Thursday, March 12, 2009

5 Ways to Make Your Website Mobile (And 1 Reason You Might Not Want To.)


As of August 2008, mobile handset penetration in Italy was at 140%. You read that right: there are now more mobile devices than people in Italy. According to Engadget, some studies are predicting 100% mobile phone penetration in the United States within 4 years; at present, it’s estimated at around 84%. Some research indicates that as of 2008, as much as 3-10% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices.
So clearly, if your site is not accessible or easy to read via mobile devices, you’re missing a pretty large potential audience.

So, because I’m a helpful sort of gal, I thought I’d post 5 fast, simple ways to make your website mobile-friendly.

1. Mofuse. Assuming your site is a blog, or at least has an RSS feed of some sort, you can create a mobile version of it lickety-split with Mofuse. Create an account, plug in your feed URL, settle on a subdomain (like http://socialmediaexplorer.mofuse.com) and then pick a way to integrate the mobile version with your regular site. You can either create an SMS widget, automatically detect and redirect mobile users to the mobile site, or add a “mobile version” badge to your site.

Mofuse allows you to do some styling and customization of your site, as well as add a custom domain. It also offers analytics, so you can keep tabs on your mobile visitors separately. You can also add a mobile-only homepage, as well as other mobile-only pages and links, including a Click 2 Call link. Click 2 Call allows folks to call a telephone number directly from your site (I could see this being pretty handy for a site that was primarily a lead-generation tool.) Publishers can opt-in to 50/50 revenue sharing advertising by agreeing to include ads from either AdMob or Google AdSense.

2. Mippin is another option, if Mofuse sounds a little more complicated than you’re interested in right now. Mippin is extremely similar to Mofuse, allowing you to quickly set up a mobile version of any RSS-driven site, customize the look of it a bit, and also has the nice added feature of automatically generating some searchable tags for your site based on its content (you can also add tags manually). Advertising (which publishers share revenues on) is optional on Mippin, and offered through AdMob’s ad network. Mippin also has some analytics reporting available, called “Reports.”

3. Got no RSS? No problem. Site.mobi has a free tool that will allow you to build a mobile site from scratch, customize the pages, and drop in whatever content you so desire, using one of several basic templates.

4. Let’s say you’re seriously over creating new accounts with free services. You just want a way to make your site visible to mobile users. You can use Google’s mobile version tool to strip the images and styling and create a mobile/WAP version of your site in seconds. Take the following string, and place your URL in it where indicated: http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2F{YOUR URL}&hl=en&mrestrict=xhtml.

For example, you could go to http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.socialmediaexplorer.com&hl=en&mrestrict=xhtml Pretty nifty, eh? (Hat tip to Jerry Ong for this method)
Or you could just go here, and plug in your URL: http://www.google.com/gwt/n
Now, I know what you’re thinking. That’s a heck of a long URL to remember. Which is why there are at least two steps to this process. One option (the easy/free one) would be to use your favorite URL shortener (TinyUrl, urltea, is.gd, bit.ly, etc.), plug in the lengthy URL string above, and you’re good to go. A slightly more complicated version would be to redirect a mobile-specific domain to that URL. For example, if your hosting company lets you set up subdomains, you could set up http://m.yoururlhere.com to redirect to the URL string from Google Mobile Sites.

The downside to this method is that your site will be framed at top and bottom with a Google header and footer. And Google could discontinue this service at any time. But it’s simple, free, and fast.

5. Let’s say you’re a bit of a control freak. You don’t want your mobile site sitting on someone else’s service or domain or hosting or whatever. This method requires some light PHP coding skill, and the ability to set up subdomains and redirects, but it’s still fairly simple. Rather than copying the whole thing here, I will just encourage you to check out the original article, courtesy Mike Davidson.

An alternate “I don’t do no stinking PHP!” version for Wordpress users would be to either select a Wordpress theme that has a mobile stylesheet, or if you’ve got a designer whose done a custom theme for you, ask for a mobile stylesheet and the javascript code to detect mobile devices and apply that stylesheet. If you’re going this route, check out Alex King’s Wordpress Mobile Edition plug-in which auto-detects mobile devices, as well as the MobilePress plug-in, as it will also alert Google and Yahoo mobile bots to your site.

Okay, now that I’ve shown you a number of fast, easy ways to create a mobile version of your website or blog, it’s time for the caveat: You may not want to use any of these.
Remember way back in the day, when the web itself was brand-spanking new, and internet access boasted penetration numbers similar to what mobile web access has today? Back in the days before the dot.com bubble burst, lots of businesses approached the web with the same attitude that I’m seeing frequently today in relation to the mobile channel.

“Potential customers are there, I want to be there. Content? Well, I’ve got this great print brochure/catalog. Can’t you just put that up there?”

Content strategy is markedly different on the mobile web. If your mobile strategy consists entirely of “strip out all the images and styling from my regular web site,” then you haven’t thought it through sufficiently yet. Is the content on your regular website even of interest to mobile surfers?

If you’d like to do a serious deep-dive into mobile marketing strategy, check out MobiThinking’s Top 10 Mobile Marketing Mistakes article.You may decide that it’s more important to get a presence up and running on the mobile web now, and then tweak strategy and content in more detail later. If so, any of the five methods listed above should help. But don’t let that lull you into thinking you’ve got your bases covered when it comes to mobile. It means you’ve taken the first step.

Posted by Internet Media Solutions at 11:29 AM 0 comments

10 Essential Onsite SEO Tips for your Website


It is well documented that building links is a very effective way for your website to gain increased exposure in the search engines. However many people overlook the importance of the many onsite factors that should be implemented into your website to gain strength in the search engines. Below I have detailed the top ten that you should implement.

1. Title Tags:
his is one of the most known onsite tips; however it is still largely overlooked especially in ecommerce websites. All your title tags on you’re your website must be unique, short and contain the keyphrase you are optimising that page for.

2. Description Tags:
Another well-known optimisation technique, although again not used to its full potential. Your listings that appear in the search engine results pages are in effect an advert for your website so should be treated as such. Always include a call to action to entice the searcher to click on your listing.

3. Heading Tags:
You should always follow proper procedures when it comes to heading tags always give the page content a heading and try and include a keyphrase within the heading and use proper code, for the most important heading give it a h1 tag and use h2,h3, h4 etc as sub headings within your content.

4. File Name:
When naming your webpage always name it with the main keyphrase that you’re optimising that particular webpage for. Warning: Don’t rename your existing WebPages to reflect your keyphrase as this will be treated as a different page by the search engines and if the original page has gained any strength then all that strength will be lost.

5. Anchor Text:
The use of anchor text in external links is common place. However this should also be used on your own website. When linking to another page on your website use keyphrase rich anchor text in the page content. If you don’t how do you expect a search engine to think that your website is relevant for your keyphrases if your own website doesn’t? Check out Wikipedia for a good example of this.

6. Sitemap.xml:
You should create an xml file that contains a list of URL’s that are present on your website and submit it to Google and other search engines. This will help the search engines index your website more efficiently.

7. Sitemap.html:
All websites should include an HTML sitemap; this will also help the search engines index your website. If you have a large amount of pages on your website arrange you sitemap in categories and create more than one page. Don’t just create a list of your website pages as this isn’t much help to your website visitor.

8. No Follow:
If you are linking to a website that contains some relevant information that you think your visitors will find helpful but cannot vouch for that website, then use a no-follow attribute on said link to tell Google not to follow that link. You will also not bleed PageRank onto this external source.

9. Navigation:
Avoid linking to every webpage from every other webpage on your website. When linking from your homepage, link to your most important pages and from these sub pages link to other pages within your website. As the search engines will see which pages you consider important on your website, also from these sub pages link back to your most important pages.

10. Content:
This is an important one, create unique engaging content for your website that your visitors will find interesting. You should also add content on a regular basis as this will give your website more exposure in the search engines as if you have 10 pages on your website that’s 10 opportunities people will have to find your website, although don’t add content for the sake of adding content, only add it when you have something interesting to add.

Posted by Internet Media Solutions at 11:29 AM 2 comments

Colors and Banner Designs


When color is used correctly, it can add impact and clarity to your banner message. Color can emphasize, highlight, and lead your end users to a call-to-action (i.e. clicking on your banner). Color can also be used to trigger emotion.
When color is used incorrectly, it can compromise your message and confuse your target audience. The interpretation of a color depends on culture, physiology of the eye, readability, your target audience's profession or industry, and personal preference.

* Banner colors and target audience culture
* Colors and legibility
* Psychology of color
* Banner colors and ad placement

Banner colors and target audience culture
When designing a banner ad, you should be careful about the colors you select if you are targeting a specific country or a global audience. For example, though the color purple is also associated with royalty in European countries, the color orange is associated with royalty in the Netherlands. The color white is associated with death in China whereas white is associated with purity in Western cultures.

Colors and legibility
How the human eye processes color is also a consideration for selecting banner colors. Purple is one of the hardest colors for the eye to discern, so it might not be a good overall color choice. On the other hand, yellow is the first color the eye processes. So if you were t try and call attention to some text on a dark-colored banner, yellow can be an excellent color choice. But if you were to use yellow as a background color of a banner, you might want to alter the color so that it is less stressful on the eye.

In order to make the text on a banner legible, it is very important to use colors that provide a high contrast. Black and white is the two colors that provide the highest color contrast, but white banners tend to have the lowest click-through ratios (CTRs).

Psychology of color
The type of profession you are in should influence what colors you will select for your banner ad. In the finance industry, the color red signifies financial loss. In the health care industry, the color red is associated with danger or an emergency. So using the color red in the financial or health care banner designs would not be a wise choice.

Blues, teals, and greens tend to be safe color selections because many of their psychological interpretations include security, professionalism, reliability, conservatism, and technology. (Most web-savvy people know to click on the blue, underlined text link. So using blue in a banner design can help with CTRs.)

Banner colors and ad placement
Finally, when selecting colors for banner designs, it is extremely important to consider where your banner ad will be placed. You want your banners to stand out a bit from the sites they are being displayed in, but you don't want your banners to be so ostentatious and obnoxious that they conveys the message, "CLICK ME CLICK ME CLICK ME." Your banner ads should blend well with the web pages, and talented banner designers will always take that into consideration.

As you can see, selecting colors for banner ads is not as simple as using colors based on personal preference. Culture, readability, the psychology of color, and other factors are all considerations in designing banner ads.
Posted by Internet Media Solutions at 11:28 AM 0 comments

Content Management Systems & SEO Revisited


Two years ago, I wrote an article entitled “Content Management Systems Equal Business Suicide.” The basic premise was that at that time, CMS applications were inherently devoid of basic SEO functionality. Building a new site, or converting an existing site to the existing CMS versions of 2 years ago was rapid way of consigning those sites to the oblivion of Google’s supplementary index. Lacking inbuilt search engine friendly URL’s, outputting duplicate titles, descriptions and keywords, no ability to have customised Titles that differed from Headings - all those things were extraordinarily bad elements.

Since then, things have changed markedly. These days, there are still deficiencies in evidence, but for the CMS applications that have survived the intervening 2 years, and those that have evolved since, most have addressed the basic SEO issues.

My personal favourite CMS is WordPress. Especially since version 2.5 there’s been a wealth of feature expansion in the core application, the availability of plugins that expand on the core functionality, and the advent of professionally designed Themes that have taken WordPress to new heights. All of this has allowed WordPress to blossom into a fully-matured CMS with exceptional Search Engine Optimisation features.

Lets take a closer look at the SEO functionality. As Google et al are attempting to analyse and categorise a web site, there are an estimated 200 individual elements that are calculated in the SE relevancy ranking algorithms. Every one of these you can get right improves your chances of attaining your full ranking potential. Individually, each element offers incremental albeit small gains, but collectively, they can add up to the winning difference in the ranking stakes for competitive search terms. Duplicate content is Google’s pet hate, and its vital to every site’s standing that every single page be accurately described and categorised. Here are 10 of the most prominent among the many opportunities to achieve this individualisation of pages are;

SEF URLS:
Search engine friendly URL’s are important, because inclusion of keywords in page URL’s are taken into account, and have a bearing on rankings - particularly on Yahoo. Being able to exercise total control over page URL’s is important, and WordPress allows this with Permalink mod_rewrite functionality, coupled with manual URL control on every page or post!

Meta-Tags:
There are several WordPress plugin tools to provide total control of title, descriptions and keywords, and these are easily installed and configured.

Titles:
Being able to control the off-page Title separately from the on-page heading is very important. The title’s 70 character limitation needs to be exploited to maximum effect, its the single most important on-site page SEO element! Page Headings are usually space-constrained, and in systems where the Heading automatically become the Title, you are deprived of a significant advantage.

Description:
The off-page Description (meta-tag) is a vital element in accurately describing the page contents. If each page has accurate, custom-written Description content, its used verbatim in the search engine results pages (SERP’s). In contrast, if you are forced to use a generic Description, then Google will helpfully do its level best to generate an ‘ad lib’ Description of the page based on content. The result of that ca neither be not so bad, or truly awful. Regardless, its essential that YOU have control of the Description, and that you use it to maximum effect!

Keywords:
Erroneously dismissed by some people as of no account these days, the Keyword (meta-tag) still has a part to play. Stuff it full of vaguely relevant garbage unrelated to page content and it will be ignored. Use it wisely, with specific / relevant long-tailed keyword search phrases and it can give you a little bit of SE traction - even on Google!

Image File Names:
Accurately name your image files, and include keywords relevant to the page. WordPress allows you to upload media and retain the original files names even when auto-generating thumbnail images etc.

Image ALT Tags:
Accurately describe your images using the Image ALT tag, and include keywords/phrases relevant to the page. WordPress Add Media tools allow you to add ALT text and captions, enabling inclusion of additional relevant text content. Used wisely, without spamming, its another useful element.

Anchor Text:
The words you use to link to other pages / sections of the site. WordPress Link Editor allows full control of anchor Text links, including the ability to specify “Hyperlink Title” which essentially work like Image ALT text - the title of the link pops up when the mouse pointer hovers over the link… Again, used wisely, its another useful SEO element.

CSS Dropdown Menus:
Many of the new, highly professional WordPress CMS Themes utilise CSS dropdown menus, which is extremely important in aiding search engines to locate and index internal pages. This also facilitates Google’s ability to pass Page Rank throughout the internal page structure!

Google SiteMaps:
Another delightful WordPress plugin is the automatic Google Sitemap Generator! Once installed and configured, every new page, post or edit of a page or post automatically updates the sitemap.xml page!

RSS Feeds:
WordPress RSS feeds are easily extended by installation of an onsite Feedburner email subscription service, where your posts and pages are automatically distributed to subscribers by email. Moreover, your Feedburner account and site feed gives your site a pipeline directly into the Google index! I regularly see WordPress posts that make it into Google Alerts distribution in less than 4 hours!

So, on that basis I’m happy to accord WordPress 10 out of 10 for SEO functionality. Couple that with more than 3000 available plugins to extend the core functionality, the thousands of available design templates or themes, the ease-of-use factor, robust software, ease of installation etc, and I think we’ve got a winning CMS formula.

Posted by Internet Media Solutions at 11:27 AM 0 comments

Copywriting for Search Engines, Directories and Websites


To get optimal listings in search engine and directory queries, keywords and key concepts must be placed strategically throughout your web pages. To summarize, you need these words in phrases in:

* Title tags
* Meta-tags (keywords and descriptions)
* Headings (if used)
* Body text, and
* Alt-attribute in the image source tags

When online marketing professionals optimize a web site for search engine and directory queries, they should not spend most of their time redesigning the layout (in HTML) or submitting the site to the search engines. Most of their time should be spent on researching, writing good copy that will index well in search engines, and writing thorough, accurate descriptions for directory submissions. Good web copy must contain well-researched and varied keywords and key concepts based on a web page's topic; accurately reflect the web pages' content; and be strategically placed throughout a web page as mentioned above.

Most sales and advertising "fluff" should be eliminated.

Here's an example (and one of our pet peeves). How many of you have seen this scam, "Put your printed brochure on the web!" Print advertising copy contains a lot of "fluff" phrases such as "service that is second to none." Search engine analysis? "Service" is a stop word in some search engines and will be ignored in a search query. "Second to none?" How many people do you know really search using that phrase? When we are looking for something on the web, we are going to type in exactly the type of product or service we are looking for, not sales and advertising "fluff."

Web copywriting should contain keywords and key concepts without all the "fluff." Web copy has to flow and be strategically placed to get your web pages ranked well in search engine and directory queries. Your potential customers will also appreciate being able to find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible. That's just good customer service.

The one time that web copywriting is extremely important is your site submission to Yahoo. Although Yahoo reserves the right to change or modify the site description you send them, if you can submit a well-written description containing your most important keywords and key concepts without word stacking, Yahoo will likely keep most of your description intact.

Good copywriting is a necessary element of both online and offline marketing. If you do not have experience in writing good copy for the web, we recommend that you hire an online marketing consultant to initially write the copy for you. Then you can learn from the copy you paid for. The more practice you get at web copywriting, the better you will get at it.

Posted by Internet Media Solutions at 11:27 AM 0 comments

8 Ways To Increase How Long A Visitor Stays On Your Site


How long do people stay on your site when they get there? In this article let’s talk about 8 ways to increase how long a visitor stays on your site so you can achieve more positive responses!

Getting traffic to your website is only half of the battle. The other half is getting them to stay long enough to complete a positive action. The more positive responses you get from your website visitors the better your Internet business will do.

Do you use any type of site statistic tracking on your site? Google Analytics is very good and can tell you how long a website visitor is staying on your site.

Before we get to ways to increase how long a visitor stays on your site lets talk about what positive response is. Since we know that everyone who comes to your website is going to leave you want to get them to do something positive before they do.

Examples of a positive response would be subscribing to your newsletter, clicking on a pay per click ad, filling out a lead form, bookmarking your site, subscribing to your RSS feed if you have a blog, going to another page on your site, buying something, contacting you by email for more information, and so on.

These are all things that someone could do while they’re on your site that would be considered a positive response. This also increases the amount of time that they spend on your site.

Okay back to the 8 ways to increase how long they stay.

1. Offer only fresh content. If your content is unique and interesting a person will spend more time reading it. Using private label right content is generally not the best way to do this because your visitors may already be familiar with it having seen it on someone else’s site.

2. Make your site interesting by adding video, audio, graphics, and so on to liven it up a little bit. Understanding how social media works is a very good way to come up with ideas to make your site more interesting.

3. Remind your visitors they can print out content on your website. While it’s printing it gives them an opportunity to look at other things on your site.

4. Encourage visitors to participate in a survey in exchange for a free gift. Once they complete the survey send them to another page on your site where they can access the freebie.

5. As opposed to sending your visitors to affiliate webpages, create a file with a redirect name to another page of your own. You will get credit for another page view and the time a person spends on your site will increase.

6. Pay attention to how fast your site loads. Today people are in a hurry and they do not have a lot of time to wait for webpages that load slow. If your pages are not loading fast consider what is slowing them down and change it.

7. Make sure your website is professional in every way. This includes the text that you are using on your pages. It should be easy to read and the pages themselves should be easy to navigate around them.

8. Brand yourself in every way so that as a visitor goes from one page to the next they always feel like they are still on your site. This includes having the same background color for every page including your blog. Your header should be the same on every page, and any logos should be consistent as well.These are 8 ways increase how long a visitor stays on your site. By keeping your visitors around longer you increase the odds of having a positive response from more of them.
Posted by Internet Media Solutions at 11:26 AM 0 comments

8 Reasons to Start an Online Business in 2009


The economy is down, we’re in probably the worst financial crisis since the great depression, and unemployment is shooting through the roof. Sounds like the worst time to start an online business right? Wrong! 2009 could be the perfect time to start a business if you are smart about it. Here’s the reasons why:

It’s Easy to do
Starting an online business is simple to do. It’s not like starting a normal business. It doesn’t take as much money or time to create an online business. There are many different ways to make money online including retail stores, affiliate advertising, creating a successful blog, article writing, or website/graphic design etc.

All those ideas are legitimate online businesses that have made a ton of money for a ton of people who are doing what they love. You can even create a successful online business in your spare time. You don’t have to quit your day job to be a success.

It’s Cheap
Creating a website is extremely cheap compared to starting up a store or office. Even if you don’t design your website yourself you can pay someone else to do it and you can get it done cheap by free lancers through sites like Guru.com. After you get your site designed you will need to pick a domain name. You’re going to want to pick a domain name that relates to what you are selling. After that you will need to pick a web host.

Web hosting is a service that takes all the files that make up your website and stores them on a server that is connected up to the internet 24/7/365. From their users will be able to access your website all the time. You can find reliable web hosting for $10-$20 a month, (Learn How to Pick the Right Web Host). After initial start up costs, the cost of maintaining a website are very small which allows you to be very profitable. All the choices you have to make here are extremely important ones for your site, but they can all be very cheap.

Creating a Website is Easy Now!
You don’t have to know HTML to create a good looking website now. Using programs like Adobe Dreamweaver allows you to create the design of your website and it creates the HTML that goes along with the design. There are simple tutorials all over the internet that tell you how to create a website. You can use sites like Yahoo’s Site Builder to drag and drop pictures to design your website. If you wanted to create a blog you can use free blog hosting sites like Google’s Blogger and create a blog in minutes.

E-commerce is Succeeding even in a Down Economy
While regular brick & mortar stores are struggling to even stay in business, e-commerce business is growing. According to the Department of Commerce U.S. Retail E-commerce sales numbers are up all around. The 2nd Quarter of 2008 saw $34.6 billion in sales which was a 2.9% increase from the 1st quarter and a 9.5% increase from the second quarter of 2007. Just recently on “Cyber Monday” (the online world’s “black Friday”) the online world saw another positive sign, consumers spent $846 billion on cyber Monday which was an increase of 15% over 2007’s cyber Monday.

Marketing is better/faster/more measurable online
Marketing online is all around better online. There’s an estimated 1.5 billion people who use the internet worldwide. That’s 21.9% of the world’s population. It has grown 305% from 2000-2008 and that number will only continue to grow as the populations in emerging markets like China, the Middle East, and Africa continue to get modernized.

The Internet is a force that you cannot ignore. There’s a lot of people that use the internet and the great news is they are easy to reach and easy to target. A survey by Hearst Electronics Group and Goldstein Group of business to business marketers showed that the “migration of communications budgets from traditional media to online has accelerated to the point where nearly half of all spending, 47 percent, is spent on online marketing techniques today."

The businesses are doing that for a reason, they can track their marketing methods online a lot easier so they can understand what their ROI is and decide where to put the money. Also it is easier to target people online than it is in the real world so it takes less money to make more sales. Some of the ways to advertise online include search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click ads, article marketing, blogging. All but the pay per click ads can be free. SEO is the technical term for optimizing your site and link building with the goal of getting to the top spot in search engines for a certain keyword.

This is important for the success of your online business because the majority of online users use search engines like Google to find what they are looking for. Being at the top spot in Google gets you the most traffic for the cheapest amount….free! There are tons of easy and cheap ways to market your website online.

Tracking…Online Analytics
I touched on this in the previous paragraph but this deserves more attention. Tracking how your business is doing in all aspects is important, no matter what type of business you have. When I say tracking your business I mean figuring out if you are putting your dollars in the right place. If users are leaving your site right away (a term called “bouncing”) maybe it’s because your site is not user friendly so you must re-design your website, if users are reading the content of your site but then leaving during the check out process maybe it’s time for a new shopping cart, it’s also important to know where your users are coming from and where they are going.

You can tell all of this by using analytics software that you can get online. Google Analytics is perhaps the best program that you can use to track your website and the best part is it’s completely free. All it involves is placing code that Google provides you on every page that you want the program to track. On a daily basis you can check to see how many people visited your site, what they looked at, how they came to your site, how long they stayed, where they exited from, and most importantly if they were a conversion and how they got there. That type of measurability is critical to any business and that and so much more is possible online.

Starting in a Bad Economy is a Good Thing!
Starting up a business in a bad economy can be a good thing if you are passionate about what you are doing. As Paul Graham pointed out in his essay the economy does not necessarily affect a startup it is the founders that make or break the company. Just ask Bill Gates of Microsoft or Steve Jobs of Apple both of which were started in the terrible economy of the 1970’s.

A down economy is an opportunity if looked at in the right light, by opportunistic entrepreneurs. A down economy means less competition, more companies/people looking to make deals, people looking for ways to save. It has become a well known fact that online is the place to get deals on just about anything you need. Retailers offering aggressive online discounts this year were able to increase sales from last year because they were able to adjust to a down economy because of the flexibility of online business.

Online businesses are cheap to start up and cheap to maintain, those saving get passed onto the customer in the form of great discounts. At the same time do not ignore the economy creating a website that shows people creative ways to save money would be a great site in a down economy, or a debt consolidation website, or shop and compare sites, or a community forum that lets people share the best deals. There are countless opportunities waiting to be filled in the online world.

It’s About Time You Start Doing What You Want to Do!
Who doesn’t want to own their own business? You get to be your own boss, make your own hours, and feel the joy of successfully having your own company. If you’re tired of your job or even just want to turn your hobby into a profitable venture an online business is the way to go. The best part is it does not have to take over your entire life. With an online business you can do a lot of the work in a short amount of time which means you do not necessarily have to quit your day job.

Do you like writing? Become a blogger, blogging is the hot thing in the online world right now and it takes all of 5 minutes to create a blog on blogger and not too much more time to create your own site with a Wordpress themed blog. You can write what you feel like writing about and make money doing it. Do you like a certain topic and you know a bunch of other people do? Why not start an online forum about it, that’s a great way to do what you want and profit off of it. There are plenty of businesses out there and an online business is the easiest way to get started.As you can see there are great reasons to start an online business in 2009. It’s the easiest, cheapest, fastest way to start your own business and it’s a growing market that basically anyone can be successful in, if your passionate about what you are doing. Make 2009 your year to start an online business, Get out there and Get Started.

Posted by Internet Media Solutions at 11:25 AM 1 comments

7 Simple Ways To Build Traffic To A New Website


Got a brand new website? That’s great, but nobody cares. OK, maybe that’s a little harsh. The truth, however, is that just having a website doesn’t get you much. Many business owners I meet are surprised to find, once we look at the numbers, that the shiny new site they had built not too long ago gets little to no traffic on a daily basis.

Many newcomers to the web make the mistake of thinking that just by buying a domain main and putting up your site visitors are going to happen by - something like when you buy property and build a storefront in a busy part of town.

It just doesn’t work that way. The web is harsh. You can have the best looking site in the world with great resources and content and go entirely ignored or unnoticed. It happens. It’s happening right now. Somewhere out there in the ether is a brand new gorgeous website loaded with great content, and nobody cares. Poor little lonely site.

But there is hope. Every website had its early days. Even sites that get hundreds of thousands of visitors a day started out with none.
Here are 7 simple things you can start doing right now to help drive traffic to your site.

 1. Get some quick links from trusted directories
Link building is a long-term process with long-term goals, but for brand new sites with no history you’ve got to start somewhere. There are a number of directories out there that offer free and paid listings (subject to editorial review, of course).

Here are the ones I recommend:
1. Yahoo!
2. Business.com
3. JoeAnt.com
4. DMOZ.org
5. BOTW.org
6. Ah, what the heck - here’s a great list of directories sorted by SEOmoz’s Trifecta score - bookmark it and get started

 2. Start blogging
OK, blogging isn’t for everybody (especially you boring people), but it’s a great way to build relevant content at your site on a consistent basis. It also gives your visitors/customers a way to engage with you. But please don’t make the mistake of being too “corporate” on your blog - do yourself a favor and check your Public Relations cap at the door. Don’t be afraid to discuss your mistakes, missteps you’ve made, and what you’ve learned from them as well as your triumphs. In short, be a human, not a brand.

 3. Consider Paid Search
For new websites, the day when you receive all the traffic you need for free from search engines and other referrals is a long way off - if not just a pipe dream altogether. Often times paid search campaigns are a great way to get your site in front of your target market today. Be sure to keep your budget modest, though, until you’re confident in your ROI. Be sure to do your keyword research to find lower-cost “long tail” keywords - going after the big traffic keywords might be tempting, but it gets expensive the ROI is often not the best.

 4. Use Article Marketing To Build Links
As with any tactic, I’d recommend using this one in moderation. Article marketing is, essentially, trading words for links. It can help with link building, but the quality of the links it garners is usually less than stellar.

Here’s how it works:
1. Write an informative article on your site topic (or something related)
2. Include an “about the author” section as well as links in the article that point to your pages using relevant anchor text
3. Submit the article through one of the many article syndication services (such as EZineArticles.com or GoArticles.com)
4. The deal is, anybody can come along and publish your article on their website - provided they use the article in its original format including the “about the author” section. So when the article is published, any links you include back to your site are published as well.

 1. Guest Post At Relevant Blogs
This certainly requires some up-front investment, mainly in terms of building relationships with bloggers in your topic (a little brown-nosing never hurt), but it can help get the flywheel turning for your site like nothing else can. Take the time to make your guest post remarkable and smart - your host blogger will appreciate it, and it’ll improve the likelihood of attention coming back to your site (which you’ll link to in your guest post, of course). Links from blogs are some of the most powerful editorial links you can get - don’t underestimate them for a second.

 2. Submit Your Site to Design Galleries
Is your website breathtaking to behold, beautiful enough to make angels weep? Yeah, sure it is. But seriously, if it looks pretty sharp there are plenty of web design galleries that accept submission for new sites and link to the sites they feature. Particularly for CSS-driven design there are a number of galleries that will consider your site for listing (provided your site uses CSS for layout/styling - and God help you if it doesn’t) - including CSSElite.com, CSSHeaven.com, CSSBeauty.com and many others. Just search in Google for “CSS design gallery.” Unless your site is ugly - in that case, I can’t help you, and stop asking me to look at it.

 3. Sponsor a Local Event or Charity
OK, I admit this is kind of a tired tip - but it works! Especially for local small businesses. Is there a local event coming up in your community? A local charity that has a website? Not only will sponsoring such an event give you all of the normal PR benefits (and self-righteous bragging rights) that are the byproducts of charity, but any web announcement for the event will potential include a mention of your website as well as a link to it. And you can feel good about yourself for a change.

Bonus Tip: Be Patient
Alright, this one is cheap, I admit it. Not much of a tip. But it’s important to remember that you’re not going to see your unique visitors count skyrocket immediately for your new website. Most “overnight successes” actually take a few years to get going. And if you find yourself checking your traffic numbers on a daily basis, please do us all a favor - step away from the computer, go toss the ball around with your kid, maybe take your niece out for ice cream. Contrary to popular belief, staring at your site traffic data has no positive effect on it.

Posted by Internet Media Solutions at 11:24 AM 1 comments

5 Surefire Ways To Generate Website Traffic


The whole purpose of building a website is to get it noticed on the World Wide Web. However, without targeted traffic, your website will wither away and die. Traffic is the lifeline of a successful website business. In this short article, I am going to give you just 5 of the many possible ways in which to generate targeted traffic.

1. Article Marketing
Article marketing is one of the very best ways for driving targeted traffic to your website. Write an article between 300-500 words and submit it to some of the many article directories on the internet. Be sure to include a resource box at the end of your article with a back link to your site. Make absolutely sure you follow the rules of the article directories you are submitting to. Once your article is approved you can enjoy the traffic it brings for a long time to come.

If you have written an informative article with high quality content, it may be picked up and used by bloggers, ezine publishers and owners of newsletters. Just one article a day submitted to the directories could result in 30 articles sending you traffic on a daily basis.

2. Submitting Blog Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites
There are hundreds of Social Bookmarking sites on the internet today. Sign up for several and submit your blog posts. Be sure to submit your post in the right category. Somebody that is interested in Internet Marketing wouldn’t look in the Pets category!

3. Write Testimonials
If you have bought an online product and are happy with it, why not submit a testimonial? The site owner would be very happy to display your testimonial on their site to show other interested customers how great their product is. The beauty of doing this strategy is putting a link to your website on their website. If their website is popular it can generate a lot of traffic for you.

4. Forum Marketing
Forums are a great way for driving targeted traffic to your website. Find a forum that is highly targeted to your website and become involved with the community. You must also create a signature. With your signature, you should provide a link back to your website. Give the reader some value and provide a call to action to induce them to click on your link.

The biggest benefit of all with forum marketing is the fact that the community is a very tight knit group of people who are interested in the same subject, making them extremely targeted prospects.

5. Commenting
If, like me, you may have signed up for many newsletters. Upon reading the newsletter, and if you find it interesting, then why not comment on it? As most of the comments are moderated, it is in your best interest to say something useful and not just a one-liner such as: “Great Newsletter”. This doesn’t give value to the newsletter or to yourself, so think about creating an informative comment. You will provide a back link to your website. If the newsletter provider has a huge mailing list, then your comment and link will be in front of thousands.

These are just 5 of the very many ways in which you can easily generate huge amounts of traffic to your website for little effort and, best of all, for no cost.

Happy traffic hunting...!!!

Posted by Internet Media Solutions at 11:24 AM 0 comments

5 Frequently Used / Abused SEO Link Building Techniques


Search engine optimization (SEO) embraces multiple facets to produce viable shifts in rankings for specific keywords for the website in question. One of those facets is link building (a metric that uses link popularity and the authority of the referral to dictate a pecking order).

We all know SEO and positioning are important, but what are some of the more common link building techniques people use to promote their websites and build website authority. We will briefly discuss 5 frequently used and abused techniques for building links below, with their respective pros and cons.

1. Site wide links -
Site wide links are when another website adds you to a portion of their website that is duplicated throughout the entire site. Areas like the footer, in their navigation, on the sidebar or (blogroll) as it is commonly called. As a result, if the website gains trust, authority or page rank from Google, the site being linked to gets a boost in the SERPS (search engine result pages).

There is nothing wrong with getting links from people who genuinely like your site and wish to share it with others in this fashion. However, on the flip side, this technique can be abused rather easily and leave a questionably link profile particularly when the anchor text selected just happens to be something the target site wanted to rank for (such as their main keyword vs. the site name or brand). Like all things, moderation for building links is the key as well as diversity to create a balanced link profile.

Remember, SEO based on off page links alone are volatile, any change to the algorithm could devalue or suppress excessive noise from one site offering thousands of the same links from multiple pages with the same anchor text. Google and other search engines already have countermeasures in place for excessive over-linking, so once again, if is it within your control exercise moderation and do more than just acquire tons of links without backing them up with substance, traffic and user engagement.

2. Redirects -
Regarding redirects the most frequently used for SEO is the 301 redirect. 301 redirectshttp://i.ixnp.com/images/v3.63/t.gif are implemented at the server level so that pages were deleted that no longer served their purpose could still pass rankings and authority to another page. Say for example you ran a promotion for 6 months and thousands of people linked to you as a result, well that page represents a great deal in the search engine result pages and can be used to elevate other pages in your site.

However, if you delete it, all ranking and authority for that page disappears, so from an SEO perspective a 301 redirect (permanently moved to the following address) is an excellent solution. Once again, done for the right reasons this is a benefit, however this technique if used with the wrong intentions can be abused to load a specific page up with an immense amount of link weight (which invariably impacts the search engine result pages) if the target page is optimized properly.

The con of this technique is (1) if others redirect spammy sites at your domain (known as Google bowling) or (2) if massive link bait campaigns (using emotional triggers to incite links from media, powerful blogs or editorial sources) are then redirected at the new “real page” the link bait was actually attracting links for. This can be a virtual source of unlimited links for those with enough creativity to embrace the medium. Is it ethical or is it just marketing?, it is not our place to say. The purpose was just to show how something designed for one purpose can easily serve another when ranking and keyword positioning is at stake.

3. Social Media -
Social media is great for creating exposure, building RSS subscribers who are hip to identify with your core message. But many often use it only as a way to create backlinks to posts that have less than favorable appeal. It is a double-edged sword which implies to use it (to promote), but don’t use it the wrong way (to spam others with irreverent content). Etiquette is the only thing separating someone sharing something useful with others to plain and simple online noise and spam.

I suggest that you look for other ways to build links or, if you embrace social media that you do so respectfully, be a part of a community (don’t just look at it as a place to go and build links). Links all have different types of value, some are for ranking higher in search engines, and others are no-followed but can yield hundreds of visitors to your site.

Finding the right balance (and finding evangelists for your brand) are the ideal way to promote your content. Social media leaves an imprint which can be favorable or just essentially hike up your bounce rate (as hundreds or thousands of visitors dip in for one post and bounce back to other sites).

If used properly (from social media power users who have a following of thousands) with a specific message (that does not appear as an advertisement) social media can work effectively to expedite authority for your website. Once authority is gained, ranking for anything related to your topic is far easier, so it must be a part of the process rather than the objective.

4. Press Releases -
Press releases are an effective way to draw a new audience from using the news/ angle of appeal that search engines are fond off. Sure, the results are not long-lasting, but if leveraged properly with the right message, they can create a viral effect and lead to other unique opportunities.

Our take on press releases is, they should only be used when something is worthy of press, but once again, anything that can be used for good reason, can also be abused online. Since most services no-follow the links, don’t expect the press release to feed your pages with link juice (so to speak).

On the contrary, it is the value of the visibility that press releases create that inclines others to pick up your story, link to your site or visit your site as a result to investigate your offer. Make sure you have something worth saying and appeal to those who will take action.

The basis of the web is content and copy, which means that driving traffic through whatever means you use will not yield fruitful results, unless the copy speaks to your target audience. I offer thanks to Brian Clark from CopyBloggerhttp://i.ixnp.com/images/v3.63/t.gif for reminding us that everything has its place, and SEO without appealing content is just noise.

Think from the perspective of benefits and features with a compelling call to action. Over time, you will be able to gauge if using press releases as a viable marketing strategy for building links is suitable for your marketing objectives or not.

5. Directories -
Once the mecca of link building and link building services, directories have seen better days. In the past the main objective for a website was to be inducted into DMOZhttp://i.ixnp.com/images/v3.63/t.gif (the open directory project), which was an indication of passing a stringent review process. That was in fact until directories were abused and starting charging hefty fees for inclusion (starting the paid link conundrum) and automating the addition of sites without sufficient review. As a result, Google and other search engines devalued their reputation and pulled their ability to impact the search engine result pages in such a dramatic fashion.

Granted all directories are not created equal, the problem with most is that they are strained for link flow and the minute amount that they pass on to your site is hardly worth the effort (due to long periods of deeper pages not being indexed).

In order for a link to aid your website, search engines must index the page that link is on, so, if your link is buried 5 folders away from the root folder for a site that has thousands of outbound links and a disproportionate amount of inbound links, chances are that link is a dud.
Just like punches in bunches, directories do add up and can produce a substantial impact on search engines as far as sculpting a link profile for your website. However for all of those minor league links, one heavyweight with trust coming from a website that already has an affinity with the market or niche you are trying to rank for is worth its weight in gold in the long-run.
Quality directories (that pass rank and authority) still exist, you just have to know what to look for (like crawl rate, age of the domain, number of inbound links to that page and ensuring the links are capped on that page with no more than 40 outbound links).

While this list could most definitely go indefinitely highlighting the pros and cons of link building, the take away is quite simple. Understand your ranking objectives enough to know what the tipping point will require.

If your competition has used all of the methods above to create a substantial position, there is no guarantee that those same methods will work for you today. Ranking algorithms are constantly shifting in favor or out of favor with particular SEO link building techniques.

One thing is constant, language and since search engines are to a great extent based on information retrieval and assessment, the stronger the grasp of language and the cues you use as signals impart an imprint to search engines that identify what your site is about.

In layman’s terms,

(1) create topical pools of quality content if applicable or attract quality links from websites that are ranking for the key phrases you are targeting

(2) build your own internal link reputation (much like Wikipedia) by linking to yourself when applicable when there is a co-occurrence of keywords

(3) look for linking opportunities but more importantly make your content link worthy and our target audience will find you once the word gets out (such as using a press release).There is never a one and done method for securing a top position, it requires constant diligence and adaptation to remain flexible and fluid to accommodate change. By working with some of the ethical formats of the methods above, it is still possible to make a tremendous impact while really driving home your message with frequent updates by adding quality content to stay buoyant in search engines (in addition to building quality links).

Posted by Internet Media Solutions at 11:22 AM 0 comments
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