Optimize Email Deliverability with Best Practice Strategies

As an email marketer you may face email deliverability issues every day. Whether you're sending a personal email or bulk customer communication, electronic messages are frequently intercepted, filtered, erroneously labeled as spam, bounced or returned to the sender as undeliverable. For routine non-business correspondence, this is simply a minor annoyance and inconvenience. But when your message broadcasts a crisis or emergency, or if it includes time-sensitive account, billing or service information, you could face serious consequences. If you're a marketer, every undelivered message translates into lost revenue. Luckily, there are ways to improve the odds of delivery and decrease the chance of running into problems in the first place.

The key to email deliverability lies in earning the trust of Internet Service Providers, or ISPs. Because these companies need to provide quality service to their subscribers, they devise standard protocols and policies regarding unsolicited bulk email. To communicate with your subscribers and customers, without interference, focus on four key criteria proven to optimize deliverability rates.

1. Mind Your Lists.

How relevant is your list? You should only add recipients via responsible opt-in practices, removing bounced accounts and unsubscribe requests immediately. Never use distribution lists that are severely outdated or purchased. Many purchased lists include spam trap or HoneyPot addresses, intended to lure and catch spammers.

2. Maintain Low Complaint Levels.

Do recipients want your messages? Every time a subscriber reports you to their ISP, deliverability plummets. Several popular ISPs, including AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail, make this extremely easy with one-click spam reporting features. It's important to know how many complaints are coming in. Complaint processing can be automated, with email marketing service providers removing complainers from your distribution lists and integrating this data into real-time reports. However, you should strive to avoid complaints altogether. To minimize complaints, let recipients' know who you are by identifying your company in the 'from' field, use a clear and relevant subject line and distribute messages on a routine and predictable schedule.

3. Be Professional.

What does your message say about your company? Advance your brand and professional reputation by sending well-designed, organized and relevant email communications. Segment distribution lists and customize messages whenever possible. You should also make sure that domain names for landing pages have a public Whois record and a clearly linked Privacy Policy.

3. Use Email Authentication.

Take advantage of email authentication technologies. One such solution is Sender Policy Framework (SPF), providing an open-standard, technical method for preventing address forgery.

4. Understand Reputation.

What do your past actions say about you? ISPs filter spam based on your company, domain name and private IP address reputation. Building a solid reputation in these areas takes time, and the only way to build it is by sending legitimate emails and following practices. Send legitimate emails, clean your lists and avoid complaints. Make sure that your email service provider or email servers are setup with private IP addresses so that you repuation is only impacted by your email marketing practices.

Once you've taken all proactive email delivery strategies, use the reporting tools in your email marketing software to measure overall delivery. If you find specific ISPs are blocking your blast communications even though you've followed best practices, contact them right away to resolve the matter and apply for whitelist status.

Email marketing benefits are undeniable. With diligent efforts, marketers can dramatically increase business-critical email communication deliverability and improve their bottom line.

About the Author:

Dan Forootan is the President of EZ Publishing, Inc., the creator of the StreamSend Email Marketing service.

Six Quick and Simple Ways to Dominate Google Rankings!

The reason Google is the most successful search engine in the world is because they provide the best search results; pages ranked by tangible value. That tangible value is a combination of content and links, with links being the more important factor (they assume any pages linking in will only link to good content or risk their own ranking.)



Here are a few tips that will help you take full advantage of Google's love of linking...

1.) Link Deep and with Relevance



So why is deeper better and what's this about relevance? Google figured out that a link to a homepage is only good if that homepage has the information the visitor needs. If a person clicks a link for "amazíng chocolate chip cookie recipe" and ends up on the home page, which has nothing of the sort, Google discounts it as a wasted link. On the other hand, if the link leads to the page containing info on the "Amazíng Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe," even five levels deep, the link has huge value to the visitor and to Google.



Want some proof? You already have it if you've ever used Google's AdWords pay per clíck service. They will not even accept PAID links to pages that are not the most relevant for their visitors, regardless of what you are willing to pay per clíck. Now that's saying something!



2.) Use Absolute Links Internally



It sounds complicated but it's not. Absolute links are those with a fixed full URL. There's another kind, called "relative" links that skip the first part of the domain and remain "relative" to the file structure. Let's take a look at the difference...



Here's the absolute link to the Google Ads page from Google's homepage: "http://www.google.com/intl/en/ads/"



Here's what it might look like as a relative link: "./intl/en/ads/"



Long story short; absolute links help your SEO efforts and relative links don't.



3.) Use Keywords in Anchor Text



Use relevant keywords in your link anchor text (that is the text within the hyperlink.) Forget about "Clíck Here" like you see on so many sites. Not only does that not help your ranking, it actually lowers the relevancy of your real keywords because Google believes that if a word is important enough it will likely be used as part of a link to get the visitor where they want to go.

4.) Follow the 1% Solution



Make no more than 1% of your page text into links (both outbound and internal.) That is, if you have 500 words on the page there should be no more than 5 text links total. And don't overuse the same keyword text for the links. So if you have three mentions each of three different keywords, try to use each just once in a link. Then use similar text for any remaining links.



Example: If "chocolate chip cookies" is your main keyword phrase you might use "chocolate chip cookies" as the anchor text for one link and then "my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe" for another link.



It's also a good idea to use 10 Links Max per page whether you have 1,000 words or 10,000 words on that page.



5.) Add a Link Failsafe



This is really simple and almost nobody does it. Links get broken more often than we like. Sometimes it's because we moved a page and sometimes it has nothing to do with anything we consciously did (especially with blogs.) The solution is to create a custom 404 page (Page Not Found) that looks just like any other page on your site and has a simple note like "We're sorry we cannot find the page you are looking for. However, if you love cookies of all kinds we think you'll find exactly what you want by clicking on one of the following links..." Then of course you have a navigation system for them to follow.

6.) Get the Best Links Possible



This is extremely important yet often overlooked because it can be such a difficult and time consuming job. If you take nothing else away from this article, please take this... Finding the best possible inbound links is the single most important thing you can do to make the number one spot on Google.



Here are three tips to help minimize your time and effort while giving you results SEO experts charge an arm and a leg for.



A.) Get listed in directories.



Submít your site to the top directories like Jayde.com and DMOZ.org. Once they link to your site you will have great relevant inbound links and some instant credibility with Google.



Here are some great free directories in order of value, starting with the best... dmoz.org, jayde.com, webworldindex.com, turnpike.net, and directoryvault.com. Yahoo is important but charges $299 for commercial site inclusion.



B.) Use "Special Commands" to do the legwork for you.



The best linked sites can easily be found with a simple search command called "allinanchor:" Here's how to use it. Go to Google and type in "allinanchor:keyword goes here" (no quotes and no space after the colon.) Now hit Enter and you'll see the sites that have the highest relevancy for keywords used in anchor text. Look for any that you know are competitors and outrank your site.



Now take the URL for any of these and use this command "link:www.theirdomain.extension" (again with no quotes and no space after the colon.) This will show you all the sites linking in as well as internal pages linking back in.



In short, these two special commands give you an inside look at exactly how the competition does what it does with the results they get. This is huge!



C.) Use good SEO software whenever possible.



If you can afford to spend one or two hundred dollars to save huge amounts of time and get professional results, it's well worth it. Like many SEO professionals whose livelihood depends on results, I've been using SEO software to get top search engine placement for years. The best ones not only help you identify great link partners but will even help you contact them and make sure they don't cheat you in any way. I use SEO Elite and am still amazed by all it can do.



If possible, get a tool that also does rank checking and reporting. Once you begin you'll want to check rankings every so often and an automated tool will save you a ton of time. Oddly enough I bought SEO Elite primarily for rank checking then discovered it was worth its weight in gold as linking tool as well. So whatever tool you use, get as much out of it as you can. You might be pleasantly surprised.

About The Author

Mike Small is the founder of the free SEO (search engine optimization) site SEOpartner.com and author of numerous search engine optimization books and whitepapers including the SEO Notebook.

Importance of CSS in web development

CSS style sheets have made it easier to handle web pages during web development. CSS or Cascading Style Sheets as the name suggests is a style sheet that allows you to easily link to other documents in your website. It allows you to retain control over the various elements in different web pages of your website.

CSS only defines the structure and content presentation of a website it has nothing to do with the design of a website. A single CSS sheet can control the font, positioning, colour and style information of an entire website.

9 advantages of using CSS

* Web pages are easier to load and uses less bandwidth

CSS style sheets are preferred by web developers for website development because they are lighter than table layouts, which consumes lots of bandwidth. The style sheet is downloaded only once and stored in the cache memory, so subsequent pages load faster.

* A CSS style sheet compliments well with HTML

HTML is insufficient when used independently in website development, but when combined with CSS they can result in technically stronger web pages.

* CSS allows you to position your element anywhere in the webpage

Web developers love to use CSS because it allows them to position their element where ever they want in the web page. If during any phase of web development the developer feels that particular links or columns are not going well with the situation then it becomes easier for them to position them easily using CSS. CSS reduces the risks associated with maintenance of the website.

* CSS is compatible with all web browsers

CSS is combined with HTML or XHTML by web developers for web application development because it is compatible with all web browsers. The sites that use CSS appear similar in all the web browsers.

* CSS can be used to create print friendly web pages

Most of the web developers love to use CSS for building their HTML based web applications because they allow them to create print friendly web pages. These web pages can be easily printed. The colours, images and other things which are difficult to be printed can be eliminated and printed easily.

* CSS style sheets allows the user to customize the webpage

Now days many websites allow the user to change the layout of the website without affecting the content. The CSS style sheets which are stored externally allow the user to make requisite changes by themselves. Most of the modern browsers give user the liberty to define their own style sheets like changing some font properties etc.

* CSS style sheets makes it easier for your website to feature in search engines

The CSS style sheets are favoured by web developers because they allow them to position their elements as per their wish anywhere in web application. Positioning helps to project the main contents first, so that it is easily captured by web spiders. CSS also gives cleaner HTML codes thus cutting down the job of web spider to search the real content from junk code.

* CSS allows the web pages to have absolute consistency

One of the reasons for using CSS during web development is that they allow consistency to all web pages. All the expressions and texts will get their characteristics from external style sheet. Web developers need not to worry about the change in characteristics of the elements because they can be easily altered at any stage of web development by using CSS.

* CSS lends portability to content

By using CSS you can make separate style sheets for different media. This provides you the great flexibility in presenting your content. CSS allows you to redefine the characteristics of elements in a website to suit the need of the situation. For e.g.: A separate style sheet will allow you to redefine the characteristics of certain elements so that they are easier to be printed. Also the user will never come to know that you had restructured the characteristics for their benefit.

CSS is created to make the things easier for your website and also to give you control over different elements in your website. Utilising benefits of CSS will give you popular user friendly web pages.

About the Author:

Sigma InfoTech is an Australian based Website Design firm, specialising in Website Development, Web Developer, Website design, Application Development Australia. Write to webmastergrace@gmail.com your comments and suggestions will be highly appreciated.

Do You Really Need To Come In First Place?

When I was in 6th grade, track and field was all the rage. I've never been particularly athletic. But it was 1984 and everyone in my class was pretty fascinated with the Olympics that year. As you can imagine the school's annual track meet turned into a mini-Olympics.



So I surveyed the events and the sign-ups for each one. I decided that the long-distance running events held the most promise for glory. The 2 mile, in particular, only had 2 other girls signed up - so I was pretty much assured a "medal". That sounded pretty exciting. Maybe I could go for the gold!

However, watching the other events leading up to the 2-mile, I soon learned that one of the other girls was a seasoned runner. She knew all about pacing, how many minutes she should be able to run a mile in, and all that fancy stuff. At that point, I knew that first place was pretty much done for. I barely knew how many laps around the track I had to run. I ran the race anyway and wound up coming in second - which was just fine by me.



It's not all about winníng - a place or a show can be just fine.



Whenever I talk to a client about search engine placement, this track meet comes into mind. The client comes to me wanting to be Number 1 for their chosen search term. But for many small businesses, being ranked first is not truly that important - and depending on the search term, being Number 1 may hurt their business.



How can being Number 1 possibly hurt?



I know, saying that being on top can hurt your business sounds pretty unbelievable. But, being in first place has several disadvantages:



1. Getting to first place for desirable keywords takes a lot of work. The world of search engine placement is highly competitive. Most people with a website are trying to get placed in the Search Engines.



With all of this competition, you'll have to do a lot of work on your site to get the search engines' attention. This could include keyword research, changing your headlines, editing your text, submitting your site, getting links coming into your site, and making sure that your site is content-rich. It takes a fair bit of work just to get listed, and then even more work to get to the top. Aiming for third or fourth place can be easier to achieve, and cuts down the amount of work required to get there.

2. The climb to the top is often slow. Raising your ranking on the search engines isn't an instantaneous process. After you've made your changes, you have to wait for the search engines to stop by and re-rank you.



You probably won't get to the top spot on the first try - so you'll have to go through this process a few times to make headway. The quest to get to the top can take quite a while, and having to work repeatedly on optimizing your site for search engines can take your focus and attention away from your business.



3. Being Number 1 can bring you more "browsers" instead of qualified prospects. Holding the top spot means that you're most likely to be a visitor's first stop on their search. Instead of having a focused idea of what they're looking for, the people who are coming to your site may only have a vague idea - which means more hand-holding and question-answering for you.



This can become a real problem if you work to be ranked first for a more general search term like "marketing consultant". You'll have lots of visitors, sure, but are they really the best visitors for you?



The sheer number of visitors is much less important than the quality of visitors that arrive at your site. Are they looking for what you're selling? Do they have the right sort of budget to work with you? Are they in an industry that you like working with? Are they going to connect with your personality?



If you get them to your site, but they then answer "no" to any of the above questions, they won't buy from you - which can be more frustrating than having them not come by at all. ok and feel with social interaction features, keyword & category search, RSS feeds and relevant blog posts by some of the Web's top writers.

4. Sometimes the top spot gets skipped! Some searchers automatically clíck lower in the líst instead of clicking on Number 1. This may be because they assume that the person in the Number 1 spot would be too busy to help them, or would have higher rates. Or they may just skip over the top slot visually because it's close to paid ads at the top of the page.



Being a few listings down actually reduces this skip-over factor, and makes it more likely that a rushed visitor will notice your listing.



5. People often aren't ready to buy the first thing they see. Your customers will want to do their due diligence research before making a purchase. If you're number one on the search results líst and they start researching from the top, you may find that by listing 4 or 5 they feel informed enough to purchase. And you will have been long forgotten just because they clicked on it first.

If a visitor comes to your site after having seen other options, they may be more prepared to make a purchase immediately. This could help you close more sales.



6. Staying on top is challenging. Imagine a pyramid of cheerleaders competing for the "longest time in a human pyramid" World Record. They're up there, trying to keep the girl on top stable for hours at a time. Sounds exhausting, right?



It's equally tiring to try to stay in the top spot on the search engine rankings. Because, while you're sitting smugly on top, other companies are working on their sites, trying to climb over you. Unless you keep checking and keep working at it, that Number 1 slot may not be yours for long. This vicious circle takes your attention away from your business as you have to work on your website endlessly.



Does that mean that if you do reach Number 1 you should take steps to lower your ranking?



If you're already in the top spot for a search term, don't panic - you've already conquered Number 1 and 2 on this líst by being patient and working through the process.



But if you find that you're suffering from any of the other problems on the líst - too many browsers, not enough visitors because you're being skipped, or lots of visitors and not enough purchasers, you may consider experimenting with letting other companies take over the top spot for a while to see if your site will benefit.



Being in first place isn't everything in the search engine race. But if you can get into the top 10 results, you'll improve your traffic, get more interested prospects to your site, and probably close more sales. And there should be a medal for that!

About The Author

Erin Ferree is a brand identity designer who creates big visibility for small businesses. As the owner of Elf Design, Erin is passionate about helping her clients stand out in front of their competition and attract more clients. One of the best ways to do that is with Search Engine Optimization, which you can learn about in her eLearning product, Raise Your Ranking, which is available at HowToRaiseYourRanking.com .

Get Your Blog Google-Ranked in 30 Days or Less (Part 2)

1. Network offline. Helpful networking tools include www.linkedin.com, www.meetup.com and www.mybloglog.com. These sites provide real world contacts to simplify and streamline the process of networking. They're also useful in building beneficial online relationships - not to be overlooked. Also reach out using conferences that are available in your area and abroad.

The keys to building a successful, well-tended blog run the gamut from good content to good contacts, and from credibility to controversy. There are lots of ways to expand your blog community and develop quality rankings at the same time.

2. Be consistent into month two. Keep the tone, style and topicality of your blog consistent for the first two months until spiders get it. Then, you can branch out to peripheral topics to expand reader interest.

3. Bait your blog. Post unconventional and controversial articles to create lengthy threads that, in turn, create site stickiness.

4. Get linked alongside related blogs on other sites. You can contact the blog administrator to swap links, you can become a regular guest blogger if your writing is good enough or your knowledge extensive. Niche sites are great for building blog links networks.

5. Cross link your posts. Link amongst your related blog posts using the keywords you're optimizing your blog for as the anchor text.

6. Respond to comments in your blog. This accomplishes three important objectives:

(a) it shows that there's a human behind the blog;

(b) it gives you a chance to show your expertise; and

(c) you can lead the thread in a new direction or keep the discussion going. Oh, it's also the polite thing to do, as well.



7. Deep links or links to sub-pages are vital. There's a tendency to link from a remote site to your home page. Not necessarily the best strategy. Consider linking to pages deeper in the site – pages related directly to your blog post. This way, visitors are in your site and less likely to bounce.



8. Submit industry or topical news to general news sites. Not just industry related sites. If a small oil and gas company brings in a gusher, it's of broader interest than to just industry insiders. Also adds credibility and another link.



9. Update or create a Wikipedia page and link to your site. Another means of establishing yourself as an authority. Just make sure the Wiki piece is accurate, well written and typo-free.

10. Direct (future) page rank efforts to well-optimized content on your home site. Don't direct visitors and bots to the garbage bin of out-dated content stored in the site's archives. Point them to the new news.

11. Syndicate content outside of your blog. Every site owner needs content. Fortunately, there's plenty of it free for the taking. Sites like www.helium.com, www.ezine.com and www.goarticles.com are content supermarkets. Post your piece and pick up non-reciprocal, in-bound links for your effort. Content syndication increases link popularity.

12. Use QA sessions in your blog. You're the expert. Also, invite guest bloggers to handle questions beyond your skill set. Helpful, simple advice keeps visitors coming back and makes you a guru.

13. Add imagery and video content to your posts. A picture is worth a thousand web words. Charts and graphs simplify complex information and don't take up a lot of room. If you aren't an artist, create a relationship with a freelancer. Don't use clip art.



14. Answer questions on Google groups and Yahoo Answers. People write in with all sorts of questions, some sure to fall within your area of expertise. By signing on as an authority in a field (your arena) you build credibility. Plus, it's fun helping others from the comfort of your own work station.



15. Find free stuff to give away. Free still works on the web. There's lots of open source software (OSS), mortgäge calculators, real-time stock feeds and other digital goodies that visitors can download free. Free is nice.

16. Write about popular brands or celebrities where possible. It doesn't matter if you're blogging short sales in the market or clothing for the over-sized human, celebrity and name brands get picked up by spiders.

17. Create surveys. Surveys are more in depth than a poll. One survey you might want to try is one in which buyers rate the services and products you sell. Great marketing information. Consider placing a satisfaction survey somewhere on your site.

18. Poll your readers. Everybody's got an opinion. Provide a platform to let posters and readers vote on a topic related to your site. It doesn't do any good if you run a retail outlet and poll visitors on who they'd like to see in the White House. Stay on topic.

19. Focus on contextual relevancy before quantity of links. Connectivity within a market or topic segment has more value than SEO anchor text, at least in the short term.

20. Cite the sources of your content. This adds credibility to your posts. It also provides a trail for a reader interested in learning more about the topic at hand.

21. Write content for various experience levels. For many spaces DIYs are the largest sector. Some readers are just starting out. Others have been at it for years and probably know more than you do, so post blogs to appeal to a broad range of skill sets – from green rookie to wizened old vet.

22. Publish new content on weekdays. Even search engines need a break. Actually, more people are online Monday through Friday so your latest blog post is still the latest when posted on Monday rather than Sunday. A little thing, for sure, but little things mean a lot online.

23. Participate in your link community. Forum and blog links are ephemeral, lasting a day or two as web fodder, so there's always the need for more green. Interact by posting to not only drive traffic with the link, but to also pick up another link from a credible site. All good.



24. Only purchase ad links on relevant niche sites. This, by default, limits competitive links and delivers more qualified (knowledgeable and ready-to-purchase) visitors to your site.

25. Focus on ranking for three key words or phrases to start. The keywords you select should appear in your HTML title tags and within the site's content when appropriate. However, watch keyword density levels. Anything above 5% starts to sound like gibberish. 2% to 3% keyword density provides more creative latitude for the content developer, and still lets bots know what the site is about.

Once you've got all of this down your next steps are to begin monetizing your site.

About The Author

Frederick Townes in the owner of W3 EDGE Web Design. W3 EDGE is a Boston web design company that specializes in search engine friendly design, Internet marketing and conversion optimization.

Strategies For Search Engine Optimization

A web site does not stop with ownership. Work has to be done such as getting it optimized for search engines. Your web site has to be made search engine friendly, that is to say, it must meet certain expectations of the "crawlers" or "spiders" of search engines. The index that these crawlers have created will be used in ascertaining the status of your web site in terms of relevancy to the requests of users.

Good strategies for search engine optimization that should be fully implemented include the following:

(1) Credible domain name

Acquire a domain name that is not too long or difficult to remember. It should relate to the content of your web site. Within the domain name, there should preferably be keywords that a crawler will understand. Abbreviations, dashes, underscores, numerals and other meaningless characters should all be avoided. Always opt for a .com name if possible, simply because it is a more common term that customers think of.

(2) Titles should be rich in keywords

The titles for all of your pages should be keyword-rich. They should be easily understood by visitors, and more importantly should contain keywords that will relate to whatever your customers may want to search for. In search engine optimization, search engines often use the [TITLE]; element as the text for their link to your site. Emphasis is placed by search engines in this area of optimization because it enables them to determine the relevance of your page to a visitor's search. The titles for your pages should preferably be less than 50 characters including spaces. This enables you to select a title that is precise, and one that will not be truncated in search results for reason of length. For immediate impact, include your call to action, so that attention of visitors can be captured.

(3) Include META elements

Description and keyword properties should be included in your headers' META elements. META name="description" content="[brief description of your site]" is often used by search engines to find out what your site is all about. It will be beneficial to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. You can think about how they will go about searching for information, and you can subsequently choose appropriate terms that will capture traffic to your site. A great research tool to use is Wordtracker.

(4) Quality of content

It is imperative to provide good and rich content on your web site. The content should always be keyword-rich, as this facilitates good classification of your pages by the search engines. It must be interesting and entertaining. Quality is the keyword as far as content is concerned. This is one strategy for search engine optimization that should be given heavy consideration. Content should therefore be fresh and should never be a duplicate. Search engines now include in their search algorithm ways to effect measurement of freshness of content on all sites. Do note that spiders cannot read images, so remember to use < ALT > tags for images if you need to use them to increase your site traffic.

(5) Links leveraging

Web sites that get incoming links do get a higher ranking. If these incoming links originate from a site with higher ranking and which perform well for key phrases that are related to your content, these are good links of quality that will push up the ranking of your site. They will greatly benefit your site. It will be to your advantage to request them to link back to your site. Everything on your site must be properly linked; all links must be functioning, because this will enable all of your content to be indexed. This shows a good strategy for search engine optimization in operation.

(6) Site registration

Your site must be registered with major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Open Directory Project (DMOZ.org) once it is sufficiently optimized. Instructions given by each search engine are different from one another, so it is important to follow instructions closely, to avoid having your site improperly indexed. For best results, do it right - straight from the beginning.

(7) Play it smart

Ensure that your site can be easily indexed by search engines. Your pages must be crawler-friendly. Avoid the application of spamming strategies such as irrelevant metadata and hidden text. Better be safe than sorry. Play it smart when you are in your zest aiming for higher search-engine rankings. Avoid strategies that offer the easy way out for getting good ranking.

(8) Virtue of patience

Patience pays. It may take some time to reach Google No 1 spot. The time spent on search engine optimization for your web site will definitely not be lost just because the top spot is not reached yet. There are still numerous other ways of capturing traffic besides performing a little more tweaking of your site.

In conclusion, your web site must be optimized for search engines, as this will help you secure a better search result, better site ranking, and not forgetting increase in site traffic. For your desired results, you will need to apply the strategies for search engine optimization listed above.

About the Author:

Jeremy Long Chia Teik - For latest updates on how to increase traffic, raise page ranking, write effective articles and powerful squeeze pages, create explosive blog marketing system, learn about viral marketing, and bring in massive income from your internet marketing business, please Click here.

3 Top Tips for Great Web Page Design

Great web page design is very important to making sure that your customers see your company in the way that you want them to. Just as you put a great deal of effort, time and resources in ensuring that your bricks and mortar storefront is bright, clean, and attractive, your website needs the same kind of attention. This article will explain the top three ways to make your website work for you!

When I started Future Access in 1995, St. Catharines website design guru's thought that good web page design was no more than putting up a few pictures, a page of text, and that was it. Little to no thought was given to how things made you feel, the logical path you would expect someone to take through the site, or where you wanted them to end up. It was much more about being trendy and cool by being one of the first companies in your industry to have a website at all!

Today, now that bandwidth limitations have been greatly reduced and multimedia content is everywhere, great web page design has become a way for small companies to level the playing field and compete on par with much larger rivals. In my experience, as we have developed better and better websites over the years, our customers' customers continually give positive feedback (and their business!) to companies that have made effective use of their design.

People have enough stressors in their life as it is today, and they don't need their experience on your website to add to them. Everywhere you look, busy, highly pressured individuals are seeking after a Zen-like experience, feng-shui, or just simplicity in general. So should it be on your website. Do away with the unnecessary extras, flashy gimmicks, and fancy doo-dads. Resist the temptation to say everything you want, or put a list of every single product you offer all on one page.

I have come to realize that less is more, and that users really appreciate the simplicity of a clean, uncluttered look on websites. The success of Google's web page design is a prime example. Look how clean Google's homepage is compared to its major competitors like Yahoo and MSN. They have so much white space, they even offered a black background for the 2008 Earth Day in order to reduce power consumption on the monitors of their millions of users.

The simplicity and ease of use have allowed a single company to capture half of the market share of the entire search engine industry, and catapult them to market leaders and innovators in many other areas as well. Remember this, give the user what they want (not what you want), and less is more.

Part of keeping your site clean and easy to use is simple, intuitive navigation. Many times in my online browsing experience I have come across websites that have a beautiful homepage, and then completely change the design on their inside pages. Menu items that were clearly outlined across the top have now moved to the left hand side, or have disappeared altogether. I have no idea how I am supposed to progress through the site, and in fact I can get lost altogether on some pages.

I have found that a much better approach is to use clear, consistent navigation. This means that the links to your various pages should appear in the same place and in the same order on every page on your site. If you have many pages for your users to navigate, a drop-down menu can be a very effective tool. Everyone is used to clicking or rolling over a menu at the top of a program like Microsoft Word and have a menu drop down from there. If your website allows them to navigate in the same way, you keep the experience consistent and help users to get around your site with ease.

So now that we have established that your website should be clean, simple, and easy to navigate, how do we make it beautiful? What is going to create that emotional response that you create when people walk through your doors into your bricks-and-mortar storefront?

After years of St. Catharines website design at Future Access, creating hundreds of websites for our customers, I have come to realize that the use of high-quality photography really separates a great site from an average one. The key is to use the right photograph, and not to overdo it. A collage of 9 or 10 images a blurred together on your homepage, many of them indistinguishable because they are wide shots reduced greatly in size will not be effective. Instead, a single large, high-quality close-up photograph that showcases your product or service can work best.

If you want to use more than one image, a moderately paced Flash animation can create extra emotion by having them fade into one another, or by panning across the picture very slowly. A photographic technique called "depth-of-field", where the foreground of an image is in sharp focus but the distant background is completely blurred really draws attention to the image. Don't believe me? Check it out next time you are browsing the web and see for yourself!

Now you have all the essential advice you need to create fantastic website. Great web page design includes a clean uncluttered look that eliminates unnecessary information. You need an intuitive navigation system to help people get around easily. And finally, you should use great, high-impact photography to create an emotional response. That's it! Now, go and check your website to see if it meets these criteria. If not, go to it!

About the Author:

Bill Janzen has been doing web page design since 1995, and owns Future Access, a St. Catharines website design company.

Google Everflux: Just What We Needed, Google on Speed

Is it just me or has Google gone into overdrive? As a professional full-time online marketer I have to keep my mind firmly placed on what Google is doing. As much as I try not to because Google has probably driven more people around the bend than Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz put together.

Like any professional marketer, I monitor my numerous keywords on a daily basis - especially my major targeted keyword phrases that bring in the most sales and subscribers. For years now, I have had top rankings in Google for my chosen phrases; they move up and down, but mostly they don't leave the first page.

However, lately I have been noticing a lot of jumping in the top listings. Links out of nowhere are appearing, links being dropped and my own links moving up and down much too quickly for my comfort. Even six months ago the Google main index seemed to be a whole lot more stable than it is now.

Within the past months, rankings within Google have become more dynamic, more fluid. They can change from day to day, what some people are calling Google Everflux. This is very similar to the old Google Dance we used to have a few years ago...when Google would update or refresh its index about once a month. Now Google is stepping out on that dance floor every day.

Once upon a time, your keyword rankings in Google didn't change that much. Every four or five months Google would do major updates where your keywords and your site's PageRank could have a major jump or fall in Google's index. But have things changed? Has the whole ranking process now been speeded up? Has the Google Index now become more fluid, more dynamic, changeable daily? Updating, fluctuating on the fly?

Inquiring minds want to know...

Keep in mind, Google Everflux is not a new term. As far back as July 2002 there are references in Webmasterworld to the Google Freshbot and Google Everflux. This term referred to the re-freshing of the Google Index.

Unlike many SEO theories and assumptions, the Google Everflux is the Real McCoy. That is if you can believe the Google Guy, and there's no reason not to take Matt Cutts at his word.

In a response to a comment on his blog on January 1, 2007, he gives this answer:

Quoting Matt Cutts: "...I'm not trying to side-step the issue. I believe that a data refresh, which used to be every 3-4 weeks, is now happening more like every day. So the changes in ranking that some people were seeing on the 17th or 27th during the summer months can now happen every day."

Even more telling was Matt's response to another person's summary of these changes within Google.
Senaia said: "So the Index Update is what people use to call Google Dance, when it was on monthly basis. Now it's on daily basis and they call it Everflux.



Backlinks update and Pagerank update are also types of data refresh.



So, the big scary updates like Florida... are Algorithm updates?"



Matt Cutts said: "Senaia, that's not a bad summary. Florida and Jagger were changes in our algorithms to score documents, for example."



However, is the current Google Everflux a more souped-up version of this re-freshing process? Google in fast-forward? On speed-dial?



Regardless of the rate of change, Google Everflux is important simply because Google is so important to any webmaster or site. There's no denying that, whether you love it or hate it, Google will deliver the most search engine traffic to any webmaster who gets top rankings for his/her keywords. The other search engines shouldn't be ignored, but most of your search traffic will come from Google. According to Nielsen Stats in February (2008), Google had around 60 percent (58.7 - 4.5 billion Google search queries) of the traffic on the web.

But 60 percent is not the true percentage; from close examination of my different sites' traffic logs I know Google gives me around 90 percent of my search traffic. Maybe I am over optimized for Google, but even when I manage on rare occasions to get number one rankings in all three search engines for a minor keyword, Google is still the one sending the most traffic.



Since this search traffic is extremely important to my livelihood, I keep a close watch on my major keywords in Google. Movement up or down just a few places means an íncrease or decrease in my traffic. Google has changed. It is not the same search engine it was 6 months ago. Not by a long shot.



What does this mean to your site or keywords?



It probably means you have to put your link building efforts into overdrive if you want to get a top listing in Google and keep it there. It will probably mean that you have to be constantly creating valuable content and quality-relevant links related to your site's topic in order to remain competitive.



This is what you should be doing in the first place, but now you will have to work harder to keep your links in those top positions in Google. At least this has been my experience lately.



One thing I have noticed with my keyword rankings, links from the so-called Social Bookmark sites (Digg, Reddit, Squidoo...) have become very important to Google. Real people reading and ranking real content. This is what these social media sites are all about, and it seems Google is placing more emphasis on these sites.



I say "seems" because with Google, nobody knows for sure. However, I can see in my daily monitoring of my own keywords - Google Everflux is real and is probably here to stay.



Over time old links you had are being dropped, as Google re-ranks their links and index. The whole fall-out from Google's paid link crackdown is still being played out as webmasters scramble to devise new ways to juice-up their links. Google is firing back with new ways to keep its index supposedly honest, an ongoing, turbulent battle that will probably get more turbulent. As new sites and links become important there will be a constant change in the rankings within Google.



Google also seems to be favoring big, resourceful authority sites for the top positions in their SERPs, giving these sites 6 or 7 sub-headings and links - all in the top spot.



Which means it will be much harder for the smaller marketer to compete. Of course, it is only a matter of time before big, large corporations completely dominate all the major profitable keywords on the web, in Google and elsewhere. Once big business figures out what's going on and realizes just what keyword control in their industry will give them.



That may be a little extreme, but like any valuable resource, it won't be long before multi-national corporate giants eat up the little guys/sites via keyword branding and dominance. It will take some time, and since there are millions of small niches there is still some marketing room for small sites to cash in. But our days of glory are numbered...



For now, if you count on Google for your search traffic, keep building quality links/content daily and don't forget the all important social bookmark sites... make sure you're building some good links from them. One simple solution that has given me hundreds of social bookmark links in the past year is simply adding the free AddThis.com button on my sites. Just let your visitors bookmark and build links for you in these social media sites.



Keep a blog or blogs and tie in your site with links and trackbacks. And make sure you tie/connect your site to the whole blogosphere. Don't forget to add video/audio to your site, as those formats will play an ever-increasing role on the web.



No matter what warp-speed Google finally decides upon, valuable content is still the key to getting top rankings in any search engine. Adding fresh, valuable relevant content to your sites each day will keep them in the picture.



If that doesn't work, you can always take up speed car racing - I heard it is supposed to be very calming on the nerves. And I bet you one backrub none of them will have ever heard of Google Everflux.

About The Author

The author is now a full-time web marketer who regularly sells 1000's of dollars worth of affiliate products/ services each day. He owns and runs numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing.

2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Pages to Include in Your Website

Building a Website may appear to be very complex, but it's really an easy process. The best way to start is by developing a map of the pages and content that you want to include. This depends upon the type of business you have, and how informative you want your Website to be. Below is a list of sample pages for you to review while you plan out your site.

Essential pages

As a bare minimum, your business Website should include the following pages:

• Home Page — the design of your home page.


• About Us and, if appropriate, About Our President/Principal


• Our Services — This is a listing of the different services or products you provide, along with a short description of each. If your products or services require more in-depth descriptions, link to separate pages for more information.


• Contact Us — This can range from a simple listing of your contact information to a more complex "intake form", with a range of questions on your prospect's needs.

Create a different name for these Website sections if you'd like to add more personality to your site! For example, your About Us page can be titled, "Who We Are," or "About Us."

Service- vs. Product-based businesses

In addition to these basic pages, you may wish to include other pages. Services- and product-based businesses require different types of pages. If your company performs services for others, your business is a service-based business, and your site should include these pages:

• Clients — Your clients can be presented in terms of specific client names or a more general industry listing.


• Testimonials — These can be on their own page, listed on the client page, or distributed throughout the site.


• Request a Quote or How to get Started with your service

In service-based businesses, it's important to ground your claims and add to your credibility with a demonstration of your capabilities or skills. You can do so with these types of pages:

• References — These are more formal and longer than standard testimonials.


• Portfolio — This is appropriate for artists, designers, writers, and other creative professions.


• Sound Clips—This is appropriate for entertainers, bands, DJs, and speakers.


• Samples of our work — These are for other professions, as appropriate.


• Resume(s).

If your company sells products, your business is a product-based business. To provide your customers with quick and easy access to your products, your site should include:

• Product Description(s) — Include photos, details, pricing, and "Add to Cart" capabilities.


• View your Shopping Cart


• Check Out

Adding credibility

Once you have these basic pages, the next step is to add credibility and information to your site. PR, news, and information pages can do this for you, providing visitors an incentive to return time and time again.

• News — Include current as well as past articles on your company.


• Pressroom — This is for press releases produced by your company.


• Newsletters and/or Articles— These are written by your firm or principals and help provide you with "expert" status, as opposed to articles written by outside sources.


• Media or Press Kit — This area would contain a company backgrounder, logos, photos, and tools that others may use when writing articles about your company.


• Audio clips— These would be sound clips of you talking about your business makes your Website more personable. You could also provide audio testimonials for more punch.


• Video Clips— According to Web trend forecasters, a video testimonial is quickly becoming the next hot item for building credibility.


• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), or Ask the Expert

Additional business pages may also be appropriate, depending upon the type and size of your business:

• Company Mission


• Company Vision


• History


• Case Studies


• Why Choose Us?


• Bios of your Team Members


• Jobs or Opportunities


• Map and/or Directions


• Events/Classes/Workshops — This page would include details about, as well as the schedule of and sign-up for various company events open to the public.


• Downloads — These are PDFs, brochures, presentations, and software demos or programs.


• Statistics Research or Studies — Either conducted by your firm, or related to your firm, clients or industry


• Pricing — If you sell products, your pricing should be listed in your shopping cart. For service-based businesses, whether or not you list your pricing depends upon the standards in your industry; you don't want to price your services on your site if you don't have to.

Additional Information Pages

• Recommended Books — Linking these to a reseller account through Amazon.com can generate extra revenue for your business.


• Resources — Other services that are compatible with yours, or links to places online where you can learn more.


• Links — Exchanging quality links with other sites can be a good way to increase your search engine rankings.

We hope that this list is helpful in your website planning process!

About the Author

Erin Ferree is a brand identity and marketing design strategist who creates big visibility for small businesses. Through her customized marketing and brand identity packages, Erin helps her clients discover their brand differentiators, then designs logos, business cards, and other marketing materials and websites to reflect that differentiation, as well as to increase credibility and memorability. As the owner of elf design, Erin is passionate about helping small business owners stand out in front of their competition and attract more clients. Hundreds of small business owners across the US and Canada have relied on Erin to create content and visuals that support their brands.

Snagging Inbound Links

Inbound links are now so important in the constant battle to achieve top search engine rankings, that tons of people are using every tactic under the sun to gain that one additional link. You must be careful when it comes to linking though. You could jeopardize your whole linking plan by getting links in a shady manner which could have an adverse affect on your search rankings. These inbound links are seen by search engines as votes for your site within a particular community of sites.

Anytime you're being voted for, you want to have as many votes as possible. However you want to be using tactics which are going to pay dividends in your linking strategy, not do more harm then good. Below I líst some of the best and safest methods around for generating inbound links for your website. Some can be more effective than others:

• Requesting Links: The oldest method of gaining inbound links is to request them. This requires that you study your market to find out who the players involved in the market are. Then, you contact each one of the sites and ask them to link to your site. In most cases, the person you contact receives your request, but providing links to other sites is the least of their worries, so you may never hear from them. If you do, it can sometimes be months later. So, you put a lot of time into requesting links from other sites for a relatively small return on your efforts. For more on requesting links, I recommend you checkout The Do's & Dont's of Requesting Links.


• Writing Articles: One of the most effective methods of gaining inbound links is to provide an article for other companies to use as long as they include a paragraph at the bottom that includes credits for you as well as a link back to your site. This method of gaining inbound links works well, because web sites are always looking for good content to include on their pages. The catch here is that the article you write should be well written, accurate, and useful to other sites in your industry. Once you've produced an article that meets these requirements, you can begin to let others know you have content available for them to use for free; you can do this by having a 'free articles' page on your site or submit the content to article directories. For more on article marketing, view Bill Platt's in-depth article, Article Marketing for Links .


• Blogs: Another way to get links back to your site is from bloggers. What started as a strange phenomenon that was mostly personal has now become a powerful business tool; many businesses rely on links back to their sites from the various industry bloggers out there. In most cases, though, bloggers aren't just going to stumble onto your web site. It's far better for you to contact the blogger with information about your organization, some product that you provide, or with news that would interest them. This information then gives the blogger something to use in his or her regular posts. Keep in mind, however, that you can't control what a blogger might say, so it's possible that the review you get won't be favorable. Its possible to get reviews from small to mid-sized blogs without too much of a problem, but when it comes to getting reviews from the most popular blogger in your niche, it may cost you a few hundred $$$. For example, John Chow charges a whopping $500 for a review, which he doesn't even write himself.

• Press Releases: Press releases are one of the mainstays of any marketing program. It can be so effective that many organizations hire companies to do nothing but distribute their press releases. What's so powerful about a press release? It's just the facts, including benefits, sent out to publications and organizations that might publish all or part of the press release. Use press release marketing to send out new items of all types, and send them as widely as you can. New organizations, publications, newsletters, even some forums will post press releases. When you write it, make sure a link back to your site is included.


• Affiliate Programs: Affiliate programs are a type of paid advertising. You provide a link to people who want to link back to your web site. They place the link on their site and when someone clicks through that link and makes a purchase (or converts any other goal you have arranged), the affiliate - the person who placed your link on their site - gets paid a small percentage. Usually the payment for affiliate programs is very low ($.01 to $.05 per click or a small percentage of the sale). But some people make a good living being affiliates, and many organizations receive additional traffic because of their affiliate programs. The trick with affiliate programs is to not allow them to be your sole source of incoming links.


• PPC and Paid Links: Pay-per-click advertisements are an acceptable business practice. There is no problem with using PPC advertisements to achieve inbound links to your site. Remember that, like affiliate links, PPC links are not direct links to your site. Paid links, on the other hand, are different from affiliate links - you pay to have a direct, or flat link, placed on a page. Some search engines frown on the practice of using these types of links. Using paid links (especially those that land on link farms) is a practice that carries some business risk.

• Link to Yourself: Linking to yourself is a technique that sits right on the line between ethical and unethical. Linking to yourself from other sites that you might own is an acceptable practice. But if you set up other sites simply to be able to link back to your own site and create the illusion of popularity, you're going to do more damage than it's probably worth to you. If you are linking to yourself and you suspect that you might be doing something that would adversely affect your search engine ranking, then you shouldn't do it. There are plenty of links to be had without linking back to your web sites; you just have to work a little harder for the higher quality links.

Inbound links are such an important part of any marketing online strategies that some organizations find themselves caught up in the process of learning who is linking back to them. It's not a bad thing to want to know where your links are coming from. And one of the places you can gather that information is from your web-analytics application. A great and free analytics program available is Google Analytics. Check it out.



So there are my top link snagging tips which I actively employ for most of my online businesses. Which tactics do you use for your website, and have I missed out any good link-snagging techniques? Have your say by leaving me a comment.

About The Author

Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company.

How To Make Your Website Structurally Sound

You've decided to build a website. Great! Your first step is to determine its structure - the pages you want to include and the information you want provide to visitors. But how to begin?

Your first instinct may be to make your site different from everyone else's. After all, trying to differentiate your business is what you've been doing throughout your branding process.

Building a Website is Like Building a Custom Home



When you create a custom house, you can arrange your floor plan however you want, paint the walls as you please and fill the house with furniture you love. Your goal is to create a unique space that stands out from everyone else's.



In the same vein, there are elements of your website where standing out makes sense. For example, the overall look of your site and your copy should be different from other sites - especially those of your competitors.



Differentiating your website is good for your small business - to a point. What you don't want to do is reengineer its basic structure.



Standing Out Isn't Always the Stable Way to Build



Underneath it all, even the most unique custom home has the same foundation and spacing between studs in the wall as every other house on the block.



By following underlying principles of construction, builders help ensure that the house is structurally sound. Why not use the same approach when it comes to your website? That way, your site is far more likely to work well for you.



To use site building rules, of course, you need to know what they are.

Rule 1: Do Competitive Research

Before someone sets out to build a custom house, they'll probably do quite a lot of research—looking at other houses, determining the architectural styles that appeal to them, and perhaps even checking out homes in the neighborhood where they want to build.



The same goes for your website. You need find out what you're up against. Once you're familiar with competitors' sites, you can make sure that your site will not only be different in the right places, such as look and feel and content, but that it will also be comparable in the right places.



Most likely, your competitors have been building their sites for some time - and probably updating them to answer customer questions and market their businesses more strongly. You don't want prospects to pass you by because your site doesn't answer an important question that a competitor has addressed.



Visiting other sites and making notes of basic structure, business information presented, customer questions answered and even relevant tools and articles gives you a jump start on creating a site that facilitates apples-to-apples comparisons.



Rule 2: Plan Your Site Architecture



As you may suspect, planning your site architecture is like drawing up architectural plans for a custom house, where you plan just what you'll include and what will go in each space. For example, do you want a library? A formal dining room? And where will you put the piano?

Similarly, for your website, you must decide the pages you'll include and the information on each page.



When planning your site architecture, think about what you'd like your website to do for your business. Do you want it to bring in clients and close sales? If so, pricing information and even a shopping cart can help do that. Do you need your site to get media attention? Then a Media Room might be the key. Make sure to include the pages and content required to get the job done.



In addition, think about how you plan to expand your website in the future. At the beginning, designing a website of more than 10 pages can overwhelm a small business - both in terms of budget and time required to write the content.



But, if you create an expanded site map at the beginning - a website wish list if you will - then you and your website strategist can determine which pages will be most important in helping you reach your goals. You'll also have a clear roadmap you can use to add on to your website as your budget and schedule allow.



Rule 3: Name Your Pages in a Way That Makes Sense



Have you ever walked into an unfamiliar house and been unable to find your way around? You probably asked the hostess where the kitchen was so you could drop off your pot luck dish or the way to the bathroom.



On a website, though, visitors don't have the luxury of asking where things are. So you want to make it as easy as possible for them to find the information that they need.

Some small businesses want navigation button names to be clever or interesting. But, it's important to think about the website visit from your customers' or prospects' point of view. They often come to your site looking for specific information. Even if they're just browsing, they want an organized way to look around - where clicking a link takes them to the page they expect. Remember that visitors don't have a lot of time or the patience to bumble around your site.



You see the same navigation buttons on every site you visit for a good reason. Established usage conventions have trained visitors to look for names like "Services," "About" and "Contact" when they're out browsing around. Capitalize on this and your visitors will be able to find what they're looking for quickly - keeping your site and your business in their good graces.



Following these three simple rules makes it much more likely that your website is structurally sound and that your visitors will have a great experience there instead of a frustrating one.

About The Author



Erin Ferree is a brand identity designer who creates big visibility for small businesses. Her ebook, "All The News About Email Newsletters" will tell you everything you need to know about desiging, writing, and sending out an email newsletter to stay in touch with your clients and prospects.

Improve your Search Engine Position with Sitemaps

A sitemap is a little-known secret to enhancing your Web site's position in the search engine listings. No, it's not a killer secret that will draw in thousands of new visitors overnight, but it is an important addition to your toolset, and not hard to implement. This article will tell you why you need a sitemap, and how to create one and submit it to the search engines.

The term "sitemap" can refer to two different things. Many large, complex Web sites provide a visual sitemap that visitors can use for quick navigation, if they already know roughly where they want to go. If your site is large or complex, you should provide one of these sitemaps for your visitors.

But this article is about the other kind of sitemap: The kind that is made for the search engines, like Google, to use in indexing your site. There are several forms that these sitemaps can take, but we'll get to that a little later.

First of all, let's consider why you even need a sitemap. Google and the other search engines will index your site even if you don't have a sitemap. However, there are four main advantages to having a sitemap:

1. If your site uses non-HTML links, such as Macromedia Flash menus or JavaScript menus, the search engines will not be able to follow these links, and so they will not find all of your pages. A code-driven site must use a sitemap.

2. A sitemap tells the search engines which pages on your site are more important, and which are less important. This prevents the less important pages from competing with your own pages in the listings.

3. A sitemap tells the search engines which pages on your site are updated more frequently than others. This enables the search engines to ignore your static pages, increasing the likelihood that they will have the most current data on your most dynamic pages.

4. A sitemap enables you to tell the search engines when you have added or updated your site's content. To some extent, this puts you in control of making the search engines aware of your latest content. Of course, it doesn't force the search engines to do your bidding, but it tends to make it easier for users to find your new pages more quickly.

So, what is a sitemap?

As mentioned above, there are many possible forms of sitemaps, but we'll concentrate on the most useful kind, the XML sitemap format created and promulgated by sitemaps.org. This protocol, currently known as "Sitemap 0.90," is maintained and endorsed jointly by Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Ask, so you know it is pretty much a universal standard.

An XML sitemap consists of a list of pages on your Web site, and standard information about each page. Here is an example:

< url >

< loc >http://www.freelancesubmit.com/Index.htm< /loc >

< lastmod >2008-04-07< /lastmod >

< changefreq >never</ changefreq>

< priority >0.3</ priority>

< /url >

...

< url >

< loc >http://www.freelancesubmit.com/Services.htm< /loc >

< lastmod >2008-04-07</ lastmod>

< changefreq >weekly</ changefreq>

< priority >0.8</ priority>

< /url >

...

Don't worry about the technical details of formatting the XML. We'll talk about tools that will create this for you in a moment.

There are three things to notice about each entry:

1. LastMod. Tell the search engines the last date (and time) you changed this page. That will tell them which ones they ought to index right away, and which ones they can ignore.

2. ChangeFreq. In case you're not updating your sitemap all the time, this will give the search engines a clue as to how often they ought to check each page.

3. Priority. This tells the search engines the relative importance of this page, compared to all the other pages in your site.

In assigning a value for "Priority," on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0, determine which pages are most important and which are least important within your site. We're not telling the search engines that this "Services" page is in the 80th percentile of all pages on the Web, but it is far more important than the "Index" page within this site. That's where we want our visitors to end up.

It's easy to identify pages within your site which are lowest priority. Some examples:

- Privacy Policy - "Contact us" - "About us"

Please don't misunderstand this. It's not that your "Privacy Policy" page is unimportant and so you might as well not have one. It's that your "Privacy Policy" is important enough to take for granted: Your visitors will find it when they need it. But for search engine purposes, you'd rather direct them to the pages where you actually do your business.

So, how do you create a sitemap?

There are a number of software tools that will create a sitemap by reading your site's content. You will have to adjust the results, especially the "Priority" settings, but most of these do a pretty good job. Search the Web for "sitemap generator," or for any of the following specific free tools:

- SitemapDoc - XML-Sitemaps - AuditMyPC Google Sitemap Generator

And once you have your sitemap, what do you do with it?

There are three things to do, in sequence:

1. Place the sitemap file into the root directory of your Web server, alongside your main "index" file. And each time you update it, place the new copy there.

2. Notify the major search engines of your new sitemap file each time you update it. For Google, this means to submit it from within "Webmaster Tools." For other major search engines, search on that search engine for "submit sitemap," and you'll probably find where to enter the URL of your sitemap file.

3. Place a reference to the sitemap file in your robots.txt file, as "Sitemap: http://www.freelancesubmit.com/sitemap.xml". This will make sure that any search engine will find it, even those that you did not submit it to directly. You only need to do this once, unless you change the name or location of your sitemap file.

Once you have your sitemap created and submitted, don't forget to maintain it. Each time you add a page to your Web site, add it to your sitemap. Each time you update a page on your Web site, update its "lastmod" setting in your sitemap. Try adjusting the "priority" of your pages from time to time to see if it improves the performance of that particular page. And each time you modify your sitemap, resubmit it to the major search engines.

About the Author:

Charles J. Bonner is the founder and principal project manager of www.FreeLanceSubmit.com. For a complete list of resources for creating and using sitemaps, visit http://www.FreeLanceSubmit.com/ArticleBuildASitemap.htm.

SEO and SEM Shortcuts, Spying and Stats to Dominate Google!

Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are two of the most powerful and profitable things you can do for your online business. As Google celebrates its twelfth birthday there are more Internet shoppers than ever, with more choices than ever. So let's take a few minutes to see how you can beat the competition and dominate Google.



This article has three parts; Stats, Spying and Shortcuts. Each part can be used individually or grouped to provide quicker results. The following information is what the SEO and SEM experts know and gives you the inside scoop on the tools they use.

Part 1; Search Engine Stats: This will give you the latest intel on search engines. This is to help you make informed decisions on how to spend your SEO time and where to spend your SEM money (search engine marketing, which includes pay per click advertising.)



A.) Google gets nearly half of all US searches performed on the Internet so you can bet that's at the top of our SEO to do líst. Here are the exact numbers as provided by the "comScore for searchenginewatch.com" survey:



42.7% - Google

28.0% - Yahoo!

13.2% - MSN

7.60% - AOL

5.90% - ASK

2.60% - All Others Combined



B.) Now that we know how much the search engines are used let's get some inside information to help us plan SEO and SEM strategies. According to the UK based company Neutralize.com, users of Google versus those of MSN are just about polar opposites when it comes to natural versus paid search listings. Here's what their research found:



Google: 72.3% of searchers prefer clicking on the natural listings that SEO helps you get. Only 27.7% prefer using the paid links you might use as part of your SEM plan.



MSN: Only 28.8% of searchers go for the natural listings while 71.2% rely on paid links. This is almost the exact opposite of how Google users work.



That is amazíng information to have! You know right away that your time and effort is better spent on SEO for Google while putting your pay per click dollars into MSN is probably your best bet.

C.) Now for the biggie; return on investment (ROI.) Once again our friends at Neutralize have some great information. The following numbers show the approximate ROI that Website owners got using SEO and SEM (specifically pay per click.) for lead generation and actual sales...



Lead Generation: * 79% SEO * 75% Paid Search (SEM)



Actual Sales: * 78% SEO * 63% Paid Search (SEM)



These are huge returns on investment. In comparison, banners only account for about one third as many leads and sales.



Part 2; Spying: This will show you where and how to get the very best inside info on what all your competitors are doing and how to beat them. It's like being handed a copy of your competitions' online business plans. Just go to "SpyFu.com" and take a look at some of the free information they provide. Better yet, visit https://www.spyfu.com/WhyBuySpyfu.aspx to see everything you can get, free and paid. I'm a big believer in spending wisely so for most people I would recommend just spending the $6 for a 3 day full access package instead of paying for a regular subscription.



Here's a blurb from the site that tells what SpyFu offers..."Want to know which of your competitors has the largest ad budget, or which term gets the most clicks per day? Use SpyFu's Advanced Search to find out. Advanced Search allows one to search by all the metrics provided on the site and allows you to focus on the data that's most important to you. What's more, you can save your Advanced Search results to Excel with the click of a button."

Part 3; SEO and SEM Shortcuts: Don't confuse shortcuts with cutting corners. Our "shortcuts" are based on finding how the professionals do it and following in their footsteps. When it comes to SEO and SEM, the best shortcuts to success involve finding the best performing and least expensive software that provides the quickest return on investment.



A.) The best SEM shortcut I know is using software to find your top keywords and otherwise help manage your pay per click campaign. Two of the most popular and widely used tools are WordTracker.com and Keyword Elite.

With WordTracker.com you pay a recurring subscription fee of $59 per month or $329 per year. I used this for a while then bought Keyword Elite for $175 because it appeared to do more and cost less than subscribing to WordTracker. I found it to be a better deal for my needs since there are no recurríng fees and lifetime free upgrades. But it all boils down to personal preference here. Both products are fantastic!



B.) Picking the top SEO tool is a no brainer for me. I retired my other three products after working with SEO Elite for just a few weeks. Although I admit I was first attracted by the small price tag of $167, it wasn't long before I tossed the more expensive tools and just used SEO Elite. Here's what it did, right from the start...It helped me land 121 top 5 rankings on Google within three weeks; Mostly 1's and 2's. It also found 377 high quality link partners in the first two weeks alone, which led to even more top rankings. This is the same company that published Keyword Elite, which also helped me make the initial decision. They've been a major SEO software development player for years and the lifetime of free upgrades with zero annual costs they provide is that special touch that shows they can relate to people in the world of search engine optimization.



This information can help you dominate Google, Yahoo and MSN very quickly. Enjoy!

About The Author

Mike Small has been a search engine optimization specialist and author since 1998. His clients include small business and Fortune 500 companies alike. His books include The SEO Answer Book and SEO Notebook. He offers free SEO and SEM advice on his blog SEOpartner.com .

Snagging Inbound Links

Inbound links are now so important in the constant battle to achieve top search engine rankings, that tons of people are using every tactic under the sun to gain that one additional link. You must be careful when it comes to linking though. You could jeopardize your whole linking plan by getting links in a shady manner which could have an adverse affect on your search rankings. These inbound links are seen by search engines as votes for your site within a particular community of sites.

Anytime you're being voted for, you want to have as many votes as possible. However you want to be using tactics which are going to pay dividends in your linking strategy, not do more harm then good. Below I líst some of the best and safest methods around for generating inbound links for your website. Some can be more effective than others:

• Requesting Links: The oldest method of gaining inbound links is to request them. This requires that you study your market to find out who the players involved in the market are. Then, you contact each one of the sites and ask them to link to your site. In most cases, the person you contact receives your request, but providing links to other sites is the least of their worries, so you may never hear from them. If you do, it can sometimes be months later. So, you put a lot of time into requesting links from other sites for a relatively small return on your efforts.




• Writing Articles: One of the most effective methods of gaining inbound links is to provide an article for other companies to use as long as they include a paragraph at the bottom that includes credits for you as well as a link back to your site. This method of gaining inbound links works well, because web sites are always looking for good content to include on their pages. The catch here is that the article you write should be well written, accurate, and useful to other sites in your industry. Once you've produced an article that meets these requirements, you can begin to let others know you have content available for them to use for free; you can do this by having a 'free articles' page on your site or submit the content to article directories.




• Blogs: Another way to get links back to your site is from bloggers. What started as a strange phenomenon that was mostly personal has now become a powerful business tool; many businesses rely on links back to their sites from the various industry bloggers out there. In most cases, though, bloggers aren't just going to stumble onto your web site. It's far better for you to contact the blogger with information about your organization, some product that you provide, or with news that would interest them. This information then gives the blogger something to use in his or her regular posts. Keep in mind, however, that you can't control what a blogger might say, so it's possible that the review you get won't be favorable. Its possible to get reviews from small to mid-sized blogs without too much of a problem, but when it comes to getting reviews from the most popular blogger in your niche, it may cost you a few hundred $$$. For example, John Chow charges a whopping $500 for a review, which he doesn't even write himself.

• Press Releases: Press releases are one of the mainstays of any marketing program. It can be so effective that many organizations hire companies to do nothing but distribute their press releases. What's so powerful about a press release? It's just the facts, including benefits, sent out to publications and organizations that might publish all or part of the press release. Use press release marketing to send out new items of all types, and send them as widely as you can. New organizations, publications, newsletters, even some forums will post press releases. When you write it, make sure a link back to your site is included.


• Affiliate Programs: Affiliate programs are a type of paid advertising. You provide a link to people who want to link back to your web site. They place the link on their site and when someone clicks through that link and makes a purchase (or converts any other goal you have arranged), the affiliate - the person who placed your link on their site - gets paid a small percentage. Usually the payment for affiliate programs is very low ($.01 to $.05 per click or a small percentage of the sale). But some people make a good living being affiliates, and many organizations receive additional traffic because of their affiliate programs. The trick with affiliate programs is to not allow them to be your sole source of incoming links.


• PPC and Paid Links: Pay-per-click advertisements are an acceptable business practice. There is no problem with using PPC advertisements to achieve inbound links to your site. Remember that, like affiliate links, PPC links are not direct links to your site. Paid links, on the other hand, are different from affiliate links - you pay to have a direct, or flat link, placed on a page. Some search engines frown on the practice of using these types of links. Using paid links (especially those that land on link farms) is a practice that carries some business risk.

• Link to Yourself: Linking to yourself is a technique that sits right on the line between ethical and unethical. Linking to yourself from other sites that you might own is an acceptable practice. But if you set up other sites simply to be able to link back to your own site and create the illusion of popularity, you're going to do more damage than it's probably worth to you. If you are linking to yourself and you suspect that you might be doing something that would adversely affect your search engine ranking, then you shouldn't do it. There are plenty of links to be had without linking back to your web sites; you just have to work a little harder for the higher quality links.

Inbound links are such an important part of any marketing online strategies that some organizations find themselves caught up in the process of learning who is linking back to them. It's not a bad thing to want to know where your links are coming from. And one of the places you can gather that information is from your web-analytics application. A great and free analytics program available is Google Analytics. Check it out.



So there are my top link snagging tips which I actively employ for most of my online businesses. Which tactics do you use for your website, and have I missed out any good link-snagging techniques? Have your say by leaving me a comment.

About The Author

Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company.

Why Page Rank is Important in Building Traffic

Google PageRank is important in building traffic to your website for a number of reasons. Before we discuss why, here is quick heads up on how it works.

Page Rank is based on links between your site and other sites, in fact specifically between web pages, since it is links between individual pages rather than complete websites that interests Google. That is because Google lists individual pages and not domains. There is a formula that Google uses to determine the value of each link to your site, which is based on the PageRank of the web page providing the link and also the number of other links leaving that page.

You can see the page Rank in the Google PageRank bar on the Google Toolbar - it is the green bar that shows a numerical value of 0 to 10 when you hover your cursor over it. This value is logarithmic, which means that if it takes 10 links to reach PR 1, then it takes a lot more to reach 2. If Google uses a logarithmic factor of 8, as it might do (nobody knows), then it will take 8 links to your site to get to PR 1, 64 to reach PR 2, 512 to PR 3 and so on. This is very basic, since, as I have stated, it also depends on the PR of the page providing the link and the number of other links leaving that page.

Here are the top 4 reasons that in my opinion help most to generate traffic and make you money:

1. The higher your Google PageRank, then the higher Google is likely to list you in the search engine results pages. Google take the view than the more other websites link to yours, then the more relevant your web page must be to the topic in hand, otherwise they wouldn't link to you. In fact, the links are to specific pages in your site, not to the site as a whole, which is why it is called 'Page Rank' and not Site Rank.

2. The higher the Page Rank, then the more relevant other people will consider any particular page on your website to be. They will feel more confident that if they visit your site they will have their questions answered and find the information they are looking for.

3. A high Page Rank shows that you have a high number of links on the pages of other websites. There is then the possibility of others clicking on these links to get to your website.

4. The higher your Page Rank, then the more people will want you to link to their website. That means that they too will be likely to visit your site. They will also offer you a reciprocal link if you want one, and that too will provide you with more exposure online.

There are some factors you should keep in mind that could affect your Page Rank. The way your domain name is presented is very important. Take at look at these domains: www.mydomain.com, www.mydomain.com/index.html, domain.com, domain.com/index.html

They are all different URLs that will lead somebody using them to your domain. However, search engine spiders see them all as different URLs, and if you use different ways to write your home page URL, then they will all be listed separately, and all be given a different Page Rank. Thus, the page rank for any one of them will be weaker than your page would have been if you had used only the one way to express it. Get into the habit of expressing your domain in only one way.

There are other ways in which poor use of your website URLs and also injudicious linking policies, can harm your Page Rank, but the main point that should keep in mind is that the your page rank applies to each page individually, and you get a share of the Google PageRank of the page that provides you with the link. If that page has a PR of zero, then you get nothing.

In giving my reasons for page rank being important in building traffic, I should stress that it is not one of my more important ways. However, Google takes notice of your PageRank, otherwise why would it bother giving you a Page Rank in the first place. For that reason alone it is well worth building up as many links back to your webpages as possible, not just for the traffic, but also to keep your website in the public eye.

It is the Home Page that is highest listed on most search engines, and also the page is given the highest PageRank, so if you can persuade others to link to your home page in return for a link from a page internal to your site, then that would be a good deal, and is what you should be trying for.

Don't ask me though, because I would a link back from your highest Page Ranked page!