
You may also be required to confirm other things, such as credit card information, email addresses etc.

Step 6

Once you have confirmed everything necessary you can now begin to use your PayPal account to not only pay for items online where PayPal is accepted as a method of payment, but you will also be able to receive payments.

Take the time to really browse your account and learn all you can about how to use it to your advantage! It will be well worth the time invested and will definitely make the financial side of your online business easier for you.
Once you have signed up you will be given a number of options as to what type of account you want. :)
Sign up for PayPal and start accepting credit card payments instantly.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Filed under Account Pay Pal Set Up by Andrew M Harvey.
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10 Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking is a system of sharing Internet bookmarks with other Internet users. There are many websites that allow you to share your favorite web pages and network with other users. Here are a few of the most popular:

technorati.com – This site allows users to share their blogs, photos, videos and more and boasts almost a million and a half visitors each month.

del.icio.us – This site is a very popular and was one of the first social bookmarking sites to really take off.

digg.com – This site receives 8.7 million visitors each month. Visitors can look up any topic and receive instant information and statistics.

stumbleupon.com – This is a relatively new site and it combines myspace with social bookmarking. Users can make up 5 of their own pages on any topic they want.

reddit.com -This site allows users to view what’s new, what’s hot at the moment and what the weekly stats are.

fark.com – This site’s main page has categories displayed that allows the user to go directly to topics such as sports, business, politics, music and more.

mybloglog.com – This site combines social bookmarking, blogging and social networking.

blinklist.com – This website is still in beta testing and it’s mission statement is more about how people can use the service for keeping track of their own research.

ma.gnolia.com – This site isn’t quite as big as some of the others but it is very easy to use and has a lot of information to make the process of social bookmarking understandable. This is a great site to get started with.

tailrank.com – This site keeps track of the conversations between blogs to help find what is hot on the web. The user can search on any topic they like or view randomly through categories such as politics, video, technology and entertainment.

These sites are all varied and, while they share in social bookmarking, they are all geared towards different audiences. To get the most out of these sites you may want to combine the use of several of them. For instance, you can list your blogs on technorati.com and ping the site when you update your blogs.

Then join a site such as stumbleupon.com and set up five web pages about various topics found on your own website. For instance, if your website featured information on guinea pigs, one of your stumbleupon.com sites could feature information on feeding guinea pigs and another page could feature information on the type of environment they should be kept in and so forth.

Meanwhile, keep your bookmarks in del.icio.us to share with other users and visit a site such as tailrank.com to keep track of what other people are blogging about. This can inspire new blog posts for your own blog, which would then mean you’d have more pings for technorati.com and the cycle would just start over.

All of these elements would work together to create more buzz for your website and introduce you to people with similar interests. This could lead to more web traffic and even some future joint venture partners, which, in turn would lead to even more traffic (but that is a whole new topic for another article).

Popularity: 7% [?]

Filed under Main by Andrew M Harvey.

October 12, 2007

Make Money with YouTube

What is YouTube ? and can you make money online with it?

YouTube is a website that allows people to share video clips. These videos range from homemade photo montages to dance recitals to actual music videos and snippets of television shows and movies.

YouTube, which was started by three former PayPal employees, made it’s official debut in August of 2005 and grew so fast that in October of 2006 Google bought the site for 1.65 billion dollars.

The site allows unregistered users to watch most of the videos on the site. Registered users are allowed to view all of the videos on the site as well as upload an unlimited number of videos. The site offers a search function which makes locating certain types of videos easy. It also recommends videos based on the video you are currently watching.

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the site, as some television production companies feel that this infringes on piracy and copyright laws. In essence, these companies feel that they are losing money – why would anyone want to watch a whole show when they can get the best clips for free on You Tube. For example, if you missed the feud on the television show The View that led to Rosie O’Donnell’s early departure, you can view it on YouTube.

The site is so popular that many people are already referring to the American 2008 Presidential election as the “YouTube Election”. Candidates are uploading their own videos that explain their stance on issues. The population at large is able to upload videos containing their own views of these candidates.

Deciding how to create a funny video that somehow ties in with your product or service can be tricky. A seamstress, for instance, could create a video where people found their seams opening in embarrassing instances and at the end include a still image of text that read “If this happens to you, visit mysite.com”.

Viewers of the video could easily get a kick out of seeing a groom split his pants while dancing at his own wedding reception and pass it around to all their friends, who in turn pass it to their friends. Some of the people who view it may need alterations made to their own clothes and could end up doing business with the seamstress who created the video.

YouTube has created a new way for the population to connect and share media. Whether you try using it as a marketing tool or simply for entertainment purposes, this is a site that will continue to grow and grow.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Filed under Web Marketing Videos by Andrew M Harvey.
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How To Create a Video In CamStudio

CamStudio is an opensource software screen recorder. This means that you can use it to record screen videos - videos using your computer screen.

You can also record audio using your computer's microphone and/or audio coming from your computer. It's perfect for tutorials and best of all…it's free!

Step 1. Visit CamStudio.org and download the free software.

Step 2. Once CamStudio is installed, you can make your video adjustments. Open CamStudio and click on the options button at the top. A menu will drop down and you'll see Video Options at the top. Adjust your video to compress via one of the listed programs, you'll have to download these from the other programs websites or you can leave it on the default settings.

Step 3. You have a choice of two video formats, either AVI or SWF. AVI is a standard video format that most people can easily open however SWF is better if you want to publish your file to a website. SWF is a flash format. Some feel SWF is better for web publication because you don't have to embed it onto your site.

Step 4. Your next step will be to adjust your audio options so that you can either record via your computer's microphone or record using your computer's speakers. This means that if you're recording a game or some program that has sound, the sound will be included in your video. The program's default is to have the sound turned off.

Step 5. You can go ahead and simply click record right now and see what happens. When you're done recording you simply push the stop button and you'll see a prompt on your screen to save the file. However, you may want the CamStudio screen to be minimized so that it isn't included in your video. Scroll down to program options and choose the Minimize program on the start recording option.

Step 6. You're essentially done at this point and may begin recording. I suggest that you give yourself an hour or two to play with the program. You can change how your curser looks. You can pan in and out and even control the speed. You can adjust whether you record a full screen or simply a portion of your screen. You can also add screen annotations and adjust how they look.

CamStudio has a few bugs, it doesn't work in Firefox, but they're working on it and when it comes to opensource screenrecorders, it can't be beat. It's simple and straightforward to use and the results are quality. Download it and give it a shot today, you may find that your next information product is only a few clicks away.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Filed under Video Tutorials by Andrew M Harvey.
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How To Make Your Site Web 2.0 Friendly

You want to drive traffic to your website. You want to keep people at your website. You want to encourage people to return to your website. You want them to purchase your product.

Web 2.0 concepts will help you accomplish all of your goals. Web 2.0 is all about involving your visitors to interact with you and your website. With any website, the more you can make it interactive and user friendly the better it will be. You can add this type of interactivity to your own website in a number of ways:

1. Blogs. Blogs enable visitors to get to know you and your other website visitors immediately. They can read your posts, read the comments left by others and comment themselves. Additionally, blogs increase your search engine rankings and drive traffic when you make use of tags. Take your blog a step further and invite guests to post. This will keep the conversation lively and engaging.

2. Reviews. You're the expert, right? People visit your website to learn what you offer and what you have to say on your niche topic. Why not add reviews to your site too. Take it a step further and ask guests to review relevant products, services and websites. This enables your readers to influence the content of your website and it means that they'll come back again and again to read their own posts but to read reviews that other's have posted.

3. Forum or chat room. This tool is the epitome of Web 2.0 and user directed content. Best of all, forums are fairly easy to add to your site and you can outsource a moderator which means it adds immense value to your site and you don't really have to spend much of your own time. However, you can certainly facilitate it and become an active member in your own forum. It's fun to do and a great way to really connect with your customers.

4. Photos. Maybe it's just me, but I always wonder what an author or website owner looks like. I guess it is part of connecting online. Whatever the reason, including relevant photos on your website is a great way to involve your visitors. You may already do this in your newsletter. Carry it over onto your website or blog.

5. Video and audio. Interactive mediums like a video or audio that your visitors can play is another great tool. You can use them simply to say hello, you can use them to make a sales pitch or you can use them to inform. Think video tutorial or audio blog.

6. Quizzes, surveys and even newsletter subscription forms. Getting your members involved is often as easy as asking their opinion. You can of course add surveys and quizzes to your newsletters and email campaigns but why not simply add them to your website? A weekly or monthly quiz where you post the answer the following month is a fun way to involve your visitors and to encourage them to come back and learn the answer.

Web 2.0 isn't anything new or technologically tricky. Web 2.0 is simply involving your visitors in the content of your website. It is engaging them in dialogue, asking their opinion, inviting them to contribute. Web 2.0 is building a community around your website and it is good business.


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October 8, 2007

Keyword Marketing and Any Extra Keywords

Writing for the Internet is a little different from writing for other mediums. It requires the writer to engage readers quickly in order to avoid losing them to another website. But, the readers are only part of the equation. In order to make sure your website is seen in the first place you must also write for the search engines.

Search engines use complicated and frequently changing algorithms to determine how relevant a web page is to any given search term. They then rank the relevant sites from highest to lowest in search results.The popularity of search engines makes them one of the best ways to get traffic, but it is essential to be ranked highly for terms that relate to your site to receive the maximum benefit.

While the algorithms used to rank sites are a well-kept secret, there are ways to ensure that your site will be ranked highly for the search terms you choose. These terms, also called keywords, must be placed strategically within your copy so that the search engines will find your page relevant. While this should come naturally to a certain extent it is important to make sure that they are included in a way that optimizes your chances of being ranked highly and finding can be to your advantage if your take your time to do the research.

The first thing you must consider when adding any keywords to your copy is which keywords to use. Some people make the mistake of using keywords that are not commonly searched.There are keyword selector tools online that can assist you with this. You just enter the keyword you are considering and they will tell you how often it and other related keywords are searched for. Also keep in mind, just because a keyword or phrase is popular doesn't mean you will rank highly for it. Keep the competition in mind when considering your keywords as well. For instance, if your site is focused around Ford trucks, you probably will have a hard time ranking above Ford Motor company websites with the phrase "ford trucks."

It is also essential to consider the audience or target market you are looking to attract. Think about who your ideal visitor is then think about what terms that person would use when looking for your web page. These may be less technical or otherwise different from the ones you would use because your ideal visitor may not be as well versed in the subject at hand as you are.

Finally, you can use more than one keyword on a page. It's a good idea to stick with three or less though. Any more than that will probably look unnatural and make the writing flow poorly.

If you do choose the correct keywords it shouldn't be very difficult to make them fit into your copy. The easiest way to do so is to write the copy as you normally would remembering to use the specific keyword you're targeting instead of any synonyms you might otherwise use. When you're done go through and see how many times you used the keywords. If they don't make up about 3-5% of the total number of words used go back and add them in a few more times where appropriate.

It's also best to use keywords in headings where appropriate. The search engines look favorably on keywords used in this manner and may consider the page more relevant when found there. Using them as linking text is also thought to earn brownie points with the search engines.

Using the right keywords is essential if you are looking for good placement in the search engines. Working these key words into your copy is fairly easy. If you have chosen terms that fit with the subject at hand you will be able to incorporate them into your writing without much effort. If you are patient you may be able to find any extra keyword phrases by doing a little more research online.

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