How to Build a Business Website

Written by: Nowshade Kabir
http://weblog.rusbiz.com

A recent report done by Yankee Group, a Boston-based market research company, states that at the end of 2004 around 34 percent of small and medium sized businesses in North America are selling goods and services on the Internet and another 25 percent is planning to do so within next 12 months. Online sales in the United States represented 8.4 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product in 2004. This figure is increasingly rising. This means, if your company is not paying serious attention to this vital channel of sales and marketing, you are simply missing the boat.

In its basic form a website is a bundle of pages full of texts, graphics and other electronic files published on the Internet for people to view. How you organize your website depends totally on your online goals. Websites are built for various purposes. You can use a website as a sales point, a marketing channel, a corporate image building tool, a branding channel, an information center, a CRM center, a product launching center, and for number of other reasons. When you plan to build a website, you should base your online strategy keeping in mind two things: your online objectives and your potential audience.

SOME OF THE MOST COMMON TYPES OF CORPORATE WEBSITES ARE:
Information providing sites
Most of today’s sites fall in this category. The simplest of them are actually mere reflection of offline corporate brochures.

Promoting company
The idea behind some of information-driven sites is to give maximum information related to the company. A holding company, for example, may prefer to have a site like this. These sites usually include: company history, company related news, mission statement, profiles of key executives, a good FAQ section, etc. Graphics are used in these sites only to accentuate the text information. However, the sites may include video and FLASH presentation as well.

Promoting products or services
A pharmaceutical company to promote its recently launched medicine may develop a website surrounding the product. The sole purpose of this type of sites is to create awareness of specific products or services.

Creating brand awareness
A manufacturing company that sells its products exclusively through distributing channel may develop a website to provide ultimate information on the products and create brand. These sites complement company’s offline promotional efforts and always built in consistence with other commercials.

E-commerce
Online sales are done through the e-commerce sites. Main characteristics of an e-commerce site include:
1. Detail products or services information with pictures and sometimes with multimedia presentations, drawings, charts, etc. 2. Shopping cart – so that the buyer can select one or several items to purchase.3. Payment gateway – so that the buyer can make payments for the products or services purchased.

Corporate portals
A Website that offers a broad range of resources and services such as email, forums, company pertinent news & articles, membersonly area, etc. is generally called a portal. Portals are intended to be the gateway for their respective audience.

B2B exchange
Business to Business Exchange is an online platform where buyers and sellers come to communicate, collaborate and make business transactions. The main objective of a B2B Exchange is to create a venue, filled with features that allow members to efficiently conduct business processes through the Internet. A private B2B exchange is a corporate portal with a marketplace. It is designedto provide services to the company’s own buyers, sellers and workforce.

WEBSITE PLANNING
Before starting to build your website you should first develop a plan in line with your online objectives, target audience and resources. You can write your plan thoroughly as a storyboard. A storyboard is something similar to a flowchart of all the website components you deem necessary. Once you have a clear picture of what you are going to build, sit with your developers and create a technical scope of the project. This is absolutely necessary! In most of the cases your entrepreneurial vision will differ drastically with the way a programmer look into your requirement.

While working on your scope or even after publishing your websitebear in mind the following crucial aspects of effective websites:

Page loading timeIn the euphoria of having a great slick website, often, we use images that make the pages too heavy. A page which takes just one second to load with T1 speed will need full 55 seconds to load with a 28.8 modem. Web surfers are impatient bunch of click-happy people they don’t like to wait too long! Make sure you optimize each and every page of your website before launchingthe site! Otherwise, you will loose a large portion of your would-be visitors for nothing!
- Look at your pages from a visitor’s prospective.
- Eliminate all images that are not so important to deliveryour messages.- Optimize the remaining images with available tools.
- FLASH images are may be cool, don’t use them just because they are cool. Use them wisely.

Host your website in a server with a good bandwidth.

Navigation
Your website’s links should be well-defined, persistent, and easily visible. If the site is large with many pages, you must have a site map page. Remember that not all visitors will land to your homepage, in order to keep them browsing through your site make navigation from your main landing pages as easy as possible. Try giving them compelling reasons to do so by using catchy links. Also, make sure that all your links work correctly and take a visitor to right place.
Webpage consistencyAll your web pages should have one consistent look. This will give your website a professional appearance, and visitors while browsing through your site will always know that they are still on your website.

Content is the king
If you want your visitors to return back to your site, regularlyadd fresh, relevant and quality content to your website. Internetusers are information hungry people, feed them with fresh information on a regular basis and you will have good number of loyal visitors to your website.
If you already have a website make sure you optimize your websitefrom user’s point of view. According to Gartner, a market research company, even a minor investment in improving the usability of a company website will yield an annual return of 10 to 20 per cent. It increases brand awareness, leads to higher user adoption rates and possibly more transactions per user. Average order size starts to rise and the site generates more return visits from customers.

RESOURCES
Website Performance Tool and Web Page Speed Analysis:http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze
Check your web pages for bad links:http://www.siteowner.com/badlinks.cfm
Webmaster resources: http://bignosebird.com

About the author
Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, he has wide experience in Business Consulting, International Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace with solutions to start and run online business.You can contact him at mailto:nowshade[at]rusbiz.comhttp://ezine.rusbiz.com

Blogging for Business

Written by: Amitabh Shukla
Amitabh Shukla

Business blogs are primarily used to improve a company's communication both internally and externally. Business blogs are a type of communication channel that could be used effectively in product launches, team interaction internally within the company or interaction between clients and company. With the level of interactivity blogs provide, clients feel more confident in the company. Not to mention the amount of traffic it brings to the main site.

Personal and business blogs: What is difference between two?

There is not much of difference between personal and business blogs visually but there is a fine difference between them in terms of reputation and brand attached.

Business blogs should be well planned before hand. Companies can't afford to just walk away after launching their blog. Business blog has to be successful. Constant and consistent posts are the rule of the game. Blogsphere is full of best writers and faster one learns their rule, better for them. Companies can't just rely on the fact that they are market leaders in their business so they will be successful with their blogs too.

The postings on business blog should be open and should portray personality of the writer and the company. The postings on business blogs should be very informal, and should be written in first person voice. Posts should be informative and relevant with an expert touch to it.

Business Blogs and it content:

According to search engine optimizers, "Content is King". Indeed this is true for websites but not for a blog. Blog is all about writing with a particular voice and personality. A lot of people would like the style and would stick to the blog with regular visits. A lot of them will hate it and would never return.

Content for a business blog should be written in a strong voice with high consistency in quality. It becomes somewhat difficult to maintain quality with regular postings, but no choice. A few bad or substandard posts and regular visitors to the blog will fly off.

Important

Don't hammer your visitors every time with posts like how great is your product and so on. Add some funny incidences or bit of humor to your postings. Talk something about how employees enjoyed drinks in a party organized at particular department. Add some lighter moments in between posts.

Amitabh Shukla(Personal blog for the author is at Seo Expert)

5 Surefire Ways To Ruin Any Website

by Timothy Ward

Owning a website gives you certain rights. For example, you have the right to plaster your URL all over the doors and windows of your SUV in hopes that someone in one of the 7 cars you pass on the way to work will get the urge to visit your website and spend gobs of money. You own the website-this is your right. You also have the right to post pictures of your family, friends, pets, and other totally uninteresting images all over your website after all it's yours. One of the biggest rights you have as a webmaster is the right to make your website successful (and profitable) or to run it into the ground like a 737 missing both engines and landing gear. For those of you who despise online success and frown upon the wealths of cyberspace I have compiled a list of 5 ways to ruin any website.

1. Make Your Website As Cluttered As Possible
Nothing makes visitors leave quicker than a cluttered website that is hard to navigate around. So if you want people to flee from your site like it's a rabid wolf then be sure to put as much junk as you can on the homepage. Then make the links to the rest of the website hard to find. Be sure to have lots and lots of pictures, forms, banners and pop-ups as well. All the relevant information should be well hidden, and the main focus should appear to be the countless programs you want visitors to sign up for. That should keep any pesky visitors from ever coming back.

2. Never Update Your Website
If someone were to visit your website today and then come back 6 months from now they should see the same information. Nothing should be updated. This will let them know that you care nothing about the website and that you have nothing new to offer them. The next time they see a listing for your website they won't even bother to visit. Great!

3. Never Ever Advertise
Advertising cost money and it might draw some good targeted traffic to your website. So be sure to never advertise. You can just keep promoting your website through those same tired free programs that you have been using for years. This should bring you little or no traffic, and the traffic that does come won't be your target audience so they're almost certain to leave without spending a dime. Awesome!

4. Always Sell A Crappy Product
Selling good products online can get you a good reputation. A good reputation can get you repeat sales and new customers. You don't want all this hassle. So find the worst products you can and sell them exclusively. This should damage your reputation to the point where no one wants to bother buying from your site. Be sure to lie about your product too. This will further ruin any kind of credibility you may have.

5. Never Respond To Any Questions
If someone emails you with a question about your website or products on your website, Do Not Reply. Replying could be considered courteous and businesslike. You don't want to come off that way. It's better to just delete any emails from people who were interested enough in your website to take the time to email. Hopefully this will drive them to one of your competitors websites and out of your hair.

There you have it folks. Five great ways to ruin any website. So don't blame me if you don't follow these tips and you become an online success story. I've done all I can to try and help out. And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to write down the URL that's airbrushed on the hood of this Ford Explorer beside me...
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Tim Ward invites you to visit http://www.timward.1afm.com to sign up for his weekly humor column 'I Never Said I WasNormal'.
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Combine Links with Quality Resources and You’re on a Winner

Written by: Jim Green
WRITING FOR PROFIT

There are 1001 ways to drive traffic to your websites.

I reckon I’ve tried most of them over the years and in the process have become blasé over the whole process of traffic promotion - but here’s one that surprises even a hardened old cynic like me…

Several months ago I designed a single-page website, launched the creature as a sub-domain and promptly forgot about it. In point of fact it was so absentmindedly conceived that the tag still contains the template reference.

So what happened to it?

Here’s what….it has achieved some amazing rankings.

- Yahoo! # 2 (out of 8,270,000 web pages)
- AltaVista #2
- AllTheWeb #2

What’s even better…

I attached my little afterthought single page to two of my prime sites and quality traffic is rocketing to both of them. These sites have always performed well for me but now they’re on fire.

1st CREATIVE WRITING COURSE
#13 on Yahoo! (out of 8,720,000 web pages) for keyword phrase ‘creative writing course’

HOW TO PRODUCTS-XL
# 10 on Yahoo! (Out of 706,000,000 – yes 706 million – web pages)
for keyword phrase ‘how to products’

What is the secret of the single page winner?

It consists entirely of LINKS to QUALITY RESOURCES with reciprocal arrangements for most.

The trick is to narrow the focus on your niche and link to the cream of the marketplace including some of your competition…

If you visit the website in the resource box and click on RESOURCES you can check out my little one-page monster for yourself – and thereafter do a check on the search engines listed.

Jim Green is a bestselling author with an ever-growing string of niche non-fiction titles to his credit. View his output at http://1st-creative-writing-course.com

Are You Choosing Your Website Colors Safely?

Written by: Maricon Almonte Williams
Printing Shoppers

Many designers are overlooking the vitality of colors in creating a web site. Why is it vital? It is because it creates a mood – it can annoy, irritate or interest and uplift the spirit of the visitors. Your site can end up plain and boring or chaotic if you don’t take a look at your colors minutest details.

If you are not an expert in colors, you can consult the color wheel to achieve safe colors. You can opt for complementary colors, those that are found across another color, for safe choices. Orange and blue implies excitement. Green and blue on the other hand, implies unanimity and agreement. You can also opt for monochromatic colors or in the web design parlance – the monolithic approach. It is the approach which uses different shades of the same color. Experts are saying that monoliths is best suited for business sites because of their classy and subtle appearance. Just a word of caution to web designers, this approach can sometimes result to boring colors and may in turn, need an addition of black or other solid colors.

As a general rule, use colors that are pleasing to the eyes and will complement to the subject matter. Thus, it can be concluded that rich, classy and traditional colors like blue, gray, brown and burgundy can be best suited for business websites.

You can also use the conventional black texts with white backgrounds to ensure readability. To grab attention to the subject matter, you can use the bold color red. In order to make your website dynamic yet still readable, you can use contrasting colors. You can have the trial and error method to get best results.

To further guide you with what colors can do. Here are some of their portrayed identities:

Blue means water, peaceful, sad and masculinity.
Red means passion, love, hot and fire.
Yellow conveys happiness, caution, construction, and slowdown.
Green connotes jealousy, envy, beginner, fertility and spring.
Purple may mean royal, grand and comedy.
Orange conveys warmth, Halloween, fall and seasons.
Brown may mean warning, dirty, fall, earthy, environmental and grounded.
Pink entails femininity, cute, softness and weakness.

Your choices of color represent you. It must also represent your products or services. It must be used as a tool to attract visitors and not to irritate them. Another rule of thumb that you must consider is that you MUST use web safe color. What do I mean web safe? It means that the colors must appear sound and clear on the monitor. That way you can be assured that what the visitors are seeing are the exact colors that you want to convey thus, the exact identity.

Indulge in the enthralling world of the powerful colors and you will be delighted with the positive output.

For Comments and Questions about the Article you may Log - on to http://www.printingshoppers.com

3 Simple (and Little-known) Psychological Tricks that Can Increase Your Profits by 100% or More!

by Michael Hopkins

Your sales page is the life-blood of your business. It's the number one difference between a successful product and an unsuccessful product.

Now, a lot has been written about the art of sales copy writing and, if you've been marketing online for any length of time already, you'll be familiar with most of the main points (a strong headline, focus on benefits, a strong call to action and so on).

However, in this article I'm going to introduce you to three very simple, little-known psychological tricks that will instantly increase the readability of your sales page and, thus, greatly increase your chances of closing the sale.

By the way, I learned the first two tricks (and a lot more) from George Katsoudas through the (excellent) free e-course he offers at FrankensteinMarketing.com.

Okay, here goes...

Psychological Sales Page Trick #1: The Big Letter
It's well known that, if you can get your visitors to read the opening paragraph of your sales page, you've hugely increased the chances that they'll read your entire page. And, if they read the entire page, your chances of making a sale have improved big time.

Now, let me ask you a question...
Have you ever wondered why magazines and newspapers use a BIG first letter in the opening paragraph of their articles? (For example, if the article begins with the word 'Why', there will be a great big black W at the beginning).
They do this, because it draws the reader down in to the article.
You can use this very same principle on your website. By using a big letter at the start of your opening paragraph, your visitors eyes will be drawn in and you'll succeed in getting them launched into your sales page.
But don't just make your letter bigger so it sticks up above the others in the paragraph - that simply doesn't work.
Your big letter needs to be aligned so that the top of the letter is in line with the top of the text that follows. (You can see a very good example of this on the 'Website Conversion Secrets' sales page here).
To achieve this effect, create an image file of the letter and then, using your web editing software align it to the left of the text.
It takes just five minutes to do this, but it will be five minutes well spent.

Psychological Sales Page Trick #2: Indented Paragraphs
This is so simple, so effective and yet hardly anyone does it!
Indent your paragraphs!
Just adding a few spaces before the start of each paragraph (just like in this article) makes it easier for the reader to continue reading your text.
And, as I've said, if you can get people reading your sales text, you're well on the way to making a sale.

Psychological Sales Page Trick #3: Add Order to Your Form
Summarize everything in your order form.
Lots of people won't read your entire sales page and will just want to know what you're offering and how much it costs.
For this reason, it's important that, at the point of ordering, you include every bit of essential information related to your offer: the product name with a brief description, the free bonuses, the price, the guarantee, the assurance of a secure ordering procedure and the compelling reason why the visitor should buy now.
The best way to do this is to have all the order links on your sales page point to a separate 'order' page containing everything I mentioned above.
Again, you can see this technique at work on the "Website Conversion Secrets" site.
By the way, do you notice the unchecked check-box, followed by "Yes,..."? You've probably seen them used a lot by now. Why? Well, it's another psychological trick. Mark Joyner - after an extensive series of tests - concluded that the addition of this check-box resulted in a 32% increase in sales! Go figure.
And there you have it. Three simple tricks that will get more people reading your sales letters helping you to make more profits.
Don't put it off. Try it out on your sales page today. You can use the Scientific Internet Marketing Assistant that you got for free in your last issue of Ebook Times to test the results. I'm confident that you'll be pleasantly surprised!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Michael Hopkins is owner of BizzyDays Ebook Publications.Visit now to download original ebooks for free at:http://www.bizzydays.com

Dramatically Increase Your Traffic at Zero Cost!

by Michael Hopkins

Bringing in lots of quality traffic to your website is the key to success for your online business. But it also happens to be the hardest and most expensive part.
Fortunately, there's still ONE easy way to bring in floods of quality traffic without spending a cent...

Just write simple articles and submit them for publication in relevant ezines.
It's not new and it's not revolutionary but it DOES work!

There are several benefits to using articles to promote your product or service:
· You can generate huge amounts of quality targeted traffic by having your articles published in ezines related to your market.
· By having your articles published on other websites (and ezine archives), you'll increase your link popularity as well as directly bring in extra traffic.
· By including the articles on your site, you'll have some good keyword-rich content for the search engines to pick up on.
· Once you've written a few articles centered around the same topic, compile them into a free ebook and, hey presto, you've got yet another traffic-generating tool!
· You can make your articles available to your affiliates as a tool to promote your product.
· You instantly enhance your reputation in the eyes of potential customers.

In short, articles are an EXCELLENT promotion and sales tool.
And, despite what you might think, writing quality articles that Ezine publishers WILL use is much easier than you might think.

Consider these titles and see how many articles related to your product/service you could write...
7 Ways To...
10 Tips For First-Time...
6 Things You Never Knew About...
8 Useful Resources for...
10 Websites That...

These kind of titles ALWAYS work well at attracting the attention of the target audience AND they're quick and easy to write -- all you need is an introduction, the list of points and a concluding paragraph. Heck, just find a few useful websites or free tools related to your subject and you're probably half way there!

Once you've written your article, wait a few days and then read it again. This will give you a fresh perspective to make some improvements and clean up errors. (Don't ignore this step -- it's important).

Now, start submitting your article to article announcement lists and article directories. Here are a few to get you started:

Announcement Lists(Note: Sending an email will subscribe you to the list. It's best to avoid using your main email address if you don't want to have loads of articles arriving to your inbox every day).- article_announce-subscribe@egroups.com- free-content-subscribe@onelist.com- publishinyours-subscribe@onelist.com- articles_archives-subscribe@egroups.com
Article Directories:- GoArticles.com- EzineArticles.com- IdeaMarketers.com- Amazines.com- NetterWeb.com- Article Central

Once you've done submitting your article there, it's time to get specific...

Start submitting to relevant ezines and websites inviting them to publish it. You'll find tons of ezines that are crying out for content in Ezine Directories like Zinos.com or Amazines.com.

Make sure the ezines you're submitting to accept articles and, if so, find out if they have specific guidelines for submission. It's a good idea to find out the name of the publisher so that you can personalize your submission.

This is a copy of the message I use when submitting articles. Feel free to copy it and adapt it to your own needs:

Hi,
My name is [YOUR NAME] and I'm the owner of
[YOUR SITE AND URL].
I've included my latest article for you to consider publishing
in your ezine [EZINE NAME].
The title is "[ARTICLE TITLE]"
I'm certain your readers will find value in it.
Please feel free to publish the article (below) along with the short
bio at the end. I'd greatly appreciate a courtesy copy if you decide
to use it.
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to your ezine.
Wishing you continued success!
[YOUR NAME]
[YOUR EMAIL]
[YOUR URL]
Article: "[ARTICLE TITLE]"
Article size: xxx words (body)
=======================================================
Article Begins Here...
=======================================================
[ARTICLE TEXT]
=======================================================
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
[YOUR BIO]
=======================================================

And there you have it, a quick and easy (yes, easy!) approach to generating quality targeted traffic in the short and long term.

Believe me, if you want to do just one thing this week towards developing your online business, then don't put it off...

Write that article today!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Michael Hopkins is owner of BizzyDays Ebook Publications.Visit now to download original ebooks for free at:http://www.bizzydays.com/

RSS Feeds Have Revolutionized the Internet

by: Gunnar Berglund

RSS feeds have revolutionized the Internet for one very good reason: they have provided and end to Spam. With RSS feeds, you can say good-bye to mass emails and distributions that do not meet your news needs and clog up your mailbox and hard drive.

RSS technology provides a way to sort through the vast amount of information available via the Internet and to select only that information that will best suit your needs.

RSS technology is easy to use and available to the general public, and assists web masters and designers every day in their attempts to fine tune website to the specifications of the goal audience. RSS feeds provide a simple approach to the perplexing problem of Spam, and are accessible at your fingertips.

An RSS editor or reader reads RSS feeds. An RSS feed is a small package of information that you can use to select the larger article or content. RSS feeds contain the title of the article, and a synopsis of what the article is about. The RSS feed significantly cuts down on the time you spend sorting through articles to pick the ones that meet your specific needs.

An RSS feed also sometimes contains a snippet of the actual article, which will allow you to understand the feel and style of the article. An RSS editor or reader can sort RSS feeds. This technology can be fine tuned to select RSS feeds for your perusal You can select based on title, content, or based on the origin of the article. You can subscribe to certain news groups or can keep your RSS feeds more generalized.

An RSS editor can be used to generate RSS feeds. You can use RSS marketing to distribute your information to the public and be sure it will be treated as important information rather than as Spam. Traffic to your website will increase when you incorporate the kind of information your target audience in most interested in.

You can specify your content areas on your RSS feed, and generate return readers by continually providing the most up-to-date and applicable information. You can get your product information into the hands of the kind of people who invest in RSS technology and who appreciate innovation.

An RSS feed allows you to market directly to the customers you seek, and decreases the aggravation of mass email. Mass email, another form of Spam, is often filtered before your future clients ever have a chance to look into what you have to offer.

RSS feeds provide an opportunity to reach a multitude of people while ensuring that the information you are dispersing is not Spam oriented. Original, fresh content will keep you Internet site interesting and attractive to new and old readers alike. Check into RSS feeds and see how RSS technology has revolutionized the Internet.

About The Author
© 2005 Gunnar Berglund
Gunnar Berglund has been a "internet- hardworker" for the last five years. He publishes The meonit Gazette http://gazette.meonit.com and run http://www.meonit.com and http://www.visualxmleditor.com.

Keywords Are For Humans Not Search Engines

by: Ant Onaf

It seems keywords are making the top of SEO list time and time again. The problem is that some optimizers do not understand the rightful purpose of keywords. Keywords should not be solely embedded for the purpose of reaching the top of search engines. Search Engine Optimization should not be the primary focus of any website. The primary and number 1 focus should always be the visitors. If you create a website for your audience and for your visitors then you should rank fairly. I can't see why any legitimate website can not rank properly within search engines, after time and dedication. Search Engine Optimization main purpose is ranking faster within search engines. Instead of gaining a good balance of traffic within 1 or more years, it is possible to gain a good balance of traffic within 6-9 months with SEO.

Keywords play a major factor in SEO and search engines in general, but the question is are keywords for the search engines or the visitors? The visitors are the ones who are trying to find your site by typing in a keyword, but the search engine is the one locating your site and delivering your site to the visitor based on the searched keywords. Therefore I would have to say, keywords, visitors, and search engines all work hand in hand, but if you focus on the visitor and not the search engine, then you will reap greater rewards. A webmaster should have a plentiful of quality and researched keywords, which becomes the sites core. To receive a good balance of keywords you need to think like your visitors or know how your visitors think. It boils down to research and tracking your visitors. Tracking visitors on your site is business-wise and is not an unethical practice, it’s your website (business). In an offline business you are well aware when a visitor opens the door to your business and comes in the store, the same applies online. It becomes unethical when you continue to track visitors when they exit your site, when you invade visitors’ privacy, or when you intentionally collect personal information about a visitor without their consent or knowledge. Tracking a visitor within your site does not need to be intense, the common web log files are helpful enough. With the web log files you should be able to track the keyword used to find your website, track where a visitor came from to find your site (the referrer), track the total number of unique visitors, track the total number of all visitors, track how many pages were viewed, track the path visitors take within your site, and much more information is available through the web logs. There are many tools that can translate your raw web log files into graphical and legible text, such as: Nihuo or Web Log Expert which both offers a free log analyzer download as well as an inexpensive analyzer for more detailed stats and more features. There are other upscale web log analyzers which are mostly for enterprises or larger sites but are extremely detailed and rewarding, such as: Web Trends, Deep Matrix, or Urchin (which has recently been acquired by the search engine giant 'Google'). Knowing your visitors can only benefit your site. If you have a new website without any visits then you will not have the benefit of knowing your visitors and you will have to create your visitors habits, by using good judgment and research to determine which keywords best suits your site. Your best effort should provide you with at least 250 keywords and keyword phrases, depending on your site category.

Once you have tracked your visitors and/or have completed researching keywords, you are ready to make informed decisions and begin the process of elimination. Many argue to stay away from popular or general keywords because the market for popular and general keywords is flooded and over-crowded, you will never be able to compete. My sentiments exactly, but remember keywords are for visitors, not search engines...so yes, I recommend including popular and general keywords as long as the keyword(s) show room for opportunity. Meaning, it has been used by your visitors...as a solitaire keyword or within a keyword phrase. Creating keyword phrases is important because at least 95% of internet users search using keyword phrases, not many use one word. With that said, you should still include a few solitaire keywords. Use singular and plural expressions for keywords. Once you have gathered all your keywords make two lists, one list can be titled active keywords...keywords which you are currently using or plan to use in the near future. The second list can be titled inactive keywords...keywords which have been eliminated and may never be used. Eliminate keywords based on your research, visitor data, and site category. Regardless how general your site is try to have only one focus audience, this zooms in on your target, makes marketing the site easier, and more successful. When done eliminating you should have a plentiful of keywords and keyword phrases. Generally, the goal should be to have at least a combination of 100 keywords and keyword phrases. This number may be greater or lesser depending on your site category/niche market. Keyword research can be accomplished a number of ways. I would recommend using best judgment and sticking to your site topic. If your site is about “the rules of playing baseball” then anything pertaining to the rules of baseball should be included as keywords. Remember think like your visitors, if you were a visitor looking for 'the rules of baseball' how would you search...your search words would probably be something like "rules of playing baseball"...."baseball playing rules"...."playing baseball rules"....rules of baseball"...."baseball rules"...."how to play baseball"...."baseball and the rules"...if your site contains the 'rules of baseball' then each of those keyword phrases will be sufficient for inclusion into your active keyword list. A few links that can help with keyword research are: NicheBot, Wordtracker, Google Keyword Tool, Digital Point Keyword Tool. Some of the main attributes which you want to research is how often the keyword/keyword phrase is searched for within search engines, how much competition there is for the keyword/keyword phrase, and if you are considering pay-per-click then you would probably like to know the average cost per click for each keyword/keyword phrase. You should not rely 100% on any of these reports or other reports from any third-party because there are many deterrence which may offset the reports, you should collect data from each of them and derive a census report which will allow you to make an informed decision.

Think about your visitors each step of the way when using keywords. Which keywords will catch their attention, directly or indirectly? Meaning, if a user searches for 'baseball rules' then when the search engine searches through billions of web pages...it should pull your web page into the results because you have a entire website dedicated to baseball rules and the entire site is centered around keywording. When the search engine crawls through the billions of web pages it should see that your web page title has "baseball rules" within the title, your meta-tag description has “baseball rules” within the description, your meta-tag keywords have “baseball rules” within the keywords, the link to the page is titled “baseball_rules.htm”, and the content on the web page itself has a proper amount of keyword density, basically, the keyword phrase "baseball rules" is plastered throughout the web page mostly leading towards the top of the page. I know most of what I have just mentioned is Search Engine Optimization practices and techniques, yes, that is true, but in actuality the entire process is for the visitors not the search engine. If you create your site easier for the search engine to find then the visitor will also find it easier and faster, but at all times it is important to keep the visitor in mind. Many SEO practitioners would include any keyword about baseball such as: "baseball"..."major leagues"...."major league baseball"...."minor leagues"...."minor league baseball"...."atlanta braves"...."new york yankees"...."baseball players"….etc. Those keywords are for the search engines not the visitors. If a visitors enters "atlanta braves" as a search keyword and your link is displayed as an result the visitor will be disappointed when he clicks on your link and does not find any solid information pertaining to the "atlanta braves"...instead he/she is greeted with "baseball rules". The visitor will immediately back out without referencing your site or indexing it for later retrieval because it does not pertain to their search quest. Once in a while you may become lucky and get someone who stays because it does mention baseball, but if you tracked conversions, it would surely sink, using this method. The better you target your visitors the more success you will have on the web. Properly using keywords to target your visitors and not the search engines will aid in more ways than one. It will create a healthy online circuit and greater chance for success. Imagine if each time you search the web...you had a perfect search! You only needed to search once, because exactly what you were looking for was found in the first results.

About The Author
Ant Onaf is the owner and founder of www.JournalHome.com. He is an online internet marketer, web advertiser, and IT consultant. Ant Onaf has years of IT-related experience and Internet-related experience. His ingenuity, dedication, and passion for technology & internet marketing have made him a monumental icon in the World Wide Web. His blog can be visited at http://www.journalhome.com/AntOnaf.

Web Hosting Help – What’s Bandwidth

by: Declan Tobin

Bandwidth can make all the difference when choosing where to host your website
A common mistake made by so many people when looking to choose a web host company is not asking about bandwidth. After spending so long designing or with a developer designing your web site you do not want to see a good web site ruined and only viewed by a handful of people at a time. A web site is generally your shop window and you want as many people as possible to look in and hopefully click on your information or purchase online if you are offering products. All web host companies will offer you a limited amount of bandwidth, it’s then up to you to calculate whether or not you need to pay a little extra for bandwidth you may require.

Don’t be afraid to ask for advice from the web host company, it is there job to help you along the way and after all it’s you who is paying for there service. You will need to advice them as to how big each page is on your website and if possible a rough calculation as to how many people you think may view your site on a weekly or daily basis.

Is it possible to save bandwidth?
Yes it is and this comes into play at the time of designing your website. If you are looking to save the bandwidth you should put all photos in the JPEG format and all graphics in GIF format. By doing so you are compressing the files using only the very least bandwidth required.

Why do some companies offer only a very limited amount of bandwidth?
You have got to remember that web hosting is an extensive market and very profitably for the web hosting company. The more people they can attract to their services the more profit they make. They in turn have to pay out to the telecoms companies for the bandwidth provided to them and are only wanting to pay the bare amount to keep profits high. Web host companies that are not offering you the additional bandwidth are the ones to avoid. If they say it is not possible to purchase additional bandwidth, then the chances are this is a small company with poor technology behind them operating on a shoestring budget.

What will happen if I do not have enough bandwidth?
It’s very simply really, if your website has not got enough bandwidth to operate with, one of two things will happen. Your website will download onto peoples monitors very slowly and the chances are they will not wait around. The second problem is that your web site may only be viewed by a very limited audience at one time. You may have great link backs from other websites driving traffic your way only for that traffic to be diverted elsewhere to a properly functioning competitor.

How can I ensure that this will not happen to me?
Undoubtedly it is very frustrating to spend time and money developing a good informative website only to have it’s viewing reduced by lack of bandwidth. You need to be honest with your web host company and tell them the number of pages and how large your overall files are, by doing this the onus is on them to offer us the service your require. You can ask for a guarantee from the web host company that all will be fine with your site and there are many out there willing to give such guarantees. If you decide to go it cheap and risk the low bandwidth you are only fooling yourself. Look at the rates from the different web host companies for extra bandwidth and you will be pleasantly surprised that it will not cost an arm and a leg to have a little extra. Knowingly going over bandwidth with only cost you revenue in the long run and makes your website very unprofessional. If you are hosting with a reliable web host company they will not allow this happen anyway.

If you are unsure as to how large your website actually is act the person or company who developed the site for you to advise or simply ask the web host company, all will be happy to oblige you.

About The Author
Declan Tobin is a successful freelance writer providing advice to consumers on purchasing a variety of Affordable Web Hosting and Cheap web hosting, and more! His numerous articles provide a wonderfully researched resource of interesting and relevant information. http://www.no1-in-web-hosting.com.

Web Site Hosting For Your Business – Free or Paid?

by: Calin Indre

It’s time to choose! Should you spend some money to get a web hosting solution for your business or get one for free?

Yes, the big moment has finally arrived. Your business is now on the verge of taking the next step forward. It will establish a web presence. This is an important step as from now on your business is able to reach more customers, is able to get more exposure, and hopefully enjoy online recognition.

Space, bandwidth and domain name all come with a cost, but there is a possibility to get them all for free. Resource management principles will probably tell you to choose the free solution.
Nowadays the cost for web hosting services has a very reasonable reason partially because of the technological progress, partially because of the stiff competition on the web hosting market.
Still… why pay for it when you can get it for free?

Free web hosting
Dozens, even hundreds of free web hosting providers offer their services on the Internet. Could there be one that meets the needs for your business? Hardly, if any.

Please let me state clearly that this article is not intended to attack or discredit hosts or advertisers. It’s only purpose is to assess and understand how can be best met the hosting needs of a business. Any business. And yes, in spite of everything stated here, even the author of this article has resorted at some point in time to the services of free web hosts!

You probably learned too, and at a very small age, that in life everything comes with a price. However, there it is … allover the Internet: Free Web Hosting.

Nothing in this world is free. So how comes there even is free web hosting?

The definition of the term “free” according to The New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary, states gives the following definition for the term free:

adj. not subject to external restraints or domination; not captive, at liberty; not having to be paid for; unhampered; open to all without restrictions; etc.

adv. without expense; without penalty
v.t. to release from constraint, set free
Therefore a literally free hosting service would mean no restraints, no expenses and no restrictions for the user. Webmasters would design with only limited by their imagination and skills. All the space and the bandwidth you would possibly ask for at no cost whatsoever. Real-life scenario? Could anyone really think so?

Indeed nothing in this world comes without price. Even it is not apparent. And the price you must pay for free web hosting comes in many forms, as free web hosting providers must pay too for bandwidth, not to mention other costs.

While some free web hosts require you to have one on their banners on your web site, others place pop up adds, or flashing advertising messages. So it’s free for you as long as you fulfill their set of requirements and meet their conditions. In addition to this, you should consider that host's service is free with let’s say 25 Megs of space; more space means different conditions and you could have to pay for it.

Paid web hosting
If you are billed, it means you own something. There is now a contractual bind between you and your web-hosting provider, which in turn must offer you his services. Ownership gives you more control of your online presence. Important as ownership is, it is neither the only nor the biggest advantage of paying for your hosting solution.

The identity of your business would be clear from your URL down to your web content without banners confusing your customers. Imagine that you deal with What I would say, is ask yourself if you would deal with someone offering a similar service/ product as you are promoting, who was obviously using a free site. If you would, then fine, but if not, don't expect anyone else to deal with you!

You will have usually sufficient e-mail addresses to accommodate the needs of your business. How serious would you take someone who hands you a business card with e-mail like john.doe@afreewebhostingprovider.com. And more important: would you do business with him?

It’s almost a standard for paid web hosting providers to offer features like PHP and MySQL, features that allow your site to grow along with your business needs. With such features you can easily have an online store, offer your customers the possibility to track their orders etc.
Often the web hosting provider offers guarantees for the uptime of the server, and this avoids unnecessary frustration for your customers. To complement this, support services of higher quality allow your business to overcome possible technical problems easier and faster.
Let’s review the main points of each option.

Free web hosting:
(+) It's free. No money for space, bandwidth and domain name
(-) Your URL will contain the mark of the free web-hosting provider and thus would not reflect the identity of your business. Changing providers might result in loosing some or all the traffic to your online business
(-) Required advertising items such as banners, frames etc have a detrimental effect on your content in terms of accessibility and look, making it very unprofessional
(-) If you plan to use banner exchange on your site read carefully their Terms and conditions. Some free hosts doesn't allow it
(-) You will probably have lower bandwidth then a paid host provides and space could also be restricted
(-) Features like PHP and MySQL are rather rare for a free web-hosting provider. Some don’t offer FTP access to your website
(-) It’s common that free hosting providers change their Terms and conditions at some point in time. Consider that no adds today could mean a banner or a popup tomorrow. Such changes could mean that the free hosting service is canceled and only paid web hosting services are offered. At this moment either you pay, either you loose your web site
Paid web hosting:
(-) You will have to pay for it. Usually you have to pay for hosting (space and bandwidth) and for the domain name
(+) You can host your own domain. With your unique domain name changing web hosting providers don’t cause loosing your traffic
(+) Support is offered by most paid web hosting providers. This usually means 24/7 support via email or live chat and, in some cases, toll-free phone support is available
(+) The uptime of the server(s) hosting your web site is better then on free host and more and more frequently the web hosting provider offers uptime guarantee
(+) The amount of enough disk space and bandwidth available is very likely to cover the needs of your business
(+) Features like PHP and MySQL are almost standard for a paid hosting plan. Also you will have FTP access to your website.

It could be tempting to embrace the idea that a free web hosting is good point to start from, but it’s not something you would want to consider if you are looking to establish your business as a serious web presence.

In the end it all comes down to this one question: How big ambitions do you have with your website?

If you look to make some savings while getting your business online, save time instead and register a domain name. The small amount of money saved on web hosting might cost your business customers, and a loss of image. The cost of a paid web hosting solution is small compared with freedom it gives to your online presence. Yes, freedom of your image, of the way you treat your online presence.

If your online business is important to you, better make that if you care for it at all, when coming to the decision of opting over free or paid web hosing choose
Keep in mind that the success of your online presence will play a significant role in the future growth of your business.

About The Author
Calin Indre is editor at HostPinPin (www.hostpinpin.com), a Cheap Web Hosting Directory. HostPinPin.com is a resource for webmasters and consumers looking to find a web hosting company. Providing web hosting articles, tips, web hosting reviews, compare web hosting plans and more.

10 Seconds Is All It Takes

… (How To Grab The Attention Of Your Audience With Your Web Site) by: Granny's Mettle

FACT: 30 to 60% of visitors tend to drop off and click to another site when they are forced to click their mouse more often than necessary.

FACT: People who use the internet are usually those who are always on-the-go and don’t want to spend time figuring out how to navigate any web site.

FACT: It takes all of ten seconds for most first-time visitors to spend time on any web site before deciding if it's worth any attention.

Yes, it only takes ten seconds for viewers to get interested and stay a little longer to know more about your site and get the information they're looking for.

This is the main reason why the first page is the most important in any web site. Rule of thumb is to have a page that is direct to the point, doesn't waste time, and doesn't waste bandwidth. It's necessary that you get to the crux of your message and do it quick. Or else your audiences are outta here.

Studies prove that human nature cause to lose focus on whatever it is that we are paying attention to after the initial ten seconds. The mind seem to think that after ten seconds, either the object of attention gets better and interesting, or the attraction just fades because of too many things.

And ten seconds is important in any web designer's job. A designer has to remember that in ten seconds, the web page should be able to deliver something useful, if not everything.
One designer relates that ten seconds is enough for an average person to read a length of 40 words. And 40 words can mean a great deal of a good opening paragraph. The opening paragraph according to the designer is your "contract" with your reader. With your "contract", you promise to deliver what your viewer needs, in every page of your web site.

And in ten seconds, you should be able load your page and everything in it if possible. In addition, you should also take advantage of the text and its worth for your web site. Text is the first element that gets delivered upon connection. So make reading your text worthwhile. Deliver your promise, and deliver them good.

This is the essence of usability in the wide world of the web. Utilizing those precious ten seconds to deliver what you promise, and provide what your viewer needs. Use those ten seconds wisely. Plan, design and execute in ten seconds.

People go to your web site because of what they can get from it. Ten seconds is all it takes for viewers to know if you have what they need. So make your ten seconds count.

About The Author
Granny's Mettle is a 30-something, professional web content writer. She has created various web content on a diverse range of topics, which includes digital printing topics, medical news, as well as legal issues. Her articles are composed of reviews, suggestions, tips and more for the printing and designing industry.

Her thoughts on writing: "Writing gives me pleasure… pleasure and excitement that you have created something to share with others. And with the wide world of the Internet, it gives me great satisfaction that my articles reach more people in the quickest time you could imagine."
On her spare time, she loves to stay at home, reading books on just about any topic she fancies, cooking a great meal, and taking care of her husband and kids.

For comments and inquiries about the article visit http://www.losangelesprintingservice.com
anna@rushprintingservices.com

How To Get Targeted Search Engine Traffic Quickly

by: Matt Bacak

Here’s the “How-To-Do-It Guide” for driving search engine traffic right to your website.
I only speak about methods I have used and that worked well for my business. There are a lot of people out there who will steer you in the wrong direction because they are just regurgitating old information that might have worked years ago. I’ll help you discover what’s happening right here, right now. Let’s get started with the plan.

Your first step is to define your target market. The better you are able to define your niche, the better your future clients will be able to find you and your products or services.

Next, you want to get very specific about what you’re going to market on your webpage and make sure that it’s congruent with our next step. When a person finds you on a search engine, you have a window of only 3 to 5 seconds to convince them that you are exactly what they were looking for. Make it crystal clear what you offer. If your meaning is unclear, the prospect will jump to the next site and you’ll lose that business.

The following step is to brainstorm your keywords - keeping in mind your target audience. How would they search for me? What would they look for? Don’t focus on how you identify yourself. The closer you are to your target audience, the more hits you will get, which equates to more customer traffic. The more specifically you target, the better off you are. You’re not going to have success if you list yourself too generically, there is too much competition and you’ll be lost in the crowd.

Once you have established your target market, define what specific categories you should be linking to and add them as part of your navigation page. A linking strategy is very important for building your link reputation. Links to your page will count towards link reputation and link popularity.

There are a lot of different search engines - six in particular that give you about 90% of all web-traffic. Of those Google has the most web traffic so we’ll focus on it. Google has a link page rank feature which rates the importance of your page. You’ll want to download their toolbar http://toolbar.google.com. This will allow you to view the ranking of every site you visit and how important it is in the almighty eye of Google. This is a key ingredient in determining linking strategy. Google ranks itself as a 10 on their scale of 0 to 10 (the higher the ranking, the more important a page). This is determined essentially by who is endorsing and linking to you.
You must map out how you’re going to get Google give to you a high page rank. For Google, the most important attribute is the title tag. You want to make sure you use your most targeted key word in the beginning of your title tag. Google will typically list the first 83 characters so the title is where you put your most valued key word(s) so it can be easily accessed.

The next maneuver is to focus on your link relevancy. Link relevancy is how well the text on your pages relates to your title tag, also taking in consideration the content of neighboring web pages. The analysis of all of this data enables Google to return results that are relevant to user queries. You want to be sure you are listed in user queries so make your content match your title, match your links, and match your products and or services. Remaining consistent and obvious is your key to directing traffic to your site.

About The Author
Matt Bacak became "#1 Best Selling Author" in just a few short hours. Recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s e-Biz radio show host is turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories. Discover The Secrets To Unleash The Powerful Promoter In You! Sign up for Matt Bacak's Promoting Tips Ezine ($100 value) just visit his website at http://www.powerfulpromoter.com.
matt@powerfulpromoter.com

Got a Small Business? Choose the Right Domain Name

by: Blake Kritzberg

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 is, however, two points that everyone agrees on:

Pick your domain before you launch your business.

This is especially true if your market niche has lots of competition. Research your domain before you commit to a business plan.

Don't wait too long if you like a domain.
While you're researching, you'll likely come across a couple of domains that attract you. You might be tempted to wait, since you haven't finalized or refined your business plan. Don't. A handful of domains isn't going to cost you much at an affordable registrar like GoDaddy, and once they're gone, they're gone. Chances are you can even resell the rejects at cost, if not a profit. Or "develop" them with unique content and point them to your main site for extra traffic.
Now that we have the easy part of the way, let's wade into murkier waters.
Q. Which TLD (top-level domain) is best?
A. If you're a juggernaut in the business world with a giant ad budget, the answer is dot-com (.com). If you're a smalltime business struggling for search engine positioning, the answer is still dot-com.

People do disagree on the value of a dot-com TLD. Some assert that dot-coms have no particular value in the search engines, which may be true.

However, the fact is, if you haven't yet seared your brand on the collective brow of the planet, dot-com makes you easier to remember. If you eschew dot-coms, then in some deep dark place inside, people will remember you as "that hard-to-remember URL with the ending that isn't dot-com." What's worse, if you pick an otherwise memorable domain ending in dot-net, -us, or (God forbid) -tv, some of your traffic will end up at that competitor who snagged the dot-com version of your domain. Okay, that's settled. Now for the controversial stuff. Which is best: the "keyword" domain, or the "creative-genius, snappy and brandable" domain?

Keyword Name vs. Creative-Genius Brandable Name
A Keyword Name is the boring, workhorse kind of domain. You seem them everywhere. They bristle with hyphens: "best-anchovy-pizza-in-siberia.com." Or "super-labrador-accessories-and-golfballs.biz." On the face of it, they're hard to brand. They're hard to fit on business cards. They're really hard to explain over the phone to Aunt Martha.

On the other hand, a Creative-Genius Brandable Name is the sexy kind of domain. The successes are sparkling: Yahoo!, Google, Amazon.com. You can shout these URLs across the room and the other guy will probably get it right. But note: the dot-com road is littered with hip, snappy business who failed to brand their product successfully, or get listed high in the search engines. Now their URLs all point to the same page: "server not found …"

The debate rages on, but the first question you must ask yourself is:

How will people find YOU?
It was recently reported that "direct navigation" web traffic has started to outnumber search engine traffic. In other words, more people visit sites by typing in the URL directly than they do by combing search engines for results. So more gurus are recommending ‘brandable' domains.
But think about this. As a small business owner, how will people find you? Word of mouth? Billboards on I-95? "Corporate sponsorships" on hockey arenas? Probably not: they'll find you through search engines. They'll type in "cheap purple widgets," and as a smart marketer, you will offer them a website optimized for the keywords "cheap purple widgets."

Still, this doesn't imply you should automatically pick a keyword domain. There are pros and cons to both types.

BRANDABLE: ADVANTAGES
The brandable domain is great for business cards. In fact, it's nearly compulsory if you're planning on offline marketing. In other words, if you're printing up stationary at Kinkos, you want a brandable domain name.

If you're also a marketing genius, this is a fit challenge for your talents. Finding a memorable, apt domain to brand your business is something no software-driven suggestion tool can do.

Most "hybrid" domains -- ones that are really crosses between keywords and brandable names -- are long gone. But if you create a unique idea for your brand, you can probably snag the dot-com name for yourself. Now all you have to do is burn that brand onto the world's collective forehead. If you do, you'll benefit from type-in traffic. That means that if someone hears about you, they can probably find you just buy typing in your domain.

BRANDABLE: DISADVANTAGES
The brandable name requires solid marketing skill, research and luck. Your name should be so catchy, it's almost viral. It should also convey your actual business – or you'll have to work hard (often meaning, spend money) to associate the two. Your name should be "tested" on coworkers, cousins and dishwasher repairmen to ensure it has no undesirable connotations. Finally, your name should be available as a domain, and not suffer from competitors with similar domains. Sometimes, pulling all this off is difficult.

KEYWORD: ADVANTAGES
By keyword names, we're not talking about the glorious generic keywords – the one-keyword kings such as drugs.com or business.com. No, we're talking keyword names you can afford.
This is where you buy the domain name www.cheap-purple-widgets.com in hopes of getting a top search ranking for cheap purple widgets.

Advantages are many. First, more keyword names are available. (They're ugly, and many people feel an aversion to hyphens.) Also, they do help you place higher in the search engines. It's true that search engines only give you a little credit for having a keyword in your domain, but "a little credit" counts.

Second, keyword domains leave no doubt in the searcher's mind about what you're selling. If you decided to call your widget business "Ableeza," a searcher might not get at a glance what it is you're selling, even if your rank is high.

Finally, if you can get people to link to you, those links will be valuable. No matter how Webmaster Joe describes you, the link part will always say, "cheap-purple-widgets." This is a powerful search engine strategy for moving higher.

KEYWORD: DISADVANTAGES
You won't get type-in traffic for a keyword name. You can't really explain it across a phone. It won't look pretty on a business card, and it's almost impossible to pair up with a cute logo. But if search engine traffic is going to drive your business, the keyword name is worth a long, hard look.

WRAP-UP
Regardless of which type you choose, don't play guessing games. If you go with a keyword name, use a search tool (like http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx) to determine what keyword phrases people are searching on.

If you choose a brandable name instead, test it out on a variety of real people first. Pay attention to their reactions. Reserve your domain early, since brandable domains go fast unless they're very unique.

In the long run, both types of domains can work for you, especially if offline marketing is an option and you have a knack for branding. Overall, though, the keyword domain is probably the easiest path to success for the small-business owner.

About The Author
Blake Kritzberg is a web designer and small business owner. Find more on domain selection, buying and selling at www.buy-the-domain-name.com.

Why Every Small Business Owner Needs Two Websites

by: John Jantsch

Every small business owner knows that they need a website, right? Well the truth is what they really need is at least two websites.

One website that is specific to their business, product, service, name, etc. and...
another site that is an educational site specific to the benefits of their service or product.

So JoesBaitShop.com tells all about the various lures and tackle you offer, even more about the charter trips, and eventually how to buy.

CatchFishToday.com (your other site) however is full of informative information, how-to tips, and resources for avid fisherpersons.

Of course this site also has plenty (but not too many) of links back to JoesBaitShop.com.
Here's the deal. Online people don't go out searching for companies, They go online looking for solutions, information, answers to life's persistent questions...you know like what's the best hat to wear cod fishing?

Your second website gives them the answer and sends them to your first site to go shopping.
It really doesn't matter what business you are in. An investment banking firm can benefit from the same strategy.

Here's the reason. The major search engines want to index high quality information. A site about what a person can buy from you doesn't make that cut but a site with an article about how to cast in windy conditions does.

In addition, search engines take a look at sites that link to you and give your some points for that. A high quality how to site about fishing will draw plenty of related links. This will only help drive that traffic to JoesBaitShop.com even faster.

The cost of putting up a website is so low these days it's really a crime if you don't come up with about 10 reasons to have multiple sites.

Think of it this way. You need one site that presells and one site that sells. If this strategy even remotely makes sense to you then there is a book you should read today! It's called Make Your Site Sell. Go see for yourself

Copyright 2004 John Jantsch
About The Author
John Jantsch is a marketing consultant based in Kansas City, Mo. He writes frequently on real world small business marketing tactics and is the creator of Duct Tape Marketing, a turn-key small business marketing system. Check out his blog at http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com/weblog.php or at http://www.JohnJantsch.com

Is a Small Business Web Site a Wise Investment?

by: Ron Scott

One of the greatest pitfalls in e-commerce is Field of Dreams thinking, the notion that all one has to do is “build it (a web site) and they will come.”

“I can’t think of anything further from the truth,” Ron Scott, a Riverside, California web designer, says. “Even if we develop an attractive, content rich web site, that is no guarantee that our client will generate enough sales, let alone traffic, to justify the expense.

“There has to be a market for a company’s products and/or services in the first place, and then it has to be properly promoted”, he went on to say.

This is why the firm recommends their small business clients answer a number of questions directly related to the development of a sound business plan before they open their checkbooks.

1. Have you adequately defined your market reach? Do you offer products and/or services that will be of interest to an international, national, regional, or local community? The larger your target audience, obviously the greater your probability of success. Could you add one or more products or services that would broaden your reach?

2. What is the global demand for your product and/or service? Do you have any idea how many internet inquiries are made about your product and/or service? For an answer to this question, Scott recommends visiting .the “Pay for Performance Search” page listed under the heading “Products and Services” at Overture.com. Enter a keyword or keyword phrase you might use to find information about your product and/or service in the search engine suggestion window at the bottom of the page. In addition to finding out how many inquiries were made the previous month using that keyword or keyword phrase, you may find a dozen or more related terms and the number of inquiries made about them as well. Add the number inquiries and this will give you an idea just how much interest there is in your product and/or service.

If your reach is local or regional, be sure to incorporate the names of cities in your search terms. Pay-for-performance programs sometimes do not allow local or regional advertisers to use generic terms because their services are irrelevant to a more global audience.

3. How many of these inquiries actually come from your target market? Let’s assume you do business in Los Angeles and your target market is Southern California. If 85% of all inquiries originate in the United States and that 7.1% of those live in Southern California , then the potential market in Southern California represents 7.1% of 85% (6.1%) of all inquiries using any given keyword or keyword combination.

To calculate the proportion of inquiries in any market area, visit the U. S. Census Bureau’s web site. There you will find population projections you can use to estimate the number of inquiries that are likely to be emanating from within your market area.

4. What is your likely market share? Of those consumers actually making inquiries from your market area, how many are likely to visit your site, let alone make a purchase? Assuming that the content of your web site is inviting enough to motivate visitors to either purchase your product/service or to at least make an inquiry, what percentage are actually going to become customers? A 1% return is reasonable expectation if you are in a competitive market and you have a competitively priced product and/or service. Obviously, the more unique your product, the more the higher this percentage is likely to be..

5. How many sales will you have to make to recoup the cost of development and promotion, if only 1% of your visitors take advantage of your offering? For arguments sake, let us assume that it will cost you at least $100 to reserve a domain name and to secure a host, $500 to get a 10 page site designed, and that you budget at least $100 a month on promotion. How many net sales will you have to make to recover these costs? Put another way, how many sales would you need to start making a profit?

6. Do you know who your on-line competitors are? If you don’t, go to any search engine, enter a few keywords related to your industry and see who appears on the first page. Visit a few of them. What is their message? What do you see as their strengths and weaknesses.? What do you like or dislike about their sites? How could you make your offering more attractive or enticing?

7. Can you be competitive? Knowing what your competitors are offering, can you realistically expect to compete with them, especially when it comes to pricing? Internet inquiries generally come from individuals looking for a deal so they are price sensitive. Do your competitors actual provide pricing or to they ask visitors to make an on-line inquiry or to call for a quote? If you are in a service related business, what are you going to have to do to compel visitors to act once they visit your site? What can you do to separate you from your on-line competition?

8. How unique is your product and/or service? Do you have a unique offering, or are you in a highly competitive industry? Obviously, the more unique your offering, the easier it is going to be to get exposure and the greater your potential is going to be for success.

9. How are you going to promote your site? One of the greatest misconceptions in e-commerce is the notion that to succeed all one has to do to is submit a site to search engines. This, unfortunately, is the full extent of marketing for far too many web sites and rarely gets the job done.

One of the primary considerations when it comes to search engine placement is popularity. The more sites linking or referencing your site, the higher page rank it will earn. It is fairly inexpensive to get a link on a wide variety of permanent directories, but it takes more than directory links to significantly increase a site’s popularity. If you or your webmaster don’t take the time to negotiate link exchanges with non-directory related sites, especially those who have high rankings, you are not likely to gain favorable positioning in any but the most insignificant search engines.

10. What have you budgeted for promotion? If you cannot afford to promote your site, you might as well forget spending money on its development. To get a quick idea what it might costs to promote your product or service on line using a pay-for-performance advertising program, visit Overture.com again. Enter one of your industry related keywords in Overture’s internet search window on the company’s home page.

When the results appear, click on “View Advertiser’s Max Bids” link that appears to the top and right. The highest bidder wins the top sponsored position on Yahoo, MSN, CNN, Alta Vista, InfoSpace, Overture and a dozen or more minor search engines. The top three sponsored listings will appear above normal search results at the top of these search engines whenever the surfer uses keywords or keyword phrases the advertiser has bid on.

These questions are not all inclusive, but they do provide food for thought. Hopefully, they will help those interested in establishing a web presence a better idea of what will be needed to achieve a predictable degree of success as well as a reasonable return on investment.
If you would like more information, visit http://www.websitetutoring.com.

About The Author
Ron Scott is a web designer who spends half his time teaching small business owners how to design and maintain their business web sites in-house. rs@websitetutoring.com