Use The Power Of Facebook to Catapult Your Web Presence

Currently Facebook has over 750 million active users. This means the Facebook community is over 2.4 times the population of the United States and it's growing rapidly every day. The marketing potential of this site is just incredible. If you are doing any kind of online marketing for your business and are not using Facebook then you are missing out on thousands of potential customers.


It is very easy to begin marketing on Facebook. If you already have a personal Facebook profile with a reasonable number of friends, then you already have a head start. For your marketing purposes though, it is usually a good idea to create a separate fan page for your business. If you use your personal profile for marketing purposes, chances are many of your Facebook friends may not be interested in what you have to offer and may eventually "de-friend" you if they feel like they are getting spammed. By having a separate fan page, your friends have the option to either "like" your fan page or not but you can still keep them as a friend on your personal profile.


Suggesting your fan page to your friends may be a good start to developing many Facebook followers but it shouldn't end there. Here are some other methods for increasing your Facebook fan base:

• Add a link to your fan page from your personal Facebook profile page.
• If you have a following on Twitter, you can link your Twitter account to your Facebook fan page.
• Add links to your fan page from your website and on all emails you send out.
• Add a Facebook "like" button at the end of your blog posts.
• Create videos related to your niche, add them to your fan page and your website or blog.
• Use custom Facebook applications to draw people to your fan page.
• Give free gifts for becoming a fan. This could include a free report, eBook or instructional video.
• Entice people to become fans by entering them into a drawing for a prize giveaway.

Marketing your products or services on Facebook can be very effective but you have to be careful with your approach. Keep in mind, most people do not come to Facebook to go shopping. They come to socialize and keep in touch with their friends. If you are too aggressive with your sales tactics, you may turn away some of your fans who think you are spamming them.


The best way to market on Facebook is by building the trust of your followers. Send them what they want by posting useful information, tips and videos about certain topics relating to your niche. Make sure to promptly respond to comments and messages from your fans. They need to

Common Submission MisconceptsFive Common Misconceptions to Achieving Success with your Online Business

How successful is your online business? Are you achieving the monetary rewards that you’d hoped to achieve when you set up your Web site?


If not, you may have fallen prey to one of five common misconceptions to achieving success with an online business.


Misconception #1: If you put up a Web site, people will come. Regretfully, this is far from the truth. Competition is fierce on the Internet, and you must learn how to compete in order to have a successful online business. Putting up a Web site is the first step, but doing nothing more will ensure your site’s failure


Misconception #2: Amateur promotion will render professional results. Many people believe that they can purchase a handy dandy software program that will submit their sites to 999 search engines and directories, and their promotion efforts are over. The truth of the matter is, the majority of the traffic to most Web sites comes from the major search engines and directories, so submitting to 990 other ones is simply a waste of time and won’t bring you any success.


Misconception #3: Submitting your site to the major search engines and directories is all you need to do. Wrong. Think of it this way: there are 10 search results per page for most of the engines. Most people won’t go through any more than three pages of search results before giving up and trying another search. So, only the top 30 rankings really matter. If your site is #3,429 out of two million results, how much traffic do you think you’ll get?


Misconception #4: META tags are the key to success with the search engines. Truthfully, very few of the major engines even look at META tags any more. So, sticking META tags on your pages won’t bring you traffic and sales.


Misconception #5: The key to success on the Web is achieving top 10 rankings for keywords

Website Creation and the Eye of the Spider by Scott Buresh

Picture, if you will, a Rocky-style montage. A team is involved in website creation from the ground up. A driving, inspirational song begins. The first scene is a highly contentious meeting, with a sweating and nervous marketing executive frantically drawing away at a whiteboard in front of a hostile audience. Flash to copywriters, fingers cracked and bleeding, churning away at their keyboards. Jump to web designers, sporting blurred eyes rimmed with dark circles, peering into their monitors in obvious discomfort. Finally, we see signs of it all coming together. A beautiful home page briefly appears. The music ends. A bell rings. And…
Nothing happens. The website would seem to have tripped over its own shoelaces and fallen right through the canvas, disappearing into cyberspace. The credits roll, to the eternal shame of those whose names appear.


What went wrong?


The team engaged in website creation without any regard for the role of the search engine spider. You see, there is quite a difference in what is seen by humans on a website and what is seen by a search engine “spider” (a program that routinely combs the Internet indexing websites). There are an untold number of expensive websites out there that are beautiful to behold from a human perspective, yet all but invisible to search engine spiders (and thus searchers), just as there are untold numbers of expensive, beautiful yachts silently and pointlessly resting on the ocean bottom in the Bermuda Triangle.


What follows is a small list of common website elements, broken into two categories: what search engines can see, and what they can not.


Three Things a Search Engine Spider Can’t See
Graphic text – Most professionals involved in website creation take great pride in their work, which is obviously a desired trait. Occasionally, however, this can present problems. When a web designer decides to use text in a graphic form (meaning that the text is actually an image), the search engine spider can not read what that text says. A common reason for a designer to use text in a graphic is because he or she wants to use a rare font that most visitors won’t have on their machines. Another reason is that the designer wants to have absolute control over how the website text renders. When faced with the choice over which kind of text to use, it is important to weigh the aesthetic choice against the potential loss of search engine visibility.


Images – As touched upon above, a search engine spider is not yet able to look at images or pictures and determine what they are (although you can and should attach a tag to them which the spider can read – commonly referred to as an “alt” tag). A spider will skip directly over your logo and masthead, any pictures, and most other graphical elements.


Flash – Search engine spiders will not read through the text in any Flash animation on your site (or any other animation). This does not mean that using Flash elements will render your site invisible; it merely means that you should not count on the text that appears in any Flash animation on your website to be indexed. If the team responsible for your website creation decides to build the entire site in Flash, however, you will encounter unique problems. While some search engines are getting better at trying to index websites built entirely on this platform, it is still an overall rankings killer. If you must have a website created entirely in Flash, it is wise to also have an alternate HTML version for search engines and people who prefer HTML sites.


Three Things a Search Engine Spider Can See
HTML text – A search engine spider relies heavily on HTML text to determine what a web page is about. Spiders, therefore, index HTML text and will even make distinctions between differences in how the text is presented. For example, text that is in a headline or is bolded is assumed to be slightly more important than regular text.


Links – Outgoing links on your pages are easily understood by the spider, especially if they are text links. The wording of these links (or the alt tags attached to them) can, like HTML text, give the spider an idea of what your page is about. However, there are certain types of links that are not easily indexed. If your website creation team embedded your links in a pull-down menu that utilizes JavaScript or other scripting language, most search engine spiders will not see them.


Tags – There are many kinds of tags, but not all are important for search engine optimization. Meta tags include the “keywords” tag, which should list key phrases that describe the page. Another meta tag is the “description” tag, which should be one or two brief sentences that describe the page. Another tag, which is not actually a meta tag, but which has significant importance to search engine rankings, is the “title” tag. This tag contains the words that you will see in the blue bar at the top of your web page.
This list is by no means comprehensive – there are many other attributes that aren’t mentioned in this article. The primary message here is that companies should do their homework before engaging in website creation. There are thousands of resources available on the Internet that can answer your questions about any element you are considering adding before you build (or redesign) your site. Take the time to study each so that you can be sure you aren’t sacrificing your search engine rankings for the sake of something largely unnecessary.
As for the downtrodden website creation team mentioned earlier in the article, let’s remember that Rocky has been known to get beat down in the first fight but then to pull himself up from the floor and triumph in the end. The team will go back into training and eventually understand the Eye of the Spider. Cue the music


Scott Buresh     http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/sem/website-spider.htm/

My Top Six Link Building Strategies For Beginners

In this article I want to cover off back links, what they are, why you need them and how to get them. Now if your just starting out you’ll have heard of these but certainly I know for Sam & I when we first started out in internet marketing there’s so much info to take in, it blows your mind so I thought a brief explanation, beginners guide if you will might be handy, so here goes…

What are Links?

Broadly speaking Links are a ‘link’ between your site and another, so as an example you may find a site in the same niche as you links to you because you are not the same but complementary to one another – that’s the basics. You then get ‘one way links’ & ‘back links’- now stay with me on the detail here because One-Way links are also termed back links.

But the unique thing about one-way links is that they do not return a link to the website linking to them, in other words they are not reciprocal. One-way links convey a message to the search engines that the website is so interesting or useful that the other websites had to tell people about it. One way links are the preferred back link for any website owner, so hold onto the concept as we move on.

How Do You Get a One-Way Link?

One way links are achieved is when your website is deemed to have great information and unique content that other websites believe is worthy enough to be referenced by them and shared elsewhere – hope that’s clear and everyone understands it.

Bear in mind also a website will naturally link to another that has content that will consolidate its own site standing. Here are just a few ways you may be able to get or acquire a one-way link status. They are:

Top Tips for Obtaining Back Links

1. Submitting your site to the major online search engine directories such as Yahoo! and Dmoz.org. When you have your link in these websites, your site value will automatically increase.

2. Submit articles to articles directories. There are so many article directories you can submit your article to which will provide you with a back link to your website. Again, as I’ve commented before, if you are submitting manually, still stick to the key directories – that’s where the traffic and ultimately the links will come from.

You can be sure that if it contains quality content someone will click and link back to you. Also

How the Buying Cycle Affects Your Keyword Research

Keyword research may be the single most important factor contributing to your online marketing and SEO success. The keywords you select will determine who can and can’t see your site for any given search. Incorporating the right keywords into your content helps increase your online brand presence, drives targeted traffic to your site, affects what search phrases your site ranks for and more. Missing out on important keywords, or putting the wrong keywords on the wrong pages, means missing out on potential clients and customers. If your site isn’t ranking for the right keyword, you might as well be invisible online.

Sites need to choose keywords on a page-by-page basis based on two things. First and foremost, you have to choose keywords that accurately reflect the content on the page. Search engines rank individual pages, not sites as a whole. Secondly, you have to choose keywords based on the intent of your target audience. That is where the buying cycle comes into play.

When a searcher is at the beginning of their buying cycle, they are usually in research mode. They’re just “shopping around,” bouncing from site to site to gather information from numerous sources, which they will use to influence their future purchase. For instance, first time parents might spend a couple weeks researching baby cribs for their new nursery. Who are the big crib manufacturers? How much do their cribs cost? What kind of reviews have their products received? What kind of crib is best for newborns? First time parents have a lot of questions, so they turn to friends, family and the search engines for answers. They might use search phrases like “baby crib styles,” “top rated baby cribs, “nursery furniture” or “nursery design ideas” to get them started. These are informational searches.

Depending on the kind of information someone is looking for, they may or may not be looking to make a quick transition from research to buying. For instance, someone scrolling through Yelp reviews, trying to decide where to eat lunch that day is going to make a quick decision. Someone looking to make a big purchase (like cars, electronics, furniture, etc) might spend more time researching their options.

As consumers move through their buying cycle, then tend to search using more long-tail keywords. Instead of searching for “baby crib,” the first time parents search for “portable folding crib bedding set.” These searchers have a better idea of what they are looking for and are searching for a specific thing. They might search for a company or product by name or include buzz words like “buy” or “order” in their search phrase. As consumers near the end of their buying cycle, your chance for converting them goes up. They are looking to make a final decision.

So what does this all have to do with your keyword research?

You have to decide what kind of visitors you want finding your site, and then put yourself in their

Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity

Are Internet Explorer users dumb?

(CNN) -- Are users of other Web browsers smarter than the people who use Microsoft's Internet Explorer?
A new survey doesn't quite say so. But it sure as heck suggests it.

The survey by AptiQuaint, a Vancouver-based Web consulting company, gave more than 100,000 participants an IQ test, while monitoring which browser they used to take the test.


The result? Internet Explorer users scored lower than average, while Chrome, Firefox and Safari users were slightly above average
.
And users of the more obscure Camino and Opera browsers, as well as those using Explorer with Chrome Frame (a plug-in designed to let users view emerging HTML5 content), had what AptiQuaint called "exceptionally higher" IQ levels.
Those numbers, it should be noted, probably aren't very scientific. The field of test-takers was self-selecting -- people who chose, on their own, to take an IQ test instead of a scientifically selected study group. They found the test through Web searches or ads the company placed online.


The report suggests that people using Explorer, the built-in, default browser for Windows-based computers, may be more resistant to change. A similar study in 2006 showed users on the then-current IE browser scored above average.

Search Engines prefers websites with plenty of words

The "experts" in the field say that a page in a website, should not have less than 500 words to have a chance of competing for a place in the Search Engines. This is only 1 aspect of the problem of being visible in the Search Engines of course, but it is a good start.


When you decide how you want your website to look like, keep in mind that design might not be the most important factor, writing enough of copy for the search engines to be able to find you, might be more important.


You need to have a good amount of copy for Google and other Search Engines to pick up what your website is about and what it is that you are offering.


Don't put too much effort in shortening your copy. My clients keep saying to me that people don't want to read too much text. This might be right. So keep the most important information at the top of your website and maybe more outstanding than the rest. However, you need words for the Search Engines.


Try to implement as many headings and sub headings as you think would look good and work with your copy. Google reads them as something very important, so use good keywords for your business.


Text that is bold will also be picked up by the search engines as more important information. Try sometimes to make important word within your copy highlighted if it makes sense.


Link important keywords in your copy to different pages within your website. Links are read by the search engines and they are important.

Initiating Web Marketing Efforts

Web or Internet Marketing strategies form the cornerstones of your online business, and outline in general terms what is required to make your business a success. The foremost step, prior to initiating any campaign or marketing scheme is adequate research; without which, even the best of the strategies would fall flat on their face. Any marketer must be willing to spend some time on studying and researching the market and learning the basics prior to starting up any program on web marketing. Post the research is over; care must be taken to set up an online page or a website that would serve as a platform for potential customers to know more about you and your business.


Contrary to popular perception, a website must be more user friendly than aesthetically beautiful to look at as any visitor would first notice how easily information is made available on the website than how good the graphics are or how pretty the arts are. Since, most of the users have slow dial up connections; hence more the number of images and graphics would be there on your website, the page would take more time to upload; it would further bother the visitors who are looking for some worthwhile information on your web page.


There is no doubt that over time, ecommerce sales have continued to rise as more and more people turn to the internet for their shopping. It's much easier to take a quick commute to your computer, surf the net for a short while, and purchase what you are looking for than it is to go out to a store for the same thing.


The website must be created with a view to save time and provide useful information as quickly as possible and any banners, logos and graphics that are coming in the way of accessing your website, they should be done away with. Respecting the visitor's time and reducing the number of imagery and utilizing the many optimization tricks of web design to keep the visitors hooked. Constantly improving your website usability isn't time-consuming, nor is it expensive and it's certainly not difficult. It simply involves common sense and dedication to the task


Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/initiating-web-marketing-efforts-5049027.html#ixzz1SkT0zAwP
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution No Derivatives

Submitting Your Website to Search Engines

Submitting Your Website to Search Engines If you have a web-based business enterprise or if a significant portion of your business enterprise is accomplished on the web by way of your website, then the most beneficial advertising and marketing and advertising is completed by submitting to a search engine. No amount of press release, newspaper or radio ad, banner ad, spam email or newsletter will accomplish the identical results, although, possibly effective in a small proportion. Beware of firms that promise automatic submission of your site to hundreds of search engines which are but only false promises. The very best way to submit your website for search engine ranking and inclusion would be to do it yourself or to employ an expert to do it manually, by contacting the search engine firms and directories. Just before you begin to submit your website to search engines ensure your internet sites are thoroughly created to the expert good quality working with the best key words, great graphics and images and also the relevant content.


Don't submit sites that are incomplete. Though submitting to a search engine, ensure to offer details about your website, keywords and any other info that may possibly be pertinent, which includes the name and get in touch with facts of your business enterprise. Mere submission to search engine firms does not guarantee that your web page would be right away listed and the ranking might be high. Due to the fact you will find thousands of new web sites coming up each day and it may well take really sometime before they take up your website for review by human editors. One critical factor to remember while submitting web site would be to contain a web-site map of your site which makes the crawling uncomplicated for the internet robots. Search engines like ‘http://www.google.com' hardly considers submissions with out sitemaps.


There are many on the web organizations that accept search engine submission services. You could decide on to do it your self with a software package and service like this one: http://www.webposition.com/order/trial.asp?WT.mc_id=google:{ifsearch:search}{ifcontent:content}:{creative}:trial:{keyword}&WT.srch=1 Or when you want professional help try the following sites: http://www.addpro.com/professional_submission http://www.submitawebsite.com/aboutus.html Don't use the automatic submission services. Here is a list of the most popular Search Engines and directory organizations: Search Engines Go.com/InfoSeek AltaVista Google, HotBot Excite/Webcrawler Directories AOL Search Inktomi Lycos Open Directory MSN, Yahoo! LookSmart Snap Apart from the above there are actually thousands of search engines and directory providers, where you may submit your website to as several corporations as possible.


The following links gives info on other search engines and directories: http://websearch.about.com/library/searchengine/blsearchenginesatoz.html http://websearch.about.com/library/tableofcontents/blsearchenginetableofcontents.html


The Importance of Referrer Logs Referrer logging is used to allow internet servers and web pages to identify where people are visiting them either for promotional or security purposes. You can find out which search engine they used to find your web-site and whether your customer has come from a ‘linked site'. It is basically the URL of the previous webpage from which your link was followed. By default, most hosting accounts don't contain referrer logs but could be subscribedd for an extra monthly fee. If your web host doesn't give a graphic report of your log files, you could still view the referrer logs for your website by logging into the host server working with free or low-cost FTP software program, like these:


FTP Explorer: http://www.ftpx.com/ LogMeIn: http://secure.logmein.com/dmcq/103/support.asp SmartFTP: http://www.smartftp.com/ FTP Voyager: http://www.ftpvoyager.com/ The log file is available on your web server which can be download into your computer later. You'll be able to use a log analysis tool, like those mentioned below, to create a graphic report from your log files so that the files are easier to understand.


Abacre Advanced Log Analyzer http://www.abacre.com/ala/ Referrer Soft http://www.softplatz.com/software/referrer/ Log Analyzer http://www.loganalyzer.net It is possible to view the files working with Word, Word Perfect, txt or WordPad files even should you don't have the right tool. This information and facts is very crucial to your small business and advertising and marketing plans and is not advisable to neglect it. In addition to identifying the search engine or linked web page from where your visitor arrived, referrer logs can also tell you what keywords or keyword phrases your client used for searching. As referrer information and facts can sometimes violate privacy, some browsers allow the user to disable the sending of referrer facts. Proxy and Firewall software can also filter out referrer information, to avoid leaking the location of private websites. This can result in other problems, as some servers block parts of their web page to browsers that don't send the right referrer information, in an attempt to prevent deep linking or unauthorized use of bandwidth. Some proxy software program gives the top-level address of the target web page itself as the referrer, which prevents these problems and still not divulging the user's last visited site. Since the referrer can easily be spoofed or faked, however, it is of limited use in this regard except on a casual basis.



Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/social-marketing-articles/submitting-your-website-to-search-engines-4991355.html#ixzz1RQxgUCdU
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution No Derivatives

What Do 76% of Consumers Want From Your Website? [New Data]

76% of consumers say the most important factor in a website's design is "the website makes it easy for me to find what I want."

What does this mean for marketers?

Don't obsess over the visual design of your website

Do obsess over the usability by your customers and prospects

Don't worry if you or the CEO think your website design does not look pretty

Do worry about the conversion rate of your website (Are people finding what they need and completing their tasks?)

Don't use flash, heavy graphics, or tons of video

Does Your Presence Look Expert to You?

The Living Web

People speak and write a lot about personal branding. Online that breaks down to presence which in simple terms is reputation and focus. Both become enhanced when we highlight our expertise in a strategic and consistent fashion.

7 Tweaks to Your Social Presence to Reflect Your Expertise

Experts have authentic skills, knowledge, and experience. But some of us with those exact traits have more insight to making sure those traits shine through. Here are 7 ways to manage your online presence to be seen as the expert you are.

Walk your own path. Be the expert you are, not the expert someone else is. You can’t be compared. You’re not a fanboy or a fangirl. Differentiate what you offer from the start. Play to your strengths. Check your social networking profiles — at Facebook, SU, Twitter, etc. –to see that they underscore the same differentiated traits.

Focus on ONE thing Make that one thing particularly suited to you. Be a “go to” person for a specific problem. Then find a way to meet that need that no one else can do the same way you do.

Write expert answers and content – LinkedIn question and answers are a great place to do this. Seek out questions about your chosen point of expertise throughout the Internet and write thought, precise, actionable answers to them. Give information, examples, AND analysis. Occasionally offer evaluation, synthesis, or predictions.

Always know what’s happening with folks who need what you do. Join the sites and the offline groups where your potential customers and clients hang out. Refer and promote customers and clients whenever you can. Sometimes they’ll need a helping hand and they’ll remember the expert who helped them out.

Know your niche in detail. Get to be friends with Google Alerts and discovery services. Follow key terms around the Internet.

Be an expert at helping colleagues. Don’t be shy about sharing information. Talk with them. Visit and comment on their blogs. Ask them for an interview. Guest post now and then. Help others in visible ways — on your blog, on Twitter, through Facebook groups.

Go deep. (Don’t be shallow.) Find out what researchers are thinking so that you can offer the highest quality, relevant information and analysis. Add information to the conversation that no one has found.

An expert to most people is someone who more knowledge, skills, and experience than we do . . . never discount how much expertise you’ve gained or it’s value.

Liz Strauss 2008

What’s the Difference Between a Blog and a Website?

Thanks to Jack Humphrey http://www.fridaytrafficreport.com/whats-the-difference-between-a-blog-and-a-website/

Nothing.

6 years ago they meant two different things to most people you asked.  A blog was a specific kind of website where the author wrote long pieces about their interests, desires, art or other passions.  Most never considered making money doing it and did it as a hobby.
Then blogs were found to be the darlings of Google.  Google loved the content and the words that were added to the authors’ content in the form of comments.  Community and interactivity played a big part in the success of running a website on blog software.

Today, just about every site built on the web is built wholly or partially with blog software.
The truth is, there never was a legitimate distinction between blog sites and web sites.  They are one in the same.  A domain and a content management system = website.
Some businesses need shopping cart software to organize, display, and describe their large product line.  But shopping carts outside of Amazon and other large shopping sites don’t get good organic traffic.  Many smaller shopping cart-based sites have added blogs to deliver that content that Google so loves to rank.
Suffice it to say, pretty much no one is building straight html sites these days with Dreamweaver.  Certainly not the masses who have neither the time nor the inclination to learn html and design.  Not when you can just download WordPress, grab a domain, install a free template and be publishing within a matter of hours.

Blogs are just content management systems (CMS)
And a huge array of businesses in all markets are using blog software for their core web presence.

“Blogging” is where people get confused
You are only a blogger if you primarily focus on writing content.  In that case, your biggest daily function is to produce words.
You are a publisher if you spread your work out to include marketing your site and organizing others to help with the content production for the site to buy you the time needed to take on a bigger role of gaining exposure and attracting readership.
And regardless of your daily functions above, you are a website owner.

Blog software offers the most flexibility in online publishing
It is easy for the layperson to set up without a huge learning curve.
Blogs provide the tools necessary for successful reader attraction and retention, from commenting to integration with social media via countless widgets offered by social media sites to bind blogs with their sites and communities.