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That's just one example of getting creative with link building strategies.
Put your creative mind to work and come up with ideas that will work for YOUR Web site."

Guaranteed Visitors To Your Website!!

I'm sure you've read this before. There are hundreds of websites out there that sell this service.

Well, here's what they REALLY mean...

1) They will take your website address and type it into a program on their computer.

2) Their program will then send a signal to your website address (the signal is sometimes called a "ping").

3) This signal tells your hosting company that your website has received a "visitor".

4) After they've"pinged" your website several hundred or thousand times (all automatically done by the program of course), then your website statistics show that you've received hundreds or thousands of visitors.

Don't fall for this scam!

One of the BEST ways to market your web site is to show the Internet audience that you KNOW your stuff!

If you would like to write an article about any of the following topics and submit it to our Newsletter, we would love to review it for inclusion in future issues.

Our topics of interest are...

Marketing (General)
Internet Marketing
Small Business Issues
Web Design
Web Hosting
Web site Programming

Contact us today about your article(s) and get yourself promoted!!

A Report From A Happiness Guru

Since we know that people who are happy live longer, are healthier and have the capacity to fully enjoy life, Dr. Ann Moliver Ruben, an 81-year-old psychologist, decided she had to do something about teaching people the importance of happiness.

So she fashioned herself into a HAPPINESS GURU and published a tiny book with tremendous ideas called The Memoirs of a Happy Psychologist.

People who read it learn that it is crucial to look at the bright side of life and demand that the doom and gloom side disappear immediately. They are encouraged to greet each day with thanks to God for giving them another day so they can bring joy into their lives and joy into the lives of others. They learn that money alone does not bring happiness. They appreciate the power they have to change negative attitudes into positive ones.

The HAPPINESS GURU reports rave reviews. One said, "Your book is a masterpiece." It can be yours for $10.00, plus $2.00 mailing charges, by contacting Women Are Wonderful.

Contact us today about your article(s) and get yourself promoted!!

Hello Everyone!

Traffic, traffic, it's all about the traffic!!

Or is it?

I get calls from all over the country almost every day from website owners looking for more traffic to their websites. Many are under the impression that the more traffic the better, no matter what kind of traffic it is.

Maybe that's how marketing works for brick and mortar businesses. But for websites, that simply is not the case. In fact, it's reversed!

Marketing for brick and mortar businesses involves the business hunting for customers.

Marketing for websites involves the customer hunting for the website.

So, I can completely understand how difficult it must be for many businesses to try to comprehend this switch. I mean, if they've been in business for a while, then they're accustomed to being the Hunter. But now, with a website on the Internet, they have to trade places and become the HUNTED!

You may be asking yourself, "If I want to be HUNTED, wouldn't it be better to have 5000 visitors to my site than 500 visitors?"

The answer to that is, not necessarily. It depends on what those 5000 visitors are looking for. Here's an example:

We'll use a website that sells hurricane shutters (after all, it's almost that time of year!)

Let's say the website is in south Florida and they sell hurricane shutters for single family homes and condominiums.

If they market their website for "hurricane shutters", they'll get allot of traffic, but, it's general traffic. When an Internet user types in "hurricane shutters", what are they looking for?

Information on hurricane shutters?
Installing hurricane shutters?
Replacing hurricane shutters?
Price of hurricane shutters?
Hurricane shutters in Nassau Bahamas?
Hurricane shutters in New Orleans, LA?

Get the idea? The phrase itself is too general. This phrase attracts browsers from all angles, not necessarily targeted buyers.

Using general keyword phrases to market your website is the same as paying for a billboard advertisement and placing it in the wrong geographic location. In other words, if this hurricane shutter company purchased a billboard advertisement and placed it in Minneapolis, MN, well, that would be the same as using a general keyword phrase. Yes, they would get traffic, but not the right KIND of traffic.

So, as the HUNTED, they would be found by the Internet Hunters but they would soon, thereafter be tossed away.

The beauty of Internet marketing is that we already KNOW what people are looking for. Through keyword research, the website owner can identify what his target market wants.

Here are some real time (as of April 6, 2006) keyword phrases related to a south Florida hurricane shutter website...

"florida hurricane shutters"
"accordion hurricane shutters"
"clear hurricane shutters"
"south florida hurricane shutters"

Each of these phrases was typed in more than 500 times last month and each one of these phrases has very little Internet competition.

Using phrases specific to geography and products helps to narrow down the targeted audience to your website.

Clearly, if a hurricane shutter company in Florida added 4 pages to their website, each one marketing one of the keyword phrases above, their traffic would INCREASE, and it would be traffic that is specific, targeted and more likely ready to BUY.

Now, that's what I call, well spent advertising dollars!


Sincerely,
Esther C. Kane
Eckweb Designs, Inc.
Improved Search Engine Rankings

The top three search pages- the only place you'll be noticed they say. Unfortunately, they are correct. How can you possibly compete with millions of pages? Many represent thousands of dollars of professional search marketing and optimization per page, backed by budgets on which most of us could retire. How can the little guy have a chance armed with an already out-of-date search engine marketing book and a ream of now dog-eared, printed web pages on the topic? Do you really think you have a chance to land those top spots? Yes, you do... the same chance the big guys have!

Do a search for Internet marketing or some derivative of that and you'll be thrown into an

If you've guessed it's not about which strategy to use, but rather how to use each strategy effectively, you're headed down the right path. I'm going to show you that all of these techniques share one common thread... you master that, and you're in the big leagues!

Here's the team line up in the current Internet marketing playing field.

RSS

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It's a kind of programming language format that lets you share news headlines and stories through a type of Internet address called an "RSS feed." You can import these feeds into your site so you have the latest headlines from news around the world.

But the great part about them is that feeds exist for almost every subject matter, in every genre you can think of. Track a couple down that pump news about your business subject matter and you have juicy, up-to-date dynamic content on your web page to attract visitors! You can even take it one step further.

It's not that difficult to create your own RSS feed. In this case, you're actually writing the news about your business. People around the world can then display your information on their websites. If you make those news stories factual, appealing, attractive and easy to read, you're on your way to becoming a household name.

Link Popularity

Many would argue that this is the most crucial factor in search ranking today. You might have heard the "vote" analogy. Where every site that links to yours is like a vote for your site. The more sites you have linked to you, the more votes you have... the more votes, the higher your ranking.

That's an extremely simplified definition. There's a big curve ball though. Votes are not equal. Search engines weigh many factors about your site, your link text, the site that links to you, and the number and type of sites that link to it, just to name a few variables.

Link popularity is definitely a big contender in achieving high rankings. But, you don't want to link to just anyone. And stay far away from link farms and free-for-all link sites. They usually cover a full gamut of different kinds of sites. They're scams. And many are already banned from search engines and you will be penalized.

You want to stick with sites that are similar in theme and subject matter to yours. It's worth paying for some one way links to your site from well established, authoritative sources.

Articles

The concept of article marketing in terms of the Internet is two fold. If RSS were like a news ticker, articles would be the equivalent of magazines. Here's how the process works. Write an article about one particular interesting facet of your business. An issue, current event or strategy that would peak interest in like-minded readers who are targets. Next, post your article for free on sites like content-articles.com and ezinearticles.com that store giant collections of articles. Post your article on groups like yahoogroups.com that announce new articles by particular category.

Then, a person in your related field who is looking to fill their site with some well-written, interesting things that will keep people on their site selects your article to publish and includes it for all of their traffic to read.

How does this help your business? The key is in the very bottom of the article, in a few lines of type called the resource box. Here, you put your name, and a well written (and varying) text link to your website. (This is part of the agreement. If someone wants to reproduce your words on their site they may do so for free, but they must include the resource box with the active links.)

Now, a search spider comes along and indexes your article on their site, with a link pointing right back to your site! And remember that links back to your site, in a search engine's mind, mean that you must be important.

Secondly, people may want to learn more and follow the link right back to your site. Hint... post your articles on your own site too. If someone wants to read more of what you've written, they have immediate access.

Blogs

According to Princeton University, a blog is a "web log, a shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies..."

What makes blogs so exciting is that anyone can have a blog. It's a chance to establish yourself in your area of expertise. Get your name around. People will keep coming back to your blog to hear what you have to say about a particular subject matter. While the term "diary" conveys a free writing style, the content of blogs can be quite educational and come from some powerful high ranking
industry people in an easy to understand, all professional titles aside type of atmosphere. Hint: A blog can be an unprecedented educational tool.

Imagine that your passion is physics and you could read Einstein's own, every day thoughts on relativity in an atmosphere of his laptop by a fireplace, typing away at night in his jammies very relaxed, outside of the office. You have access to some great minds and thinkers, learn from
them, expand upon their ideas, and become a leading mind yourself.

Search Engine Optimization

This is the combination of art, creative writing and statistical analysis that gives your site viewers rich content and presents it to the search engines in the most efficient method of achieving you high ranks. Optimization includes researching keywords, analyzing your competition, having just the right keyword in just the right place on the page in just the right frequency in just the right line of code so the engine feels your page is relevant. It involves streamlining your code, placing things like CSS and Java and other scripts in external files. Search engines love text, not the framework that makes it look pretty on the page.

The Dilemma

Search engines are evolving at an exponential rate, forced to adapt and develop battle strategies to combat programs and technology developed to outwit them. When link popularity became important, software to create hundreds of doorway pages to sites was invented, to cite one example.

The consequences from these people trying to outmaneuver the search companies are chaotic and create virtual gridlock on the Internet. However, statistics overwhelmingly show 75-80% of site traffic comes from search engines. So search engine marketing must be an equally strong part of your web development thrust.

You think ok, but if search engines are always evolving to stay a step ahead of the abusers, what if I manage to get my site way high on the list, only to be at the bottom again because a modification in the search-ranking algorithm is made. Suddenly my top 10 results plummet to position 880
overnight. That's pretty upsetting, not to mention a huge waste of money.

The Secret - Diversify

Don't rely only on keywords in your pages to get to the top. Like you would diversify a stock portfolio, write some articles, make sure you get yourself listed on good, quality directories and sites, and optimize your code. Develop an Internet marketing plan that won't cause you to plunge in
the search ranks because of an algorithm change. Insert appropriately the eggs in one basket cliché here.

The Common Thread

RSS feeds, articles, link text, blogs... the combination of these and other methods will bring you to the top. But they have to be effectively consistent in one thing. They must all have superior content written for the end user, not the search engines. Remember; always sell to your potential
customers, not the engines. Here's why.

A search engine company's goal is to provide the end user with the best, most relevant matches to a search inquiry. If they fail, the user moves to a different search engine. They don't want to lose customers any more than you do. To keep a customer, a search must be matched to the best
content. Period. No matter what defenses or blockades or changes they evolve with overnight. If they don't provide results a user can use, they lose that user. And they won't allow that.

Therefore, only legitimate, quality content will be matched to the end users request. No matter what modifications to algorithms or stops to doorway pages or link farms a search engine company integrates into their defenses, they won't deviate from their goal of being the best. They can only do
that by providing the best results.

An assortment of carefully planned and executed Internet marketing strategies and techniques will get you to the top. It does take some time, but your efforts must start with a solid foundation. You must look at the big picture. It's not something that can be done in an evening, so don't try. Instead, focus on building a well diversified skeletal system to your Internet marketing.

In Part two learn what good content consists of, how to write it, how to get it, how to keep it fresh and keep your audience.

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John Krycek is the owner and creative director of theMouseworks.ca. Read more articles on the insights and secrets of website development and internet marketing in easy, non-technical, up front English!
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Not Your Usual Marketing Tips

recently gave a talk on 10 Ways to Market Yourself Without Using the “Obvious” -- i.e. brochures, ads, commercials. One of the ways I suggested was by connecting with clients and colleagues via “news they can use.” That is, stuff of interest to them culled from various media sources. It’s a way to show you care by sharing information, to show you’re thinking of that person, to build relationships.

Welcome to the April edition of Not Your Usual Marketing Tips from JDK Marketing Communications Management.

Here’s a case in point. My sister e-mailed to me an online video interview with Buffalo Bob Smith. (If you have to ask who that is, chances are you’re too young to remember…)

Well, after I saw the interview with Howdy Doody’s “best buddy,” I found myself wrapped in the sanctum sanctorum of nostalgia. I had to immediately forward the interview to around 30 or so fellow Baby Boomers.

Ten of them responded in some fashion or another. (Not a bad “direct mail” response, by the way – around 30 per cent!)

Gene Fitzpatrick, Senior Mortgage Consultant with American Home Mortgage and a networking colleague was one of those who responded. And in a most wistful way:

“My younger brother, Tom, and I were on the show, probably in 1953 to 1955.

“Tom was asked by Buffalo Bob, ‘If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it?’

Tom replied, ‘I would keep half and give the other half to the poor people.’ No lie. We still talk about it when we get together.

“We really had some great times growing up in Jamaica (Queens, NY). We always looked forward to the annual Holiday show put on by the Gertz Department store. They had this club for the kids called the Gertz PIE club. I don’t remember what the PIE stood for, but it didn’t have to do with food.

“A few weeks before Christmas, Gertz rented out a movie theater on Jamaica Avenue and it was first come, first served. The doors opened at 9 AM or so. Tom and I always got there early so we could sit in the front row. We had a better chance of getting selected to pick someone’s name out of a box. If we were selected, we would receive a nice gift just for making the pick. The prizes would range from a model car kit to various toys and even a bike. Tom won a bike one time. In between the prizes, they played movies and had entertainment. It was all free to PIE club members. We went until we were 13 or so.

“Thanks for the memories.”

You’re welcome, Gene.

Staying top of mind with your colleagues, clients, prospects, whomever, doesn’t take much effort, really. A little video interview to a selected group of individuals can do the trick. And if it doesn’t translate into any monetary rewards right away, well, that’s okay.

Think of how much richer we are just for having shared the anecdote.

See you the first Tuesday of next month for another back to the future episode of Not Your Usual Marketing Tips.

Incidentally, here’s the video interview with Buffalo Bob Smith, of “Howdy Doody” fame:

Joel Kweskin
JDK Marketing Communications Management
704.846.4835, office
704.575.8850, cell
704.841.2746, fax
www.jdkmarketing.biz

Search Engine Marketing and Website Content
By Andrew Seidel

What is one of the main keys to successfully positioning your website in the search engines? The simple answer is, Content!

Why is content so important to your website?

Many businesses feel that having a small amount of content is enough, and the rest of the website will sell itself! This may be the case with a small percentage of business websites, but in the majority of cases you will lose out by not having strong content throughout your site. Read on, and you will find out why...

The aim of most businesses with a website is to successfully market their website and increase sales. This is a much cheaper form of advertising than other main stream advertising media.

There are quite a few components that make up a successful internet marketing campaign. They include,

1) Competitor Analysis
2) Keyword research
3) Linking - Internal and External
4) Coding your meta tags i.e. Header Tag, Description Tag, Keyword Tag.
5) Well optimised Content

The focus of this article is website content. That website content is a very important element in most successful internet marketing campaigns, cannot be stressed enough.

Now don't get me wrong; I am not saying website content is the only component you need to have for a successful internet marketing campaign, other elements are also very important. Content is a very strong element if the search engine is to correctly identify where a website belongs in its search engine listings. Other elements used in search engine marketing -see the elements listed above- can be manipulated to try and deceive the search engines, but good solid website content will give you an advantage over your competitors that have little or no content.

Why will it give you an advantage? If your website content is dedicated to a particular subject or theme, then search engine logic will be able to determine where your website will best fit within its search pages.

Even though this article is mainly focused around the benefits that strong content brings to your search engine rankings, don't focus purely on the search engines when writing content for your website. After all, the main purpose of having a website in the first place is to attract customers who will buy your product or service, not search engines!

Website content should have the following components:

1) Relevance to the product or service you are offering;
2) Incorporate targeted key phrases throughout;
3) Focus on the relevant sales message per product/service, as well as making it informative.
4) Free information, articles or hints and tips.

1) Relevance to the product or service you are offering;

Many websites make the mistake of covering multiple products or services on a single page. Not only can this be confusing for visitors to your website, but it also means that your overall keyword density on each page is weak. The aim is to ensure your relevant keywords appear often enough throughout your content to give you the opportunity to attain high rankings in the major search engines for your targeted keywords.

Note: Wherever possible, make the focus of each web page relate to one particular product or service.

For businesses that offer a range of different products or services, this can sometimes be quite difficult to effectively manage and organise. This is where it is of more benefit to hire a professional web designer to manage the structure of your website more effectively. Your website needs to be clear and concise for your customers as well as being effectively optimised for the search engines.

2) Incorporate targeted key phrases throughout;

Key phrases are an important part of any search engine marketing campaign. Most search engine marketing specialists will tell you that your keywords should make up approximately two to five percent of your content for optimal results.

Note: This percentage range is an estimate as there is no documentation provided by any search engine company to support this.

I will not go into too much detail here regarding key phrases, but if you would like to find out more, look out for my article on researching search engine key phrases which is coming soon.

3) Focus on the relevant sales message per product/service, as well as making it informative.

a) Relevant Sales message:

"Click here to find out about our special offer for the month of December!!!"

This statement is referred to as a "call-to-action". A Call-to-action triggers a user to perform a certain action; in this case the action performed is clicking on this special offer. Various sales and marketing research shows that when a call-to-action is used, the conversion rate to sale or enquiry is significantly higher.

b) Detailed information relating to the product or service being sold:

There are two main types of users that visit websites: those that like detail and those that want the information they are looking for delivered in brief summary.

For the purpose of this example, let's refer to:

Detailed person - Person A Summary person - Person B

An article like this is written to target "Person A", as "Person B" generally isn't interested in reading an article of this length.

With this in mind, when writing website content that has a sales focus, ensure that you provide your summary or sales message in the initial one to three -short- paragraphs, and then continue with the detail in the following paragraphs.

Alternatively, where it fits the structure of your web page better, provide your product or service summaries on a main page, with links from each category to a page dedicated to the full content information.

The last thing you want to do is overwhelm someone with so much information that they don't end up reading anything, and opts out for a website that provides information that is delivered in a much simpler format.

4) Free information, articles or hints and tips.

Create reasons for your customers to keep returning to your website!

How do you create reasons for visitors to return to your website? Free information that relates to or compliments your product or service is a great way to keep visitors coming back to your website, i.e. if your website focuses on bathroom tiles, provide free tips on how to care for your tiles, or on the best method for laying the tiles for those that want to "do-it-yourself". You could create a dedicated section within your website titled "Do-it-Yourself".

By providing free helpful information, not only are you adding extra fresh website content; you are also providing extra reasons for your customers to keep returning to your website.

Note: A visitor to your website may not want to buy from you today, but if you can give them a reason to remember your website when they are ready to buy, there is a very good chance you will get a sale from them at a future date.

How often should you add Content?

Ideally if you could add or make changes to your website content everyday it would greatly benefit your site in terms of search results. However, unless you have someone managing your website full-time, this is often difficult to manage.

I recommend that you make at least small adjustments/changes to your website on a weekly basis, and add fresh content on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis. This will keep the search engines interested in your site, and when you do make changes they will be quickly picked up and listed in the search engine results.

For any content on your website that is no longer relevant, or is out of date, either remove it, or where applicable archive it on your site. Blog software is ideal for effectively managing articles or updates on your website. Just ensure that if you do setup a Blog on your website, that it has the ability to archive and sort your articles and updates effectively. An example of a Blog used in this way, is the current Search Engine Marketing Blog I use on my website.

Writing Articles

Ideally I recommend you write articles or hints and tips yourself wherever possible. The benefits to you and your business will include;

- Credibility in your customers' eyes as they will feel comfortable about your confidence and knowledge of your product. - Fresh original content for your website which search engines (especially Google) love.

If you are unable to write content for your website due to time restrictions, or feel you don't have sufficient skills to write a professional content, there are other resources available to you: -Free articles sites where you can download and use articles on almost any subject you can think of. - Hire a professional copywriter to write your content for you. This is a more expensive option, but gives you the added advantage of fresh original content.

Having a website that is rich in well optimised content will have your website well on the way towards being successful in your search engine marketing campaign. Don't be discouraged if you don't have much content on your website now. It is never too late to get started, and no time is better than the present to get started!

Note: To-date, no matter what search engine algorithm changes occur, content has always remained an important component for search engines to determine where a website will rank for specific keywords within their results.

Original Article from Site Reference

10 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips for HTML designers
By RKD Unger
Feb 3, 2005
www.internet-marketing-australia.com

Web design and SEO component

Search engine optimisation has been a hot topic for a while. Many owners understand that without professional SEO service their investments in websites are likely to fail.

It is typical though to see a professionally designed pages that miss or ignore the SEO component.

Web designers have plenty of things to take care of or worry about.

Static or dynamic, ASP or PHP, HTML or XHTML, browser compatibility - this is just a very short list of problems they face.

Being busy with their primary tasks web designers often miss search engine issues.

That can be a primary reason for many websites and web pages not to appear in search results at all.

Although SEO should be performed by specialists, some initial efforts can be applied during the web design stage.

10 Tips for Web Designers

1.Do not miss the Title tag.
Although it is optional, it has a maximum weight for search engines. SEO specialists spend hours researching and creating good titles. Do your client a favor - if SEO is not budgeted for make sure that every page you work on has a meaningful title.

2.Do not miss DESCRIPTION meta tag.
All meta tags are optional. Be aware that description is second important SEO issue. Try to match it to title.

3.Make sure that title and description are located within HEAD.

4.Do not use dynamic pages if you can. The project architecture may dictate usage of PHP, ASP etc. However, search engines are reluctant to index them.

5.JScript is fun to use but it makes it harder for search engines to understand
the content of the page. If you need just a menu highlight try to use style instead of
script.

6.Pages with Flash are difficult to optimise for search engines.
How about web sites that are built on Flash? They impress visitors. However how do visitors find such websites?

7.Utilise style sheets.
Most of modern pages use style sheets. Very few utilise them effectively. That is why web pages are overloaded with HTML attributes. That makes them heavier and slower in load.

8.Search engine look for text - not images. If possible use text rather than image.

9.Text of the page should be at least 250 words. Search engines do not score pages
with just a few sentences.

10.Text of the page shouldn't be very lengthy. To make search engines happy
stick with the page size of 15KB - including images.

About the Author
RKD is the founder of http://www.internet-marketing-australia.com. He is the author of IMOR/SEOR methodology for search engine analysis of web sites.