Webmaster Toolkit Review

Today I am going to discuss the Webmaster Toolkit. This web site has a wealth of information which you can navigate by browsing the topics listed in the left hand sidebar on their web site. These cover topics like SEO tools, web utilities, domain tools, HTML tools and finally a list of resources. Let’s take a look at each of these in turn.

SEO Tools If you’re interested in marketing and promoting your web site then this is the section for you. In here you can find tools which will help you decide what keywords to use on your site, how popular your site is with the major search engines, how search spiders crawl your site, and various other analysis tools.

Web Utilities
If you’re interested in analyzing or tweaking your web site then check out this section. The two that you might find most useful are the .htaccess generator which is useful if you want to password protect part of your web site, and the Link Checker which will report any broken links on your site.

Domain Tools
There are a few interesting tools in this section. The two that you may find of most interest are the Domain Name Generator which will produce a list of possible domain name ideas based on a word or phrase you input. The other one is the Expired Domain Name Checker which could be a useful tool for improving both your link popularity and your website traffic whilst saving you money too! There are many expired domains still listed in many of the big directories, with the potential to drive large amounts of traffic to your site.

HTML Tools
There are couple of tools in this section which will clean up any un-needed code created by Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver. There is also the CSS Menu Generator which might be useful if you want to generate some navigation buttons on your site. Have a good look round the webmaster toolkit. The above is just a small sample of what is available. Whether you’re a novice or advanced webmaster, there are some useful tools and utilities available.

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Get Free Google Traffic Fast

So you are looking for free Google traffic? I will explain the basics of getting free Google traffic fast in a few short steps.

1. Your site must be optimized and be ready to place in Google’s free listing area for the keywords you want to show up for. Use the keywords in your title tag, your description tag, you keyword tag, and your page content.

2. You need to create a Google sitemap.xml file. There are many sitemap generator tools for free on the web. Register your sitemap with Google Webmaster.

3. You need to get high quality high Google PR “Page rank” websites to link to you. You can request link trades by sending email request to websites that are in the same business as your site or you can purchase text link space on websites like textlinkbrokers.com. If you can place your site on a PR6 page or higher, you will be indexed by Google within 48 hours.

4. Write articles like the one you are reading that pertain to your expertise and the business you are in and include your website information in the author area of the article.

5. Continue working on your sites content keeping it fresh and continue to optimize your meta tags as your see your search listings rise.

New sites with new website addresses usually take 2-3 months to place well in the free Google listings, re-designed sites can take 1-2 months to place in the free Google listings, and existing sites that have been active for more than six months can show good search results within 1 week to 1 month.

The more time and effort you put into implementing the steps listed in this article, the faster you will start to receive free Google traffic to your site.

Until Next Time…
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Best Site Promotion - Intermediate Ways to Make More Profit With Site Promotion

Promoting your web site is very important. The number of websites on the World Wide Web is increasing on a very fast pace. The World Wide Web was never so crowded ever before. Now it has become really important for all the web sites to promote themselves. There are millions of websites which currently exist on the internet and it is humanly not possible to visit all of these websites. If you want the web traffic to notice you, you need to pay close attention towards promotion of your web site. If your web site is properly promoted and your web based business is properly marketed, you will get a higher flow of quality web traffic towards your web site. In this way you will be in the position to make some money through rendering promotional help to other web sites.

If you want to make more profit through web site promotion, you can do so by selling some spaced available on your web site to other web sites. If any other web site places their link on your web site, you can charge them for this service. Similarly, placing banner ads or Rss activity is also helpful in making money. Pay per click advertising is also a very common type of web site promotion tool which can pay you really good. People use all of these tools to make money through web site promotion. Generating quality web traffic is very important. If you do not get quality traffic, you will not be able to survive the competition in the online world.
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Making Money with Internet Domains

There are thousands of ways to make money Online. Almost all of these methods start with an Internet domain since your domain name tells people where to find you Online. Domain names can be purchased for as little as eight or nine dollars. This small investment can pay off many times over.

The usual model for making money from domains involves buying domains and selling. As with physical real estate, or any investment, the objective is to buy low and sell high. While a few people have made millions selling domains with this method, there is not usually a lot of demand for an individual domain name. Domains may sit for years before they get a single interested buyer and that offer is often too low to take seriously. Other models for earning income from domains have developed in the last few years, foremost among them being domain parking.

Pay-per-click domain parking has been a lucrative way for some to earn money from domains. This white paper will emphasize this approach. The domain parking services described here provide no-cost hosting of your site and pay you every time someone clicks on a link.

Where should you park your domains? These sites differ in important ways, and one company will likely work better than another for your domains.

Affiliate income programs allow you to sell a product on your site and keep a percentage of the profit. You can do this from a site you build, or you can redirect a domain to an affiliate page created for you by the merchant who is hosting the offer.

Developing your domain into a complete, stand-alone website can sometimes make the most money. It is also the most labor-intensive.

Evaluating PPC Domain Parking Services

Paid Domain parking, the easiest approach, is often the best. ParkQuick.com is a site that features objective reviews of domain parking services. Domain Parking Services are different from each other in significant ways. Some services require that you own a minimum number of domain names, and others do not. Changes appear immediately with some services, while others require approval in advance. (All of these services provide free hosting.) In some cases you can earn cash when someone simply views your page (pay per impression), or when they click through to another site (pay per click). Some of these services will automatically optimize your sites based on what people search for. RPM (revenue per thousand impressions) is not the whole story. Some companies make it easy for you to use single-click landing pages, while others do not.

These parking services change their sites and payouts often to keep up with rapid changes in this field. All have ways to detect click-fraud, and your account will be canceled if click-fraud is ever suspected. Never click on your own links. ParkQuick’s monthly Name Monetizer newsletter will keep you up-do-date on the most recent changes. You can also read the most recent recommendations for small and large domain portfolios owners.

Some newsletter readers have asked whether they can send paid traffic to their pages. Most parking services forbid all paid traffic because it generally does not result in sales. Some parking services do allow you to buy AdWords or Overture ads and send that traffic to your domains. This is usually not cost-effective, however. Unless you are extremely careful you will end up in the red by paying more for the clicks than you will earn off the parking.

There is actually a good deal of overlap among people who consider themselves to be “domainers” and those who consider themselves Online marketers. In both cases men and women are trying to make money Online, often with the goal of “quitting our day jobs” to live off a passive income stream. We earn money when someone visiting our sites takes some action based on content on one of our sites. We earn money when they click, or when they sign-up for a service, or take some other action.
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Domain Names - 3 Top Ways to Make More Money With Domain Names

With the ever increasing number of web sites on the World Wide Web, the competition amongst the web sites is on a rise. It has become very important for all the web sites today to stand out of the crowd. Those websites which do not pay due attention towards highlighting their businesses often fail to stay in competition with their rivals. There are many things which are important when it comes to staying in business and to make money in the online world. Domain names are very important in this regard. If your website has a nice and attractive domain name, your chances of staying in business increase. Domain names are important in this regard.

It is not possible for human beings to remember the numeric URLs of the websites. To solve this problem now we have domain names. A good domain name is the one which is closely related to the content of the website. If you have a domain name which can suggest the nature of your business, the chances of getting searched by the search engine are higher when any internet surfer performs a related search through the search engine. Thus choose a good domain name which is related to the nature of your business. This will ensure that you will be noticed by the search engine and the chances of getting quality web traffic will increase. Also, you must use domain names which are easy to remember. Very literary but difficult to remember domain names may not be able to pay you a lot.
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Does Your “Old” Site Work on the “New” Web?

Well, apparently there IS something new under the sun…..and it’s happening all over the web. New technologies, new applications, and new features are making all kinds of web sites more useful than ever before, including business web sites. You may have heard it described as “web 2.0,” the “interactive web,” or the “content-driven web,” but all of these terms reinforce the same basic idea – the web has changed!

It used to be that small businesses could simply use their existing brochures and product sheets as content for their web sites, add a few keywords, and maybe add a contact form to create a pretty good small business web site. But now, there’s a new web environment for business that’s based on multimedia, interactivity, and creative presentation techniques that make these old-school web tactics seem positively outdated.

So what’s a small business to do?

Content Delivery

For starters, you’re going to have to actively communicate with your site visitors, not just provide them with a static “brochure-site” that they can read. For instance, what can your visitors expect to gain by visiting your site? Can they sign up for an e-newsletter? Do you have downloadable reports or e-books to offer them? Does your content offer them actual useful information, or is it just page after page of sales pitch? You may need to rethink the way in which you deliver your web content, and determine better ways to provide value to your visitors.

Meet New Expectations

You may also want to pay attention to the new technologies available on today’s web sites, because users are quickly becoming accustomed to them. Visitors often expect to see technologies such as RSS feeds, blogs, and podcasts available from business sites, as well as video “ads,” interviews, and tutorials. Even adding simple features can make a big difference for a web site. For example, adding an interactive calendar of events to your site (especially if you allow visitors to submit events for publication) can send a strong signal to your users that you are able to meet their expectations both on your web site and in your business, making you a natural choice over your competitors!

Make the Right Impression

If you’re a small business, the temptation might be to think that these new expectations don’t really apply to your business, or that your customers don’t really care about how sophisticated your web site is (or isn’t). Well, that’s simply not the case. Studies have shown over and over again that customers make decisions based on emotional “gut feelings,” often based on their impression of your business. If you present them with an old-fashioned, outdated web site, what do you think they will remember (if they remember you at all)?

Make sure your web site is an accurate reflection of your business, and give your visitors a reason to “click around” and get to know your company. Offer them a variety of interesting material that’s presented appropriately for today’s web users. Meet their expectations on your web site, and they will be less likely to move on to the next site (a.k.a. your competition!) and more likely to do business with you.
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Web Page Design Software Review

Good web page design software makes it easy to produce good-looking websites. (Our website reviews the easiest ones to use.) But the content you select and how you organize it is the difference between visitors staying longer than 3 seconds or not. I’ve identified 10 common mistakes made by web design newbies:

1. Too Many Advertisements
Making money from your website is fine, as long as you don’t get too greedy by jamming too many ads everywhere. (Of course, by doing this, you will make less money anyway.) What’s “too many?” Go to your website as a visitor, and have someone else look it over, too. Trust your first impression and compare it to what your friend or family member thought about it. If you do have ads, make sure they’re not too intrusive or obnoxious–like flashing banners, for example.

2. Using Flash Intros; a “Splash Page” with a little movie
Bad idea! Don’t use a Flash intro on your website. Only rarely is it ever done tastefully and appropriately. Even when it is done well, it’s a waste of effort. It’s just too risky and the rewards are NONE. No matter how cool a flash intro may look, it has never, ever proved to increase traffic or website “stickiness.” It almost always has the opposite effect.

3. Too Many Plugins
Keep any media that uses plugins to a strict maximum of one per page. For example, if you’ve got Flash, then you shouldn’t have a media player, or if you’ve got a little program run by Java then you shouldn’t have Flash as well. Don’t be tempted to plug in stuff on your website just because you think it looks “cool.”

4. Confusing Layout and Navigation
Many websites seem to make the simplest task take several steps to achieve. Remember that web surfers are in an extremely short attention-span mode and won’t stick around to try to figure out your website. This is where choosing good web site design software pays off.

5. Unclear Website Theme
It’s easy to get tunnel vision about getting all the little tasks done to your new website and forget the big picture. What I’m talking about here is the need for you to have a main theme/main purpose for your site…One that is completely obvious in the first 3 seconds of someone landing on your homepage.

Think of television commercials that you finally figured out after seeing several times, because it wasn’t clear what the ad was about…It’s not that you weren’t smart enough to figure out those ads; you simply didn’t invest the mental effort–very slight though it may be–into figuring out the ad the first time.

Because watching T.V. commercials is often no different than surfing the internet as far as the mental effort you’re willing to devote to it. But with the internet, your visitors are only going to see your site ONCE–for about 3 seconds before making a decision to stay or leave. If they leave, they’re never coming back, unlike T.V. commercials. So you have to make your message and your site very clear. Slight confusion = Instant Back button or the red “X.”

6. Broken Links
You should check all your links regularly to make sure that they all still work. Think of the times you find a site that has links that don’t work: You instantly make some assumptions about the site–like it’s outdated and unprofessional. It’s the same feeling you get when you see simple words misspelled.

7. Weird Fonts
Never get too cute and creative with your website fonts. Stick to the most common web fonts like Verdana, Arial, Times New Roman, and Tahoma. Besides, many of your visitors won’t have other fonts installed in their browsers and computers, so all they’ll see is gobbledygook. If you do want to use non-standard fonts, then limit it to graphic header images or logos–where they’re displayed as part of the image.

8. Bad Sized Fonts
It’s important to keep your text around the standard size–like 10, 11, or 12. Making text too big or too small makes it hard to read and is a great way to get your visitors to leave immediately.

9. High-Contrasting Webpage Colors
You’ve seen those webpages that have a dark background with bright-colored or white text. Or sites with very bright or very dark margins, which contrasts with the actual webpage content. All of these puts a strain on the eyes, which makes it hard to read and = Instant Back Button. The tried and true method is to use black text on a white background.

10. Auto-Sizing Webpages
Look at this webpage: craftown.com and you’ll see an example of how not to use auto-sizing webpages. The idea behind auto-sizing webpages is to use the whole desktop real estate instead of limiting the page to say, 750 pixels wide. This way, on small monitors the webpage looks large enough to read. But the problem comes with larger monitors where the text gets stretched way further than is normal for reading. And nowadays, most people have larger monitors. The fix? If you do use auto-sizing webpages, be sure to limit the text to a specific pixel amount. If you don’t know how to do this, get a web design pro to do it or don’t use it at all.

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Internet Marketing

Internet marketing experts will promote your website on popular search engines and look at making your website more user friendly to search engines and users. Once the design and navigation of your website has been perfected and enhanced, your chosen internet marketing company will start their internet marketing solutions to direct and attract more quality online users and customers to your website.

Internet marketing involves the use of various channels and techniques to promote a favorable company or brand to online users; this is achieved through various tactics under the broad term of SEO (search engine optimization). Internet marketing tactics will involve research of your target market, analyzing your direct competition and then identifying keywords or terms that will lead to your website achieving higher ranking results on search engines.

Internet marketers have found that 80-90% of online users will find their way to desired products and services by using popular search engines, such as Google, MSN and Yahoo. Now consumers with detailed use of key terms and key words are further refining online searches. This means that when people use the internet to find certain products and services, they usually start their search using search engines, and often only visit the first page and top few search results. So, it has been proven that to have a successful business online, it is imperative for your company’s details, products, services and information to be ranked high on search engine listings.

Internet marketing also involves creating a favorable online experience for consumers where they can purchase products and services, find services and products, interact, view multimedia, subscribe to newsletters, get online quotes and download free applications, files, and more. Internet marketing can also include PPC advertising (pay per click), SEO, banner advertising, interactive advertising, blogging, forum marketing, article marketing, PR, e-marketing, online planning and more.

So, if you have the desire to create an effective and profitable online business through your website, find a reputable internet marketing company to harness the marketing power of the internet and promote your website through the worldwide web. Get your website working for you, if you have already spent some time and money in the development of your website, get an experienced online marketing company to deliver top search engine marketing and search engine optimization tactics.
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Quick Hit SEO to Do List

Many potential Search Engine Optimization (SEO) clients come to me stating they don’t have the financial resources to contract my firm for services yet they’d like to get started with the promotion of their site within the search engine sphere. Below I’ve attempted to outline the first steps I might take if I had a new website to promote from the ground up.

Submit Your Site to Directories
Directory submissions are an integral part of basic SEO, and directory listings help to form a foundation of links pointing to your site that generally won’t go anywhere unless the directory disappears or is shutdown for some reason. Many directories such as DMOZ or the Yahoo Directory feed search engine results and carry a lot of “weight” with major search engines such as Google, MSN/Live, and Yahoo!

There are hundreds of free directories out there, and my recommendation is to subcontract this service out to an inexpensive submission service (do a search for “directory submission service”). For as little as $30, you can have your website submitted to hundreds of directories in little time. Manually doing this could take countless hours, and it’s very tedious work. One note of caution: directories don’t get indexed overnight. It will take some time for your site to get “credit” for being listed in a lot of the online directories.

Write and Submit Articles about Your Business or Industry
Promoting your business via articles about your industry or the business itself are a great way to build awareness without being over the top or in someone’s face. The more articles you write and submit to online e-zines or article directories, the more your name circulates. Think about it, when you read an informative article that helps you solve a problem, perform a task better, or recaps an event, your guard isn’t as high as it is when you come across an all out advertisement is it?

Be sure to include a byline at the end containing a link to your site along with brief information about you and your company. This will not only generate awareness, it will also help your search engine optimization campaign by building “natural” links back to your website as the article circulates the online community.

Engage in a Free PR Campaign
While print media isn’t as popular as it once was, people still read newspapers, trade journals, and magazines. Local newspapers are always looking for interesting stories on local people to write about in order to increase their readership. Magazines are a bit different in that your story needs to be very compelling and unique in some fashion, but your website and business can get a big jolt if you can land a story in a print publication of some sort. One word of caution: don’t go shooting for the New York Times or Inc. Magazine right out of the chute unless you’re truly prepared to handle a huge influx of site visits, e-mails, phone calls, and unrelated requests about your business.

Involve Yourself in the Blogosphere
Blogs are a great way to show a more human side to a company, and their popularity continues to increase. My advice is to start a blog about your company, industry, or niche that is a sub-domain off of your main website. A sub-domain may look like this: subdomain.domain.com to where your blog may utilize a scheme similar to blog.yourdomain.com. This is a great way to build unique content for your domain while also helping your customers or clients get to know the human side of your business. There are several free blog generators out there that will even host your blog for free, and two of the more popular ones can be found at blogger.com or wordpress.com.

If starting your own blog is too tall a task, visit others’ blogs related to your industry and join in the conversation by posting comments and interacting with the blog owner. Many blog comments are indexed by the name you enter in the name field of the comment form so you can build links to your site this way. One note of caution: there is a lot of debate whether no-follow links such as the ones on most blogs provide any search optimization value, and I have found that they do provided the blog itself ranks well and has a large following.

Promote Your Site Everywhere
Offline optimization is just as important as it is online as you’re simply trying to generate interest in your business or website, right? Consider promoting your website offline just as you would your business. Nobody will know about your site unless you tell them, but you don’t want to be a hound about it either so be subtle. The traffic you generate may result in a huge sale that puts your business on the map.

Basic SEO isn’t that difficult if you think about it in a common sense manner. Promoting your site online is very similar to how you’d promote your business offline—it’s all about positive exposure. Being heavily involved online as well as off is a solid strategy to building awareness for your business and its website.
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Various Aspects to Domain Management

Domain registration is generally very easy. In fact you can simply contact your local domain registrar and give your details like name, address, contact info and of course the name of the domain you want registered and your domain gets registered. Alternatively you can simply go online to your domain registrar’s website and if the facility is provided just fill out a simply online registration form with your name and other details and submit to register your domain. It’s as simple as that.

The problem arrives generally for most of us after the domain has been registered. We keep hearing all these words like name servers, domain pointing and forwarding, domain locking and other things which make it all a nightmare. But it is not as bad as you think. Domain management, once you understand the various aspects to it, is actually a very simply task. We look at some of the aspects in domain registration and management which you might have to go through while setting up your website.

Name Servers
Name servers are probably the most common words used after you have registered a domain. Your hosting company will tell you to change your domain name servers to their address in order for your web hosting service to function properly. So what are name servers?

To put it in simple language, name servers are the name of your server. It basically tells a domain where your website files are located so every time someone types your domain name in their browsers, the domain exactly knows where to go to show your website files – your homepage etc.

Name Servers generally look like this:

Assuming you are hosting with xyz hosting company then your name servers should generally be:

NS1.XYZ.COM
NS2.XYZ.COM

Note the NS could be followed by 3 or 4 depending on your hosting company. Your hosting company will generally provide their name servers to you when you register with them.

Domain Forwarding / Domain Redirect
Domain forwarding or also know as Domain redirect means if you have multiple domains registered and you want one of your domains to quite simply point to another domain that you have as an active website.

This technique allows you to have a single website be available under multiple domains. For example you can register your domain in both .com and .net format and then make the .net domain address forward to your .com website. That way you don’t have to spend on having two different websites hosted for each of your domain extensions.

Domain Locking
This is quite new to the world of domains but is a very important one and you should always be aware of your domain’s status – i.e. whether it is locked or unlocked.

Now, how does domain locking make a difference to you? Firstly if your domain is not locked, then malicious software or hackers have the ability to shift the domain in to their name or shift the domain’s name servers on to their web site which could cause lot of embarrassment to you. Not just that in some cases, hackers can pull the domain from your domain registrar to theirs, giving them full control of your domain.

In general you should always make sure your domain is in locked status. Of course when you need to change the domain’s name servers etc for your own use then you can unlock a domain. But always make sure moment your work is done and the name servers or any other information you are trying to change has been completed, immediately lock your domain. If you can’t lock or unlock your domain, please contact your domain registrar regarding this.
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