Hang around long enough

As a website owner, getting your site listed and placing well in the search engines can turn into a full time job. Search engine optimization is the process of altering your site so it appears in the top listings of the major search engines. You can hire someone to do it for you and pay out th...

Shout out the largest benefit of what you're promoting as soon as possible because unless your copy is particularly engrossing, most surfers won't hang around long enough to read it all. Remember, you've only got 30 seconds max for your site to be viewed and WIIFM is very much in full swing! ...

In part1 of this article I covered defining the purpose of your website and planning it on paper. In this second part I will cover designing the page elements of your site. The look and feel of a site is very important, and it must convey what your site is about. A site for an artist would ...

During the month of November many website entrepreneurs were shaken when Google made its infamous "Florida" update, wiping out search positions for several high-ranking websites, which disappeared from the "top 100" overnight. While all the details behind the Google changes are still not known, ...

Hosting of web sites has essentially become a commodity. There is very little distinguishing one hosting company from the next. Core plans and features are the same and price is no longer a true determining feature. In fact, choosing a host based on the cheapest price can be more expensive in t...

Choosing a domain name can be daunting. Research the subject (after all, you're the type of marketer who researches, right?) and you'll be hit with a landslide of opinions, most contradictory. There are, however, two points that everyone agrees on: Pick your domain before you launch your busi...

Who is more important to you as a webmaster: the visitor or the search engine? Needless traffic may be important to websites that seek advertising revenue (well, they too need targeted traffic) but you need traffic that caters to your requirement. So for a successful website, both are import...

Once your Web site is up, you must maintain it. Maintenance means changes, and each time you make a change, you may make a mistake. If your visitors get a link that doesn't work or incomplete instructions, or if your copy is lackluster instead of passionate, they will leave your site and not boo...

Images are used on web and intranet sites for many reasons: branding, highlighting, navigation, providing supplementary information, division, humour etc. Images consume more space than text, however, and thus take a longer time to download. On an intranet, this additional time is usually with...

I frequent a number of search engine optimization forums on a daily basis and the one thing I see more of than anything else are optimizers who will quickly tell you that this method is evil, or that method is spam, or this other method is cross- linking. The search engines each have their ow...

I'm sure that everyone knows that the travel sector is one of the most competitive online. There are literally thousands of sites and the search engine rankings appear to be controlled by the big corporate travel sites. So where does that leave a small travel business on the internet? Well, the...

Have you noticed your website slipping in the Google rankings over the past few months for keywords that previously scored high? Join the club and welcome to The Google Dance. The Google Dance is a phrase that was coined to explain the new search engine algorithms that Google puts into play on...

Most Internet marketing methods are risky and many will not have any affect on traffic to a web site. Some online marketers will sell you anything from banner impressions, to mass email campaigns (spam), to popup ads. All these marketing tools can work, but they are also extremely risky. Some pe...

Most links pages are defective! The worst ones can have nine near fatal flaws. How does yours stack up? As a veteran link exchanger I’ve spent countless hours in front of my monitor. Like a Vegas slots player hoping to hit the jackpot, err, I meant to say looking for prime candidates. So ...

By now, virtually every webmaster has heard or read that the major search engines are responsible for 80% or more of the traffic received by most web sites and that most searchers never look beyond the first 20 - 50 search results. Not surprisingly, an entire industry devoted to search engine r...

One of the common issues that marketers face when using Google Adwords, is that the use of popups on the target page for their ad is not permitted. Many Adwords advertisers just completely remove popups from their web site, which can not only significantly damage the profitability that results ...

You know that getting a high page ranking in one of the top search engines should be the first priority of your marketing plan. Although not as significant as they once were, meta tags are still an important aspect of search engine optimization. This article discusses ways that you should u...

Getting listed in search engines can be a lot of work. "Free" submission tools are worth about what you pay for them and, worse, can be detrimental to your efforts. Yet you don't have the time to do it yourself by hand. What do you do? You hire a professional. A professional search engine m...

Submitting your web site to the search engine directories will give you a great boost in traffic. A listing in a large search engine directory like ODP (Open Directory Project) enables your web site to get indexed for free by the major search engines such as AskJeeves, AOLSearch, Google, and Lyc...

Website owners: do you know how many links are out there on the Internet, pointing back to your site? If you're interested in getting free search engine placement for your site, you ought to know. An easy way to find out is to download the Alexa toolbar from http://www.alexa.com. One of it...