Wednesday, March 16, 2011

How to get your Website to the First Page of Google Search Results

How to get your Website to the First Page of Google Search Results

1.  Your first step will be to understand the specific keywords that are applicable to your Website. While it may be nice to think as broadly as possible such as (web design, rather than seattle web design), it's important to think niche so that you can get to the top of the results quicker (inverse relationship of less results equals higher likelihood to climb the ranking quicker). For this step, think to yourself, "if I was looking for my business on the Internet, what search phrase would I use?" For example, if you own a vacation rental software business, you wouldn't want to start with the phrase "rental software" but rather "vacation rental software". Knowing the keywords people might search for your business with is critical to the success of your online presence.

2.  Research your competitors. Check out the sites that rank on the first page of Google and take a careful look at how their site looks by examining their source code through your browser. But be careful not to copy content or META tags as search engines will pick up on this and penalize your site. It's very important to BE ORIGINAL.

3.  Knowing your keywords and analyzing your competitors is one thing, but designing a site that takes advantage of those keywords is an entirely arduous undertaking in and of itself. There are several criteria that come into play with Website elements to improve the search engine awareness of your Website for your targeted keywords.

These elements are:
a) META Tags
b) Page Title
c) Image ALT tags
d) Website text
e) SITEMAP.

There are several rules to follow when designing and coding your site for search engine awarness (or having a professional do it for you). While the entire spectrum of rules is beyond the scope of this article (but will be addressed in an article to follow), here are a few basic tips (also see the resources below for links to valuable information regarding Web SEO-driven design & coding).

a) Make sure your keywords are seen in your Keyword & Description META Tags at least three times but not more than seven.
b) Make sure that your page title contains your site keywords at least once but not more than three times.
c) Make sure that your site has at least three instances of your keywords in Image ALT tags and make sure that all your images have ALT tags that are descriptive to the actual image.
d) Make sure your Website text has at least three instances of your keywords and not more than seven per Web page (more than that may be considered keyword SPAMING by the search engines).
e) Create a sitemap for your Website (see sitemaps.org for more info).

4.  We've all heard the cliche that "content is king", and getting ranked high will certainly involve some element of the creation of "content" (in addition to your link popularity). Content can come in the form of articles, well-phrased comments, intuitive blogs, and other Web-based commentary that is carefully worded and properly linked to your site with your keywords (check out sites like blogger.com, wordpress.com, and blogspot.com for online blogs).

5.  Signup for an analytics software package such as Google analytics (free at www.google.com/analytics/). You'll need to learn how to read analytics to see how your progress of visits to your site is coming. You can also run your own searches on Google daily to see where your site is listing in the search engine results.

6.  Market, Market, Market. You need to market yourself every day and in every way that you can. Build links to your site on blogs, through comments, through press releases, through your local chamber of commerce publications, in print, on Craigslist, and just about anywhere you can. Also, the more info on your site, the better, so build that content and use it to spread the word about your site.

7.  Have Patience. This process is going to take you a good 6 to 12 months. You need to build content and create links daily to get ranked high. Remember, Google will need to believe that your site is more important (link wise & content wise) then your competitors for your given keywords, so you have some work ahead of you.

8. Use your contacts. If you have contacts at other Websites, try to get them to link to you. Also, find directories online applicable to your Website and try to get listed there with your keywords or just with a link. The more links into your site, the better!


Monday, March 14, 2011

Keyword analytics to benefits your website

  1. Trend to inside the minds of searchers

    Often we as marketers think we know a lot about how people search. The truth is, there are a lot of different ways to search and it varies by industry and from one individual to another. By analyzing the keywords and phrases that are driving traffic and sales to your website, you can find out how your customers search to find your site. What adjectives or other modifiers do potential customers search on? What order do they search?


     

  2. Which keyword are working for organic search

    If your site is showing up on the first page for some of those keywords, how much traffic are you getting from those organic listings? More importantly, how many leads or sales are you getting from those keywords? You will sometimes be surprised at which keywords drive the most traffic. Often it's not the keywords you think will be best, and that's why you have to watch your keyword referral reports to see which keywords are working.


     

  3. Calculate which keywords are not driving users

    If you're on the first page of Google and you get zero clicks, it's time to find some new keywords. Stick with the keywords that drive sales and ditch the keywords that don't work. There is a huge difference in click through rates depending on the position your site is listed in, but if your site is anywhere on the first page of Google, you should expect some level of traffic, or you're not targeting the right keyword.


     

  4. Searching keywords which works in PPC that can be used for SEO

    The nice thing about PPC search advertising is that you can choose exactly which keywords your ad shows up for. The thing that sucks about PPC is that you have to pay for every click. So why not take what you've learned from your PPC campaign and make sure you're focusing your SEO efforts on the right keywords? You'll usually find that a first page organic listing for the same keyword will send a lot more traffic than a paid listing for the same phrase, and the price per click is way better.


     

  5. Searching keywords which works for SEO that can be used for PPC lunching


     

    The same idea for taking PPC keywords into your SEO campaign works the other way, too. Organic search listings will bring people to your site for all kinds of different keywords–including tons of keyword combinations that you never would have thought to include in your PPC campaign. If you notice a particular phrase that drives a lot of sales from a unique organic search keyword, you should try it out in your PPC ads. You'll usually see a similar conversion rate, or maybe even better conversion from PPC on the same keyword!

  6. Select keywords to insert as negative matches

    Negative matching with PPC campaigns is when you tell the search engines to not show your ad when certain words are included in the search query. This can come in handy when you're doing broad matching on keywords that have multiple meanings or connotations. They can also help you eliminate keywords that are driving a lot of traffic without resulting in sales. By watching your conversion metrics on a keyword level, you can identify keywords that drive traffic without sales and add those keywords to your campaigns as negative matches. You can even save yourself some money by looking at irrelevant, under-performing keywords from your organic search that should be excluded from your PPC campaigns before you even spend a penny on PPC ads.


     

  7. More ideas to get for new content and products


     

    You'll start to notice that people find your site for all kinds of different, sometimes strange, keywords. Watch the keyword list for new ideas for topics you can write about on your blog or even a new product you can add to meet the needs of your customers. If you're getting significant traffic on keywords that you don't have content about, it's a good indicator that traffic would flow to your site if you create content to match what people are looking for.


     


     

 

Business Can Benefit From Social Media


 Get to Know Your Audience
Social media is full of groups, fan pages, and other things that make it relatively easy to find an audience that is already interested in your topic or industry.
But with all of the different social media sites, how do you find out where your audience is hanging out? Here are a couple of resources you can use:
·         Use search.twitter.com to see what people are talking about that relates to your topic/industry. See what they’re linking to and mentioning. This can lead you in the right direction.
·         Get a Facebook account if you don’t have one already and look for relevant groups and fan pages. Watch for multiple groups/fan pages for the same topic, and also watch to see how engaged the members are.
·         Forums are more old school, but they can be great for finding other sites that people are using to hang out. In the end it may be the forum itself is the hangout, or they may direct you to other places.
Managing Your Reputation
Here some tools you can use to monitor your reputation online so you can take any appropriate action:
·         Once again, you can use search.twitter.com to keep an eye on any conversations going on in the world of Twitter that relate to your brand.
·         For general monitoring of sites, news, and blogs you can always set up Google Alerts for your brand and main keywords to see what is happening online.
·         For monitoring blogs specifically, you can use Technorati or Google Blog Search. Both can help you monitor what bloggers are saying about your brand or industry.
·         If you’re really serious about tracking your reputation you could get an account at Trackur. Their pricing isn’t bad and it can be a great solution for companies looking to check in on the conversations happening online in a quick and easy way.

Promotions
Promotion is nothing new to the internet, but it hits new levels with social media. If you push the right message through the right channels you can reach a lot of people.

The key here is that you have to already have a lot of connections, especially with people that are willing to push the information to their followers as well. Twitter’s Retweet (RT) feature is very useful for this. If someone finds a story, blog post, or promotion interesting, they can just pass it on by doing a simple Retweet.

To be successful in promoting things through social media you have to have a plan and connections. Just sending out a tweet to your 30 followers won’t cut it.

SEO and Traffic Benefits
Being that we’re an SEO company, I naturally have to talk about the SEO and traffic benefits of being involved in social media. Social media can be a great traffic generator. Admittedly, it doesn’t always generate the kind of traffic that will convert into a lot of sales but it does increase buzz, recognition, and authority for your site.
Social media is also a great way to have a lot of links built to your site. As a page is promoted on different networks people are going to be linking to it. These links will include tweets, bookmarks, and even blogs. All of these links can help improve the authority of your site and lead to higher rankings in the search results.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Describe Make a Money


 

Direct Methods

1. PPC Advertising Networks

Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.

The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education are examples of profitable niches (clicks worth a couple of dollars are not rare), while tech-related topics tend to receive a smaller CPC (sometimes as low as a couple of cents per click).

The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.

List of popular CPC advertising networks:

2. CPM Advertising Networks

CPM advertising networks behave pretty much as PPC networks, except that you get paid according to the number of impressions (i.e., page views) that the ads displayed on your site will generate. CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions.

A blog that generates 100,000 page views monthly displaying an advertising banner with a $1 CPM, therefore, will earn $100 monthly.

CPM rates vary with the network, the position of the ad and the format. The better the network, the higher the CPM rate (because they have access to more advertisers). The closer you put the ad to the top of the page, the higher the CPM. The bigger the format (in terms of pixels), the higher the CPM.

You can get as low as $0,10 and as high as $10 per 1,000 impressions (more in some special cases). CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio (e.g., online forums, magazines and so on).

List of popular CPM advertising networks:

3. Direct Banner Advertising

Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremost because it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The most popular banner formats on the web are the 728×90 leaderboard, the 120×600 skyscraper, the 300×250 rectangle and the 125×125 button.

The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.

Related links:

4. Text Link Ads

After Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular.

Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, though, some using the nofollow tag and some not.

The advantage of this method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process.

Text link marketplaces and networks:

5. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based.

Affiliates can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews.

In order to find suitable affiliate programs you can turn to individual companies and publishers like Dreamhost and SEOBook, or join affiliate marketplaces and networks.

List of popular affiliate marketplaces and networks:

6. Monetization Widgets

The latest trend on the web are widgets that let you monetize your website. Examples include Widgetbucks and SmartLinks. Some of these services operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others yet leverage affiliate links.

Their main differentiator, however, is the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user to plug and play the service on its website.

List of companies that provide monetization widgets:

7. Sponsored Reviews

PayPerPost pioneered this model, with much controversy on the beginning (related to the fact that they did not require disclosure on paid posts). Soon other companies followed, most notably Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, refining the process and expanding the paid blogging model.

Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics. Not all bloggers are willing to get paid to write about a specific product or website (because it might compromise the editorial credibility), but the ones who do are making good money out of it.

If your blog has a big audience you could also offer sponsored reviews directly, cutting off the commissions of the middleman.

List of sponsored reviews and paid blogging networks:

8. RSS Feed Ads

With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel.

Feedburber already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.

Finally, some blogs are also opting to sell banners or sponsored messages on their feed directly. John Chow and Marketing Pilgrim are two examples.

Related links:

9. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events

If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually.

This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.

Mashable illustrates the case well. They have several advertising options on the site, including the possibility to sponsor specific columns and articles, including the "Daily Poll" and the "Web 2.0 Invites."

Problogger also runs group writing projects occasionally, and before proceeding he publicly announce the project asking for sponsors.

10. Premium Content

Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools.

SEOMoz is a good example. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members. It costs $48 monthly and it grants them access to guides, tools and other exclusive material.

11. Private Forums

While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join.

SEO Blackhat
charges $100 monthly from its members, and they have thousands of them. Obviously in order to charge such a price for a forum membership you need to provide real value for the members (e.g., secret techniques, tools, and so on).

Performancing also launched a private forum recently, focused on the networking aspect. It is called The Hive, and the monthly cost is $10.

These are just two examples. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.

List of popular forum software:

12. Job Boards

All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Guy Kawasaki, ReadWriteWeb, Problogger… you name it.

Needless to say that in order to create an active and profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and a decent amount traffic.

The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.

List of popular job board software:

13. Marketplaces

Sitepoint is the online marketplace by excellence. Some websites and blogs, however, are trying to replicate that model on a smaller scale.

Depending on your niche, a market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for new product listings.

The problem with this method is that there are no standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into your website.

You can see an example of a marketplaces being used on EasyWordpress and on Mashable.

14. Paid Surveys and Polls

There are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. The most popular one is called Vizu Answers.

Basically you need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.

15. Selling or Renting Internal Pages

Million Dollar Wiki made this concept popular, but it was being used on the web for a long time around (check Pagerank10.co.uk for instance).

These websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way.

Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.

16. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors

Techmeme probably pioneered this idea, but somehow it has not spread to other websites. The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column, and on the sidebar they have a section titled "Techmeme Sponsor Posts."

On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way. Considering that the monthly cost for one spot is $5000 and that they have around 6 sponsors at any given time, it must be working well.

17. Donations

Placing a "Donate" link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content.

Personal development and productivity blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems (one good example being Steve Pavlina).

A small variation of this method appeared sometime ago with the Buy Me a Beer plugin. This WordPress plugin enables you to insert a customized message at the bottom of each article, asking the readers to chip in for a beer or coffee.

18. In-text Adverting

In-text adverting networks like Kontera and Vibrant Media will place sponsored links inside your text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money.

Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text advertising.

19. Pop-ups and Pop-unders

Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to make a much money as possible from your website, you could experiment with them.

If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason why they are so popular.

Ad networks that use pop-ups:

20. Audio Ads

Also called PPP (Pay Per Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the concept is pretty simple: play a small audio advertising (usually 5 seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique visitors.

The company is still rolling tests, but some users are reporting to get from a $4 to a $6 CPM. Regardless of the pay rate, though, this is a very intrusive form of advertising, so think twice before using it.

21. Selling the Website

Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time.

Market places on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they most used parameter to determine the value of a website is the monthly revenue that it generates, multiplied by a certain number (the multiplier can be anything from 5 to 30, depending on the expectations of the seller, on the quality of the site, on the niche and other factors).

Some people also make money trading and flipping websites. They either create them from scratch or buy existing ones, and after some revamping they sell them for a profit.

Related links:

Indirect Methods

22. Selling an Ebook

Perhaps one of the oldest money making strategies on the web, using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue.

You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.

Related links:

23. Selling a Hardcover Book

Many authors and journalists leverage their blogs or websites to sell copies of hardcover books. Examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.

While most of these people were already renowned authors before they created their website, one could also follow the other way around. Lorelle VanFossen did exactly that with her Blogging Tips book. First she built her authority on the subject via her blog, and afterwards she published the book.

List of self publishing and publishing services:

24. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes

As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter.

On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.

Brian Gardner and Unique Blog Designs are two examples of websites that make money with the sales of premium and custom WordPress themes.

25. Offering Consulting and Related Services

Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.

Chris Garrett used a similar strategy. First he created a highly influential blog on the blogging and new media niche, and afterwards he started offering consulting services to clients with related problems and needs.

26. Creating an Email List or Newsletter

Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way.

Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.

Yaro Starak is a famous Internet marketer, and if you visit his blog you will notice that right on top he has a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to his email newsletter. Yaro generates five figures in revenues each month from his email newsletters, proving that this method works.

List of software to manage email newsletters:

27. Mentoring programs

People are willing to pay for someone or something that will teach them and give them knowledge (as opposed to mere information). Education is one of the biggest industries in the world, and the online landscape behaves in a similar way.

Creating a mentoring program related to the niche of your website could be very profitable if you manage to structure and promote it adequately. There is a wide range of media and tools that you can use to deliver the information, from text articles to audio and video lessons.

Brian Clark leveraged the success of Copyblogger to launch a mentoring program teaching people how to build membership and how to sell content online. The program is titled Teaching Sells, and it costs $97 monthly. Sounds expensive, but they have over 1,000 members.

28. Creating a conference around the website

If your website takes off and becomes an authority on its niche, you could create a conference around it. Depending on the size of your audience, the event could attract thousands of people, and you could make money directly from conference passes and sponsors.

Search Engine Land, for instance, created a series of conferences that visit several cities on the United States and on other countries as well. The conferences are called Search Marketing Expo, and the tickets and passes cost thousands of dollars.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Benefits of SEO

(Topic-1)

SEO Guide – Benefits of On-page and Off-page

As citizens of the twenty-first century, we all depend on the internet for our day-to-day professional and social lives. We all are aware about the role the search engine plays in providing us information on a variety of topics. Owners of websites try out some tweaking activities to have their sites listed towards the top of a search list. This set of tweaking activities that allow a site to gain higher search rank is known as search engine optimization (SEO). The basic intent is to first identify a set of keywords that correspond to the product/service the website highlights, and modify the site according to some rules considered legal by the search engines.
Research suggests that 42% of the search engine users find their desired results by clicking the links in the first page of the search results. Only 11% turn to the second page links, and this percentage deteriorates drastically for the later pages. In this article, we will explore two important aspects of SEO - the on-page and off-page SEO.
On-Page Optimization
The on-page optimization activities involve modifications in various components of a web page. Some of these activities include—ensuring the presence of identified keyword(s) in the page title, Meta description, Meta keywords, header tags, anchor tags, body text (the actual page content) and so forth. The keywords should also be present in in-bound and out-bound links and Alt tags of images. The search engine spiders view websites differently than humans do. The search engine tries to find out the essence of a site by analyzing its underlying HTML code. If it identifies a string of words (keywords) spread across various HTML elements of the page, it attaches due importance to the page with respect to these keywords.
Off-Page Optimization
The off-page optimization involves a set of activities that promotes the site from behind the scenes. Stated simply, SEO professionals promote a site by back-linking to the site from various other relevant sites. If more links point to your site, higher importance is attached during calculation of the search results. It is to be borne in mind that both the number and quality of back-links matter. For instance, the back-links generated by link firms to a site can ruin the site's SEO prospects. Even, the site can be blacklisted by leading search engines for practicing illegal SEO activities. SEO practitioners always try to provide back-links from quality sources (with good, relevant content) to the site being optimized.
Both On-Page and Off-Page Optimizations are important
In this age of competition, both on-page and off-page optimization are needed one after the other. If the competition for a keyword is weak, we can do away with the later; but such cases are extremely rare nowadays. With the continually changing algorithms of the search engines, both these techniques carry high importance. However, the on-page SEO activities need to be completed first.

(Topic-2)

Targeted Website Traffic – Discover the Secrets

If you are the owner of a business website, then you must learn Internet marketing strategies to get the most out of your web presence. If you have a site up and running, then you need steady web traffic to your site and maximum possible conversion of this "interested" web-traffic to "actual" sales closure. You need to have the right strategies in place to get people interested in your products/services offered through your site. In this article, we will explore a few of these strategies.
Common Pitfalls that Dissipate Web Traffic
At the outset, let's have a look at some of the common mistakes that website owners commit that have a negative impact on web traffic generation.
• Some sites are loaded with jazzy banner ads that lack aesthetic sense.
• The content is sometimes written in corporate style that laymen often fail to interpret.
• The sales pitch is often made too quickly.
• Sometimes the enterprise owners remain anonymous, which raises the eyebrows of the visitors. After all, we engage ourselves in business transactions with people whom we know.
• Too many products and too many cross-links leave a negative impression on the visitors.
Steps to Improve the Impression of your Site
Here are some of the tips that can increase your site's (and hence your products & services) acceptance to the visitors.
• Keep your paragraphs and sentences short, because people do not want to read long online.
• Write the content lucidly, so that every visitor is clear about your offers.
• Impart an attractive headline (if applicable, sub-headings too) within the page content.
• Do not use a small font size that readers find difficult to read.
• Stress on proper layout of the web page. Every element on the page should be properly spaced.
• Place the sign-in form link at a conspicuous place so that people can sign up easily.
Determine your Target Audience
It is surprising but true that many website owners do not have a clear understanding about the site's target audience. One of the first things you need to determine is your site's target audience. Determine the demographic aspects such as age, sex, race, and hobbies etc. Try to frame the idea of a person who is a probable candidate to buy the product. Once you frame your target audience, you are in a better position to position your site accordingly.
Targeted Advertising through Social Networking Sites and PPC Advertising
Today's Internet activities are dominated by surfing popular social networking sites. People, mostly surfers of the younger generation, visit these sites to build and maintain social networks. They get benefited by a lot of stuff - from friendship to jobs. These social media sites offer targeted advertising facilities. By investing in this scheme, you can narrow down fruitless web traffic to focused visitors.

Another method of getting targeted web traffic is investment in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. It doesn't involve a huge financial outlay, but helps you to reach your target audience quicker. It is in fact one of the most traceable forms of online marketing. People who are interested in your line of products will find the positioning of the PPC links highly relevant and would want to explore the sites.

At the end, we can conclude that getting web traffic is not as important as getting targeted web traffic. You need to do your basic homework first to identify your target audience, design your site accordingly, and invest in online marketing to pull targeted web traffic to your site with the potential of increased sales.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

URL Rewrite

What are the benefits of rewriting URL?

Collected From: http://roshanbh.com.np/2008/02/hide-php-url-rewriting-htaccess.html

When a search engine visits the dynamic url like product.php?id=5 it does not give much importance to that URL as search engine sees "?" sign treat it as a url which keeps on changing. so we're converting the dynamic URL like the product.php?id=5 to static url format like product-5.html. We'll rewrite the url in such a way that in browser's address bar it will display as a product-5.html but it actually calls the file product.php?id=5. So that why these kind of URL also named as SEO friendly URL.

What is required for URL rewriting??

To rewrite the URL you must have the mod_rewrite module must be loaded in apache server. And furthermore, FollowSymLinks options also need to be enabled otherwise you may encounter 500 Internal Sever Error.

How to check weather mod_rewrite module is enabled or not?
Data Collected: http://roshanbh.com.np/2008/04/check-enable-mod_rewrite-apache.html

Well there are lots of techniques to check this but I'll show you a very simple technique to check weather mod_rewrite module is enabled or not in you web server.

1) Type <?php phpinfo(); ?> in a php file and save it and run that file in the server.
2) And now you can the list of information, just search the word "mod_rewrite" from the browser's search menu
3) If it is found under the "Loaded Modules" section then this module is already loaded as you see in the picture below, otherwise you need to go to the next step for enabling mod_rewrite module.

How to enable mod_rewrite module in apache in xampp, wamp?

Now, I'll show you how to enable how to mod_rewrite module in apache installed under windows environment.
1) Find the "httpd.conf" file under the "conf" folder inside the Apache's installation folder.
2) Find the following line "#LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so" in the "httpd.conf" file.You can do this easily by searching the keyword "mod_rewrite" from find menu.
3) Remove the "#" at the starting of the line, "#" represents that line is commented.
4) Now restart the apache server.
5) You can see now "mod_rewrite" in the Loaded Module section while doing "phpinfo()".

Examples of url rewriting for seo friendly URL

For rewriting the URL, you should create a .htaccess file in the root folder of your web directory. And have to put the following codes as your requirement.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.htm$ $1.php [nc]

The following example will rewrite the test.php to test.html i.e when a URL like http://localhost/test.htm is called in address bar it calls the file test.php. As you can see the regular expression in first part of the RewriteRule command and $1 represents the first regular expression of the part of the RewriteRule and [nc] means not case sensitive.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^product-([0-9]+)\.html$ products.php?id=$1

The following example will rewrite the product.php?id=5 to porduct-5.html i.e when a URL like http://localhost/product-5.html calls product.php?id=5 automatically.

Hiding PHP file extension

Collected From: http://roshanbh.com.np/2008/01/hiding-php-file-extension.html

Do you want to hide your web site's server script identity ? If you don't want to reveal the programming language ( server side script ) of your website to visitors of website so that any hacker or spammer will not be able to intrude or inject any code in your website.

Here is a small technique for you, you can use .html or .asp file to work as a php file i.e. use .asp or .html extension instead of .php. You just need to create a .htaccess file and put the following code in the .htaccess file. Remember that the .htaccess file should be placed in the root folder of your website.

# Make PHP code look like asp or perl code
AddType application/x-httpd-php .asp .pl

if you place the the above code in the .htaccess file then you can use contact.asp as the name of the file. Now a visitor thought that it is a ASP file but this file contains the codes of PHP.

You can put the following code in .htaccess file to work .htm or .html file as PHP file.

# Make all PHP code look like HTML
AddType application/x-httpd-php .htm .html


 

Redirecting www URL to non www URL

Data Collected From: http://www.9lessons.info/2009/01/htaccess-tutorials.html

If you type www.twitter.com in browser it will be redirected to twitter.com.


 


Add this Following Code:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.srinivas.com

RewriteRule (.*) http://srinivas.com/$1 [R=301,L]


 


 

Rewriting 'site.com/profile.php?username=foxscan' to 'site.com/foxscan'

My twitter profile http://twitter.com/foxscan its original link passing GET values (http://twitter.com/profile.php?username=foxscan) but this URL is ugly in browser address bar, For user friendly we can change like this.


 

If you want change like this see the below code

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)$ profile.php?username=$1

RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/$ profile.php?username=$1


 


 


 

This time I'm talking about rewriting second parameter URLs using .htaccess file.

Collected From: http://www.9lessons.info/2009/11/pretty-urls-with-htaccess-file.html


 


 


 


Original URL.
Eg. http://flickr.com/users.php?id=username&page=2

Rewriting Friendly URL.
Eg. http://flickr.com/username/2

.htaccess Code

//First Parameer
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule
^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)$ users.php?user=$1
RewriteRule
^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/$ users.php?user=$1

//Second Parameter
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule
^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/([0-9]+)$ users.php?user=$1&page=$2
RewriteRule
^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/([0-9]+)/$ users.php?user=$1&page=$2