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Improve Your Websites
Performance
How well is your website performing? Are you satisfied with the amount
of customers who view your website? Do you get enough business through
your website? By reading this article you will be in a position to do
something about all three questions. It's all very well having a
nicely designed and appealing website for your business but it's of no
use if you don't get the customers to visit it. The number one term
you will find associated with this is search engine optimization. You
will find endless sources on the Internet telling you to optimize this
and optimize that but what does it all mean? Search engine
optimization simply means making your website as friendly to search
engines as possible. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN
provide your business with the ability to reach a huge amount of
customer's, they are by far the most successful method to boost sales
for your business. If your website is nicely optimized then you will
have a greater chance of appearing higher up on the search engines.
Most customers will type in a phrase into the search engine and view
the first couple of websites that it finds, they will usually be
successful in finding what they were looking for on the first page of
results. Statistics show that customers very rarely look further than
the first page (90% don't look past the first page) so what good is it
if your website was on page 10? This is where search engine
optimization comes in, it will give your business a greater chance of
being on that first golden page in the search engines. There are many
methods that all contribute to a higher ranking but some are more
influential than others. The first factor is having a well built
website. This is a standard feature that all website design companies
should offer. The second method is keywords. Keywords are the words
that are associated with your business, the idea is to include these
words in your website so when a customer types in a phrase in a search
engine, your website is more likely to appear. Keywords should be
chosen carefully to target the correct market for your business. It's
no good targeting the word "Fruit" if your business sells website
design. The third factor that contributes to a high search engine
ranking is back links. This simply means a link from someone else's
website to yours. The more links you have to your website the better.
Search engines view your back links as a sign of popularity and
obviously the more popular you are the more successful you appear. One
of the best methods for this is to submit your website to online
directories, not only will you get a back link but you are also likely
to get a lot of customers coming to your website from that link. Make
sure that you select trusted directories and one's that can relate to
your business, there is a chance that you will get penalized by search
engines if you sign up to link farms (websites that collect lot's of
spam and poor quality links). Finally, having a website that is
constantly updated also gives you a boost in terms of search engines
as they like to see fresh content. This is also likely to draw
customers back to your website as they know they are likely to see
something new. This in turn will boost the amount of traffic you get
to your website which will also help in gaining a higher search engine
rank. These are just some of the methods in which you can improve your
website performance, there are many other factors that contribute to a
high search engine ranking. Most are an on-going process so it is very
beneficial to your business to continually try to improve your
performance as there is always someone competing against you for that
top spot.
Promoting Your Website
6 Proven Strategies to Promoting Your Website
There's a proven way to make money online, you can do this by selling
information or knowledge you have. The great part is you'll be your
own boss. You're work from your home, while earning money on line.
Isn't this fun? But to successful, you'll need to promote your
website. Make a comprehensive marketing plan that where you've clearly
identified your markets and how to appeal to them. You'll also need to
work closely with your web team to optimize your website, so your
business connects with both the human audience and content spiders.
But remember - you can only do some much promotions and marketing
before you fall flat on your nose. Be sure you have the following
elements present in your website. To promote your website
successfully, you need to have great products and services. Otherwise,
they will come in to look but won't buy. Your promotional efforts will
be a total waste. Make sure your website is perfectly positioned, to
sell and process orders. If your e-commerce aspect is not secure, then
no one will buy. No matter how many great products you have. No matter
how many links you swap with, promoting your website will just be a
waste of time. Third element - internet marketing, means you need a
marketing plan which clearly speaks to your audience. Make sure that
it's at a price you can afford. If you spend too much on your
promotional efforts, only to have it die down because of lack of
funds, you will lose your momentum. So stick to a promotional budget
you can afford. So how do you promote your website? Website design
Keep your website design basic and user friendly. This means
minimizing the use of animation or outlandish colors. Make sure your
content has the appropriate keywords in them, so that search engines
can read and put you at the upper top of the rankings. Optimizing your
website for search engine rankings Make it a point to submit your
website to two of the most popular and heavily used crawler based
search engines - Yahoo and Google. If your promotional budget is
small, make sure it's keyword rich. Then submit, wait patiently for a
few months before it to appear. Or you can do a sponsored listing if
you have a bigger promotional budget. Submit your website to
directories. This is free; and many seo experts say you'll
dramatically increase your chances of appearing at the top of the
search engine results. Try these directories: MSN, Yahoo, Google,
AltaVista and Inktomi, for starters. Do swap links with other
websites. Only after, you've researched their websites to see if
you're a fit for each other. Some will refuse to swap links, but don't
let it throw you. Just keep trying. Post authoritative comments about
subjects you are knowledgeable about. A majority of these forums give
you the freedom to put your URL at the bottom do so. Lastly - write
articles about subjects you are an expert on. Submit these articles to
the directories that have big audiences. Include your URL and byline.
Soon, you'll get the traffic you need, because of the promotional
efforts you've done.
7 Steps To
Running a Killer Link Exchanging Campaign
It's no secret that one of the best ways to get traffic online is to
trade links with other related websites. Not only does this help you
get targeted traffic, but it helps with your search engine
optimization as well.
Well, there's a right way to link exchange and a wrong way, if you
want the most out of your linking, then be sure to follow these 7
steps:
1. Develop a spreadsheet file (in Excel) and create the
following columns:
Website URL
E-mail
Contact Name
Website PR (we'll talk about how to figure this out in a minute)
Contact 1
Response to Contact 1
Contact 2
Response to Contact 2
Contact 3
Response to Contact 3
2. Finding a Website's PR.
Go to Google and download the free toolbar. This toolbar has a feature
on it that will tell you the PR for any website you visit. If you plan
on optimizing your website for search engines, this tool is a MUST.
3. Choosing websites to link to.
Go to any search engine and start typing in keywords for which you'd
like to rank highly. Visit each website and add them to your excel
file. Once you hit 50 websites, spend some time contacting them. We
recommend contacting each website personally and not using any
automated software (it's very easy to see when someone uses software).
There are many programs out there that will do a mass link exchange
mailing, but we strongly advise you NOT to use them (at least in the
beginning). These programs can get you in a lot of trouble with SPAM
laws. Also, if each email is personal, you are MUCH more likely to get
a link back.
4. Write your contact email.
Make sure to address the email to someone specific. Always insert some
details that you enjoyed about the site. It's evidence that you
actually visited the site and made a conscious decision to link to it.
Briefly introduce your website, and send them the URL of your link to
their site. Finally, ask for a link back to your site. TIP: Give them
specific directions on how to link back to you, what keywords to use,
and what URL to link to. It always helps to give them the exact HTML
coding that they would need.
5. Respond to replies.
If you get an acceptance of your offer: Thank them, and add them to a
separate Excel file. This will become a list of people you will
constantly stay in touch with (to submit articles, free viral reports,
etc.). Register the reply in your "Reply to Contact 1" section. This
way you will know NOT to send a follow-up email. If the person rejects
your offer: Add that note to your Excel file so that you don't contact
them again. A good technique is to highlight that entire row with a
red highlighter so there's no danger of a mistake. If you get no
reply: Follow step 6.
6. Send follow-up e-mails.
Wait one week to follow-up with those who have not replied. This is
the second contact. In this e-mail, state that you wrote to them the
prior week. Rephrase the email to keep it fresh. Wait for replies,
then repeat Step 5. Do not contact a "no-reply" website a third time
unless you have a very good reason to.
7. Find more web sites.
After finishing your initial batch of 50, repeat the process for
another 50. Once you begin getting incoming links, you will slowly
start seeing similar "link exchange requests" coming to you. This will
decrease your leg work. There you have it, those are the 7 simple
steps to starting an effective link exchanging campaign. Remember, a
small percentage actually accept and respond, that's OK. The trick to
getting lots of links is to send lots of requests so make this a daily
habit.
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