News and Views About Online Stuff

Web Design

General Webhosts Vs WordPress Specific Webhosts

by Chris Channing

If you are hip on the blogging scene, then no doubt you’ve heard of WordPress. WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms around. Likewise, it has become something of a phenomenon as webhosts are now offering WordPress-specific webhosting. The question is- should you go for a generalized host or a WordPress-specific host?

Features To Look Out For In WordPress Hosting

Above all else, WordPress should be simple to install. Several different administration panels allow for the instant installation of the script, such as cPanel. cPanel is run on the vast majority of all webhosts, so nearly every webhost user should have access to WordPress.

The problem lies within the support for the product. Generalized webhosts don’t always have time to keep up to date on new additions of WordPress- meaning their customers could be at potential security risks. It only takes one delay in upgrades for a blog owner to lose everything they have- and at this point in time a WordPress-specific host would have been the better choice.

When a blogger needs to upgrade a blog, he or she will soon find that the “one-click” upgrade feature most webhosts have is very dangerous. These installers write over previous files: meaning that old themes, plugins, and other content can be lost for good. In this case, WordPress-specific hosts take the win as they allow for better upgrading options.

WordPress users will attest that blogs take up a nice amount of bandwidth. This is because blogs use databases to store the vast majority of their information, meaning multiple connections to the database could overload the backend of a blog. In this scenario, WordPress users need a host that allows for flexible bandwidth plans. The host should also have a sturdy hardware setup so that a bottleneck performance issue is not created at the database level.

Added Benefit For Bloggers

It isn’t always a game of business- sometimes it’s about the extras that webhosts can offer. WordPress hosts are popular for offering WordPress-specific plugins and themes for their users free of cost- whereas normally extras such as this can cost webmasters hundreds of dollars.

The great thing about getting free themes from WordPress hosts is the fact that no one else has them. This means that you can have a professionally designed blog at no extra cost, compared to the hundreds of dollars it would take to get a custom WordPress theme designed and coded.

Compared to the exclusivity of other methods, such as getting a custom design laid out and coded, the webhosting route is much cheaper. Getting custom designs can easily run hundreds of dollars, and sometimes that isn’t counting the coding of the design!

In the end, webhosts that specialize their services for WordPress users have some of the best deals around for blog fanatics- or anyone just looking to maintain their own website without the hassle!

About the Author:

How Web Designers Build A Better Design

by Chris Channing

Web design is a raging market with all types of creativity, originality, and colors bursting over every website over the Internet. The trick comes to maintain one’s individuality and still conform to web standards, readability issues, and proper design.

Before all sorts of colors, tables, and shapes are created- the concept of the readability of a website needs to be learned. The reader of the website is the target here, and how well they can read the content is the goal that needs to be achieved. Common practice states that a 10 pixel font or higher is sufficient, but going for bigger fonts is always appealing to Internet users.

Almost as important as readability, the fact comes to be that without proper navigation, the design isn’t going to be able to go very far. Intriguing CSS drop down menus have become quite popular among websites who follow trends. Other websites stick to the standard HTML menus that are strung along top and side navigation boxes. Either way, always have links to common parts of one’s website- this helps both readers and search engines find what they need.

How accessible a web design is to the user is another important factor that dictates how many Internet users can even access the website at all. Different web browsers use different engines to read how a website is coded. This means that how the website appears in one browser may be totally different in another. In some cases, it might not even render at all- meaning extra work needs to be done to standardize the design among multiple browsers.

Once all the basics in standardization and readability are maintained, the act of being creative and reestablishing the norms becomes the next test. Using different palettes of colors, using new forms of shapes and blocks (The rounded rectangle box is a current favorite for web designers), and ultimately thinking of new ways to display information has become the measuring stick in how a web design project is rated.

Lastly, it’s a good idea to make use of previously popular web design tactics. Newer and better forms of web design options are great to engage in, but the popular forms of web design options have been made popular for a reason- they are visually appealing and they just work. Thus, it’s always nice to conform to certain web design trends even if a unique look is desired. It isn’t always so much as trying to create a unique design as it is trying to create a unique experience for the Internet user viewing it.

Closing Comments

Coding and designing layouts is quite a profitable skill to have, but it will take time and effort to get to the skill level needed to do so for actual clients. And if the web design process is more of a personal gain situation, even more emphasis on creativity and inspiring designs is needed to make others take notice of one’s creations. Either way, web design is a fun industry and learning more on the subject is highly recommended.

About the Author:

Site Rubix - Not Your Momma’s Website Designer

by James Comer

Awesome! Wealthy Affiliate’s new website designer software knocked my socks off. Now, I could stop here, but then I’d be doing you a disservice by keeping it to myself and not sharing what Site Rubix is all about. Maybe you are aware- or not- that Wealthy Affiliate has been quietly turning out successful graduates of Affiliate Marketing University quite awhile now. There is just so much information, support, and tools that are cutting edge that the space I have in this article doesn’t do it justice.

These days, one of the obstacles for affiliate marketers is website design. It’s not that easy to create a clean, professional website. To design a well organized website. Creating an efficient website can literally mean the difference between filet mignon or rice and beans. Speak with anyone who is a successful internet marketer and you’ll quickly discover that all you have is a couple of seconds to capture your visitor’s attention before they return to the search engine give the sale to someone else.

Your time is best served by focusing your efforts on the most crucial aspect of affiliate marketing. Introducing Site Rubix from the creators of Wealthy Affiliate.

Site Rubix is touted as a truly “all-in-one” tool for those into affiliate marketing to build professionally created websites designed to produce. Experience is not needed whatsoever. No need to be experienced with html, or even have any idea about hand-coding a website. This is a drag and drop solution. You can drag and drop formatting, and pictures all over your template and drop them where you want them instantly.

How much was Photoshop the last time you priced it? I’ll bet $500-1000 depending on the package you bought. Did you know how to use it? While a good program, you won’t need an expensive program like that in order to design and put together awesomely done websites.

Ok, you’ve got me excited, James. What else can Site Rubix do? How about you having the ability to duplicate pages that you’ve already created, or even full sites just by clicking your mouse? No need to reinvent the wheel. If you have a page or even a whole site that is working- use it again!

You can upload your own images and banners so that you can reuse them on many different sites. Site Rubix allows you to view, organize and manage your “media” in a very well laid out interface.. and it looks great too!

You’ll be pleasantly surprised when you checkout just what Site Rubix is capable of. I know of no comparison for true drag-n-drop website design. It won’t matter if you are designing landing pages or selling your own website creation services. Site Rubix has your back.

About the Author:

6 Steps to Picking Profitable Adsense Keywords

by John Neyman

Knowing how to find the best keywords for use in your Adsense ads is not a straightforward process. Finding and implementing high profit, low competition keywords in your ads really is the trick for making Adsense payoff big.

The following process should yield profitable, low competition keywords for your Adsense ads. This process is not perfect, but when you analyze it and try it for yourself, you can see that it makes sense. Adsense that is.

Step 1 Research some keywords for your niche that have a high CPC value. To do this, first find your keywords using the Google Adwords keyword tool or another tool that will give you niche specific lists of keywords. Save those keywords into a spreadsheet program as a csv file. Copy and paste those keywords into Google’s Traffic Estimator (you will need an Adwords account). The traffic estimator will give you the estimated clicks per day and the average cost per click (CPC) for each keyword. Copy and paste this information back into your spreadsheet file for later reference.

Step 2 Multiply the average CPC by 30% to get an estimate of your maximum earnings per click. The higher the average CPC, the more likely the CPC for the 2nd - 8th positions are high as well. You want this higher average CPC to start because if the CPC starts to drop off significantly after the 3rd position, your chance of getting high click earnings as an Adsense publisher will be diminished.

Step 3 Use any one of many tools available on the internet for helping to estimate the 1st - 8th position CPC values. These tools will estimate the CPCs for each position and allow you to see how much the CPCs drop off after the first position. This dramatically helps your analysis for picking the most profitable keywords. If the CPC values stay close to the each other and to the value of the first position, then you will more than likely have a profitable keyword.

Step 4 Now determine which Adsense ads occupy which positions. You can do this by searching on Google for your keyword and looking to see which Adsense ads are generated in the search results and in which order they are. Another way to estimate this is to use the Adwords Accelerator tool. It has a feature whereby Adwords ads are dynamically displayed for a given keyword you input into the tool to check. If the Adwords advertiser has used “Adwords for Content” in his advertising, these ads will be the Adsense ads someone else is displaying on their website.

Step 5 Compare the ads you found in step 4 to the results of using a keyword check function tool (available on the internet). If the advertisers you find by doing this closely match those you found in step 4, you will more than likely have a profitable keyword.

If the advertisers are not he same, then the advertiser is possibly not using the “Adwords for Content” mode of advertising in his campaigns. This means that the keyword may not be the basis for the Adsense ads and may not be profitable.

Step 6 Now you must get the traffic. If you decide to get traffic using the Adwords approach, then just use the keywords in your Adsense ads that scored well from the above evaluation. Then, use lower cost per click keywords in your Adwords ads. The difference between the earnings from the click you get on your Adsense word from the cost of the click you pay on your Adwords word will be your profit.

If you are planning to use search engine optimization techniques to get traffic to the website where your ads are, make sure the keywords you choose have the highest KEI possible. KEI is the ratio of the number of searches for a keyword to the number of competing sites having the keyword. The combination of a high KEI and a high score from the above evaluation will yield the best profit results.

Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services.

Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leaderexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.

About the Author:

Use SEO Blogging Techniques To Boost Your Website’s Ranking

by Russell G. Stuart

It’s a vicious circle - to get more web traffic, you have to be listed high in the search results: to be listed in the high search results, you have to get lots of web traffic. Sadly, the days when rich content alone attracted web visitors are no more.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques are what makes a website appear among the first pages of a search engine. The ways to do this vary from paid and legitimate to almost illegal.

You can make sure that your content is rich in key words, after finding the appropriate key words using tools you can find for doing that; you can exchange links; you can submit articles to directories; these are just a few ways of SEO. One easy and rather enjoyable way of doing is through blogs.

A weblog, better known as a blog, are created for both personal and business purposes. Your blog gives you the freedom to talk about anything you want and it’s quite an enjoyable task that’s worth all the effort. Blog attract loads of traffic and you can have your blog either within ot external to your website.

You decide what the content on your blog should be, and you can put as many links as you like in you blog posts. If it is within your site, you can boost your site’s position in searches by incorporating links. If it is not in your site, you have a priceless way of getting regular one way links.

Link exchanging is an acceptable way to boost your site’s position in the search engines, but one-way links are even better. Blogging builds up web traffic via two methods - one is through increasing your website visitors by enticing them to follow a link to it and the other is by getting in more visits, it increases your search engine ranking.

Your blog must be informative and rich in keyword-based content to make a good hit when it first starts off. Having your blog within the site increases its chances of getting hits for keywords. Because blog posts are different from the ordinary article format, it might be harder to put in keywords in your posts, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll breeze through easily.

Another great thing about blogs is that people can tell you exactly what you are doing right, or wrong. If you listen, you will pick up ways of making your site better and more useful. You can also interact with potential customers and build contacts, an essential part of any business.

About the Author:

How To Get Outstanding Flyfishing Header Graphics

by Craig Petersen

All Right, so you’re a fanatic about flyfishing, and you need to produce a outstanding website to show the public your genius. Or you’re expecting to sell your exceptional flyfishing products, or to market your accomplishments in your neighborhood as a flyfishing guide. Whatever your rationality for needing to create a site, there is one matter you truly need to dress it up: a flyfishing header graphic that stands out from the rest. There are two basic means to get one: hire someone to plan a beautiful unique header for you, or create it yourself.

The Hiring Path

If your talents rest more in fishing than in graphics, you in all likelihood should go ahead and engage a pro to design your flyfishing header. Lead Off with getting an idea of the particular artwork you want: do you have images, or do you want a more animated feeling? Is there a direction you need to promote your business, or are you open to ideas? Is it merely a header, or are you searching for something that goes up one side and across the top, hugging your message?

Once you recognize what you want to see, it’s time to line up your graphic designer. You can search in scores of places: Elance, for example, furnishes you with freelance graphic designers for hire at reasonable prices. RentACoder is another first-class site to hire independent talent, or GetAFreelancer. At these sites, you can either put your job out for bid, and select the freelancer you like the best, or you can look through hundreds of portfolios and solicit a freelancer directly.

If money’s not a problem, locate some internet sites with great looks - not only fishing sites, but other action sites as well - and email the site owner, requesting him to recommend the artist to you. It’s rare that they will turn you down.

Deliberate, though, if you’re going to have someone produce your graphics for you, that you may save some money in the long run and end up with a genuinely great looking site if you employ them to do an total theme, with buttons and smaller versions of your flyfishing header graphics, instead of just a flyfishing header.

Do It Yourself

If you’re a do-it-yourself kind of person and you do possess some artistic talent, there are some excellent programs out there that you can use to make your flyfishing header artwork. Begin, though, by charting out precisely what your header should look like, utilizing graph paper to keep you in line. When you have a clear vision, start shopping.

For photo-realistic effects, you can’t beat Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. Either delivers great graphical capabilities, optimize pictures for the Web, and Paint Shop Pro has a tremendous utility called a picture tube that drops series of images on your sheet for you. You can find great images at sites like istockphoto or stock.xchng, or you can find free GIF images at places like gif.com to use in your header. With effective planning, you may be able to design a flyfishing header that suits your intentions just fine.

About the Author:

Tips on Internet Marketing Services

by Gary Terrazas

Good Internet marketing services for a business are those that achieve all that is required for an Internet business to succeed in all its activities.

It can be quite a challenge to find quality Internet marketing services or Internet marketing affiliate programmes. The reason being that there are a multitude of good Internet marketing affiliate programmes as well as many bad ones.

So, the first step in identifying the best provider of Internet services for your business is to learn the difference between what is a good Internet marketing programme and what is not!

Having the ability of immediately being in the position to identify whether an Internet marketing company you’ve approached is in fact legitimate or simply out to make a buck will be of immense value to you.

A super tool to make use of is one known as affiliate marketing. But before you investigate this route, know that Internet marketing services affiliates that are of any worth do not charge you to subscribe to their membership or charge you for services that have not yet supplied. Therefore it may be best to avoid any marketing affiliate programme that requests money before you receive any value.

Search engine marketing opportunities are another valuable tool that you can avail yourself of. Based on your target market it requires that you optimise your website specifically for the most popular search engines. I.e. Google and Yahoo. Although, whichever search engine you decide upon, ensure that they reach your particular target market.

By understanding how the individual search engines operate, you will have a better idea of what search engine techniques will effectively raise your ranking and which techniques are mediocre at best.

In Internet marketing you have an option of using PPC as a marketing medium. You could do such a program with a search engine or just decide to place ads on a website already enjoying high traffic.

Be cautious of paying for advertising on a busy site when that traffic irrelevant to your business. E.g. advertising fine bed linen on a coal mining website!

Choose the best Internet marketing firm or authority should you choose to make use of their offering. Remember to make enquiries about their pedigree, history and projects they have concluded. Also ask them to send through their curriculum vitae and all their details if they have traded under anther name in the past. Investigate the information you receive for authenticity.

Determine their capabilities by asking the Internet marketing company you identify how they foresee themselves adding value to your business. Keep in mind that lousy companies keep their secrets to themselves but honest companies are happy to share information with you.

There are hosts of Internet marketing services option available to you; you just have to take proper steps to make the right selection.

About the Author:

Starting a website - how your business can benefit

by Poppy

There are many ways of benefiting from starting your own website. The benefits you gain will depend on the type of business you are running. For musicians a website is a good way of allowing a wide audience to access your work. You can place MP3 files or videos of yourself on the site and allow a wide range of viewers to see and hear your work. If your music is aimed at a younger audience, make full use of the social networking sites.

Many people suffering from medical conditions feel isolated. You may feel you are the only person with the problem. Start a website. Talk about your condition, find links to treatments, medical resources or forums. Other people with the same condition will find your site. Give them a means to contact you - you will make friends and find yourself less isolated. For anyone with an interest in family history a website can be a useful way of allowing others doing similar research to contact you. Allow others to contact you to share your research.

If you want to make a bit of extra money, starting a website gives you an opportunity to earn from adverts or affiliate sales - of course you will have to work hard to ensure that visitors find your site.

For owners of even the smallest business, a website can be an invaluable tool. If you offer holiday lettings you can use an automated booking system to save time and allow your visitors to book directly. Having your own site allows you to give potential visitors a full description of your properties together with photographs and any local information you feel will be of interest to them. If you run a business selling any kind of products, a website will allow your wares to be seen by a much wider audience - local, national and even international.

For businesses selling a range of products or services, a website can be a quick and easy way of promoting your products and services to a wide audience both at home and at a distance. These days more and more people use the Internet to find information on a wide range of subjects and Internet shopping is becoming ever more popular. Don’t miss out. Use the Internet to promote your business to the widest possible audience.

For businesses selling a range of products or services, a website can be a quick and easy way of promoting your products and services to a wide audience both at home and at a distance. These days more and more people use the Internet to find information on a wide range of subjects and Internet shopping is becoming ever more popular. Don’t miss out. Use the Internet to promote your business to the widest possible audience.

For staff recruitment a website can be a cheap and effective way of reaching a wide range of potential employees. Put your job descriptions and application forms online and save your applicants time and postage.

Of course there are costs - both monetary and time - involved in setting up a website. But even a simple website can put your message across and bring you and/or your business a range of benefits.

About the Author:

3 Reasons Social Marketing Must Be A Part Of Your Business

by John Neyman

If you are trying to sell things on the Internet and you do not have a blog you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. Would you go to play golf without a putter?

Your competition is blogging and they are beating your pants off every day with ease. A part of blogging is submitting your articles to social directories.

Here are 3 reasons social marketing must be a part of your Internet business.

1. Social marketing is a popular way to get information. Directories like Digg and Netscape are quickly becoming the choice of people all over the world as a way to keep up to date on what is going on.

If you are not blogging and submitting to relevant social directories you are missing out on this easy form of traffic.

2. Social marketing is easy to do. Here’s what you need. You should get a WordPress blog and set it up so that you can quickly bookmark the top directories. Then you should post in your blog everyday. If you can talk and type you can blog.

3. Social marketing is an interactive way to develop relationships with your readers. This has become know as Web 2.0 and it is important to the future of your business.

People still like to deal with people. This is an age-old sales trick that sometimes gets lost on the Internet. By making yourself and your blog interactive you become a real person. This will help increase your chances for sales and repeat sales.

4. Search engines love social marketing. You are making their life easy when you blog around keyword rich topics that a person researching can find. When you master the techniques of social marketing you will find you can get on page one of Google and other search engines very quickly.

The reason for this is search engines are spidering Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, and many more non-stop looking for fresh relevant content to put online. This may as well be you as opposed to your competition.

If all of this seems confusing it really shouldn’t be. Read “The Authority Black Book” by Jack Humphrey. It is a free ebook you can get online. In it you will learn everything you ever wanted to know on social marketing and how to use it to increase your business.

Do not wait until tomorrow to get started. Do it today and your Internet business will thank you.

Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services.

Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leadersexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.

About the Author:

Google: The One Big Theory

by Russell R. Collins

I have created quite a large number of websites, and if, like me, you have spent hours building yours, then it can be a thankless task when it comes to waiting for customers to hit your virtual door. Like any overnight success, it can take weeks or even months for your website to start to gain popularity unless you have the benefit of advertising in other areas, such as banner adverts, posters, flyers and so on. For the average site builder, the date of publication can come and go as though all your hard work has made no difference to the value of the internet.

After some time you will, almost certainly, start to welcome a few visitors to your site, and maybe a few of them will spend their hard earned money there as well. But you’ll probably find that you get terribly excited if you have a few visitors, and a little dejected when you start to work out how much the current rate of visitors will earn you, and dreams of the Mediterranean cruise next month might have to be put on hold. If this sounds familiar, ask yourself what you have actually done to ensure that your site does become a success? Other than a slick design, nice graphics and a catchy address, what practical measures have you employed to ensure success?

One thing that you may have done is to browse through the internet and find information on how to promote your site, or tips on ‘optimizing’ it. You are almost certainly aware of the fact that to be successful on the internet you really need the search engines on your side. Having your site listed by Google, MSN and Yahoo for example is going to make a big difference to your site. But, what will make a far bigger difference is the overall rank of your website.

The rank of your site refers to how far up the list of results your website is when someone searches the internet. If your website sells left handed calculators for example, then you will expect and hope that if someone enters the keywords ‘left handed calculator’ in a search engine that your website is near the top. If it is at the top, that is fantastic, but you really need to be in the top ten, on that first page, to be a success. Unbelievably, only 3% of people who search online ever look past the first page of results that a search engine brings up. That means that if they search for ‘left handed calculators’, which brings up almost 400,000 results in Google, you need your website to be high up the first page to stand any chance of someone finding it. Even being in 11th place out of those 400,000 will mean that you’re missing out on 97% of visitors.

Possibly you might have heard of tips or companies that can rocket your website skywards and make sure your site is listed right near the top. Perhaps you’ve tried a few of these tips, and wondered why your site didn’t suddenly become the hottest place on the net? Maybe you even forked out a small fortune on a company that promised you the world and delivered you maybe a few places higher, rocketing you all the way from 164,378th place to 153,735th? Yes, 10,000 places higher, but the only difference is that number. Remember, unless you’re on the first page of results, it makes almost no difference where you are, so even if they had rocketed you to 1000th place, it still isn’t go to make much difference to your business. The thing is, that there is no single way of achieving this, and any company that takes your money on the premise that there is, is one to avoid. There are a whole range of factors, many of which are easily achievable yourself in a few hours, or even minutes. The other thing to remember is that this progress in rank doesn’t happen overnight. For many reasons, search engines don’t respond to changes immediately, and it can takes many months to achieve a high rank.

Be very wary of those sites that suggest that the best way of getting your site noticed is to use keywords. Although this is certainly true, search engines now take the number of keywords as only a minor factor in judging a site’s rank. Search engines got wise to the fact that many website owners were simply cramming great blocks of keywords into the code of a page just to get attention. They get attention now all right - and the result it that they lose their rank position very quickly. There are many other ways now which the search engines use to judge how good a site is, one of which is its popularity. This is measured in several ways, but the most significant is how many other websites are linking to yours. The more links, the more popular, and this in turn implies more relevant and useful.

Because as web designers we can sometimes become a little too close to our designs, and sometimes don’t just need to step back away from our glitzy masterpiece, we need someone else to take a good hard look and give us some feedback. Invariably these people like to be paid, but I have come across a nifty little site that offers a free assessment of your site. Although it’s free, it’s carried out by hand, and their advice is pretty thorough. They don’t just focus on keywords, but look at a whole range of ways in which your site could be made friendlier towards the search engines, and get ranked higher. If you haven’t tried them already, I’d recommend getting a review of your site for free. Even if your site has been around for a long time, or if it’s brand new, they’ll tell you all the things you could do to help improve your rank position.

Once you understand what can be changed about your site to help improve its position, it’s obviously up to you what you do. Picking and choosing at features that you can easily apply will certainly help. Over time, you can start to implement more of these suggestions, and little by little you should see a difference. I’ve done this myself - I used to be a keyword freak and just include as many as I could think of, but it started to make no difference. I’m trying things now such as amount of text per page, position of text on the page, number of links I include and so on, and I can see the increase in rank each day. My advice to any website developer is to keep a tight grip on your wallet and don’t pay companies to fob you off about magic solutions. Try a valuable free assessment today, it will pay dividends in the end.

About the Author:

11 EASY WAYS TO GET FREE TRAFFIC

by John Neyman

In this world you only have two types of assets: Money and Time. The easiest way to drive traffic to your site is to buy it. But if you are an Internet marketing beginner you probably don’t have much money to invest in traffic building. In that case, you will need to invest your time.

The following traffic techniques are time consuming, but they are 100% free and will get you a fair amount of targeted traffic. If your site is properly optimized for monetization, you will soon be earning enough money to invest in buying traffic, and save your precious time to build new money making websites.

So here are 11 surefire free traffic techniques:

This tip is so obvious it will not even be counted, but it is often overlooked: submit your site to the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and to as many other search engines as you can.

1. Use this proven Bum Marketing technique, write 5 to 10 articles and submit them to the free article directories. Of course you must include a link to your site in the article itself or in your bio box. The articles should be optimized for a keyword your site is targeting.

2. Find blogs related to your topic and leave useful comments with a backlink to your site. In the same way you could go to answers.yahoo.com, and answer questions related to your site’s topic. Off course put a link to your site in each of your answers. Another thing you should consider is joining the most popular forums that deal with your site’s topic and becoming an active poster. Include a link to your site in your signature.

3. This one can be very powerful. Write a press release about your site and submit it to press release sites such as prweb.com. If you are not familiar with press releases, take some time to do a little research: a press release is not written like an article.

4. If you are happy with a product or service you have used, write an unbiased testimonial and trade it for a backlink to your site.

5. Start a blog on blogger.com and a blog on wordpress.com, link them to your site and submit them to the hundreds of free blog directories. This will get you plenty of quality traffic as long as you keep your blogs updated.

6. Try posting ads with a link to your site on all the free classified ad sites you can find (such as craigslist.com). The best ones will allow you to post a live link. But don’t neglect the other ones. If your ad is well written, people will go out of their way and type your url in their browser. Off course you must post in the appropriate category.

7. An easy way to get extra free traffic is to add a link to your site in your email signature.

8. Start a page on myspace.com and on any other high page rank social bookmarking site you can find. In the same way, go to Squidoo.com, open a few accounts, create a few lenses and link them to your site.

9. Submit a viral video to youtube.com. You don’t really need any video producing know-how as a simple PowerPoint slideshow with some background music will do the job perfectly.

10. Search your main keywords on Google and see if you can exchange reciprocal links with related websites that come up in the top results.

11. You could write an ebook or a short report (say 10 to 20 pages), or find a product with giveaway rights that you can brand with a link to your site. Then submit it to all the free ebook directories you can find online.

This last tip is not free, but is worth the extra buck. Check out the misspellings or variations of your domain name, or those of your competitors. If you find a good available domain, grab it and redirect the traffic to your site.

Now all this looks like a full time job! These techniques work, but you don’t have to use them all at once. Just pick the one you feel the best with and act now. Invest 30 minutes to an hour daily in building your free traffic. Then step to your next favorite technique and within a few weeks you should be earning enough money to afford to buy traffic and concentrate your time and efforts on building your online business.

Our services at leader excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services.

Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leadersexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.

About the Author:

The Importance of a Sitemap

by Kim and Charles Petty

A sitemap is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap for the sake of having one. By highlighting the importance of having a well constructed sitemap, you will be able to tailor your own sitemap to suit your own needs.

1) Navigation purposes

A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. If your visitors browses your site and gets lost between the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease.

2) Conveying your site’s theme

When your visitors load up your sitemap, they will get the gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to get the “big picture” of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors’ time.

3) Site optimization purposes

When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page — they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.

4) Organization and relevance

A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird’s eye view of your site structure, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you will have a perfectly organized site with everything sorted according to their relevance.

From the above reasons, it is most important to implement a sitemap for website projects with a considerable size. Through this way, you will be able to keep your website easily accesible and neatly organized for everyone.

About the Author:

Improve Usability of Your Website

by Kim and Charles Petty

No matter how brilliant your website design is, if it is hard to reach the content of your site then your site is as useful as an empty shell. Here are some tips to improve the usability of your website to ensure it serves its functions optimally.

The first method is to make sure the typography of your content is suitable. If you have large blocks of text, make sure to use CSS to space out the lines accordingly. The longer a single line of text is, the greater the line-height of each line should be. Also, make sure the font size of your text is big enough to read easily. Some sites have 10-pixel-tall text in Verdana font; while that may look neat and tidy, you have to really strain your eyes to read the actual text.

Make it easy for visitors to find content that they want on your site. If you have thousands of articles on your site and a certain visitor wants to find one single article from that pile, you have to provide a feasible means to enable visitors to do that without hassle. Be it an SQL-driven database search engine or just a glossary or index of articles that you have, providing such a feature will make sure your visitors can use your site with ease.

Ensure that your site loads fast if you do not want to lose visitors. Most internet users will leave a website if it doesn’t load completely within 15 seconds, so make sure the crme de la crme of your website is delivered to the visitors as soon as possible to retain their attention.

Last of all, test each and every link on your site before it goes online. There is nothing more effective in tarnishing your professional image than broken links, so be very careful about that.

About the Author:

Why Do You Need A Good Website Design?

by Ron Martin

Your website is the hub of your online business; it is the virtual representation of your company whether your company exists physically or not. When you are doing business online, people cannot see you physically like how they could if they were dealing with an offline company. Hence, people do judge you by your covers. This is where a good design comes in.

Imagine if you are running an off-line company. Would you allow your salespersons to be dressed in shabby or casual clothes when they are dealing with your customers? By making your staff wear professionally, you are telling your customers that you do care about quality. This works simply because first impressions matter.

You might be at great risk, if your website doesn’t look in a professional way and things are not in the right place. You will be losing the visitors by your shabby presentation if you do not have a greatly designed website.

By presenting your website in a well laid-out fashion you will be communicating with your website visitors in a professional way. With neat tables, colors and background graphics, you can present your offers to attract people. With a good design, you will appear as a well organized and reliable company.

On the other hand, you should also have anything related to your company well designed. From business cards to letterheads to promotional brochures, every little bit matters. This is because as you grow your business, these items become the face of your business. Once again, think of the “salesperson dressed shabbily” anology, and you will get my point.

About the Author:

Tips - Search Engine Friendly Pages

by Lara Crevena

There is no point in building a website unless there are visitors coming in. A major source of traffic for most sites on the Internet is search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and so on. Hence, by designing a search engine friendly site, you will be able to rank easily in search engines and obtain more visitors.

Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots for indexing Web sites to list their search results pages. They follow links to a page, reads the contents of the page to save it in their own database, making the list as people search for it.

If you want to make your site easily indexed, you should avoid using images on your website. Frames not confuse search engine robots, and they might even leave your site because of this. In addition, managers make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page of your site without using a long, complicated scripts.

Do not submit important information in Flash movies or pictures. Robots search engines can read your text on the source code if you present important words in Flash animations and images rather than text, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically.

Use meta tags accordingly on every page of your site so that the search engine robots know at a glance what is particular about the page and whether or not to index. By using meta tags, you are the search engine facilitating the task of the robot so that they crawl and index your site more frequently.

Stop using false HTML tags like style to your page. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more efficient and effective. Using CSS, you can remove the HTML tags of your pages and make much lighter and faster to load.

About the Author:

Tips - Make It Easy To Buy From Your Site

by Lara Crevena

Convincing your prospects to purchase from you is a hard job, but have you ever thought that you’re making the process twice as difficult for both parties if your prospects are convinced but don’t know how to buy from you? No matter how good you are at convincing your prospects, they won’t buy if they find the process cumbersome.

First, you want to make sure that people can find your order form easily and without hassle. You can write a clear, concise paragraph directing your prospects on your order form so that you can minimize the chances of them getting lost. You can also reduce the chances of losing prospects by placing a link to your page of every other page of your site.

Furthermore, does offer multiple payment options? Some people may feel comfortable paying through Paypal, some may only want to pay with their credit card and others might want to send a check. The greatest number of options offered, the better your chances of covering the prospects of their ‘desired payment method. After all, it makes no sense to sell a tough prospect only to find that they will not be able to pay when you want.

On the other hand, want to prove that you are a trader credible. Is your order form obtained using encryption technology? You want to look at SSL for that. You can also offer a money back guarantee so that people will feel confident about buying from you. What if after sales support? , Who contact when they have problems after purchase?

Alternatively, you can add customer testimonials, your contact information, address, and so on to boost your prospects’ confidence. Make them feel safe about buying something from you, a total stranger to them on the other end of the Internet.

In conclusion, it would be very regrettable if they sold a lot and are sold well in a perspective when something goes wrong and he or she is willing to pay. Remove any possibility that in order to maximize their profits!

About the Author:

Info - Important Rules in Website Design

by Lara Crevena

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

Do not use splash pages: Splash pages are the first page you see when you arrive at a Web site. They normally a beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click” to enter. In fact, they are just that - beautiful vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site to proceed without the splash page.

No excessive use of banner advertisements: Even the least knowledgeable net have trained people to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valuable content and weave relevant affiliate links in your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

Have a navigation simple and clear: you must provide a simple and easy navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated menus in Flash or multi-level dropdown menus. If your visitors do not know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

Have a clear indication that the user is as follows: When visitors are deeply engrossed in navigating through your site, you will want to make sure you know that some of those who are on the site at that time. In this way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Do not confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

Avoid using audio on your site: If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

About the Author:

Questions You Must Answer Before Your Website Goes Live

by Lisa Munoz

Either you have a website and you’ve got questions as to how effective it is, or you are thinking about getting a website to help you grow your business. Regardless of where you’re at in the online marketing world, you need solid answers to these five questions before you will be able to craft an effective online presence.

- Does your website have a goal? Many websites are designed to generate sales while others are educational websites. Still other websites’ entire purpose is to gather leads. Take the time to think of the goal of your website. The design of your website depends on your goals. If you’re not clear on those goals, your website won’t be effective.

- Does your website have a specific demographic or group of people in mind? As you make your website, all of your content, pictures, even the specific words you choose will need to be targeted towards your audience. A website for doctors will be different from a website for patients.

- How do you want people to navigate through your site? This ties in directly to a different question. If you have a clear goal, getting the customer to that goal should be clear and simple. Easy and simple navigation is much better than fancy animated redirects.

- Does each page of your website have a call to action? People often need to be told what to do when surfing the net. Otherwise, they will simply wander. Captivate, educate, and motivate.

- What will you use to determine the success of your website? Are you looking for sign-ups to your newsletter? Are you basing success on sales figures? Perhaps you want people to visit a brick and mortar store. Whatever it is, you will need to be able to measure whether or not your website is working for your business. That way you can make educated changes to your website based on real figures and statistics rather than just assumptions.

It doesn’t matter if you are doing all your own website work or if you are paying a website professional to do the work for you. You need solid answers to these questions before you start implementing a website into your marketing plans. The better answers you have to these questions, the better your website will be able to help your business grow.

About the Author:

some reasons for choosing xsite pro to build your websites with.

by Allison Thompson

If you are someone who is interested in setting up an online business then you are probably in the market for getting some software which can help you to build the website or sites that you need. Today there are lots of different software programs a person can use which will provide you with everything you need. However in this particular article we will be taking a closer look at the features offered in the XSitePro website building program.

This particular software program contains one of the most comprehensive sets of tools a person can wish for in order to design and produce their own websites. Through the use of XSitePro a person is able to not only design but also develop and then build a website which is completely viable in order to help move their business on.

The biggest advantage to be had from using XSitePro over some other website design software programs is that it is extremely user friendly. Certainly there are some programs around which when you try them you discover that you need to have a degree at least in order to just understand how they work. However with this particular software program the person who will be actually using it is kept in mind by the designer. All the tools available on this particular program are very easy to gain access to and can very simply be used.

Apart from the software being user friendly XSite Pro also contains a large number of tools and applications which makes the creating of great looking websites much easier to achieve. Through the use of this software a person is able to not only produce great front/main pages which will catch the eye of anyone browsing the net. But it also allows them to incorporate new and edit old text. This in turn results in the search engines continually finding it because of the quality of the sites content and this will in turn increase the ranking of the site with them.

For those of you who are considering to buy XSite Pro Version 1.6 should be aware that Version 2 is going to be released in the future. Then those who have only recently purchased the latest version of this particular website building software package will be able to upgrade to XSite Pro Version 2 for free when it actually gets released to the general public. But as well as this software being regularly updated a person also gets a manual when they purchase it. This further will help you to understand and learn how to access and use the various tools and applications that come with the package.

Yet before you actually start to use your XSitePro software you will go through an in depth tutorial. This will then help you to learn first hand regarding how this software application actually works and how you can use it effectively and correctly. Plus you can also use the videos that come with the package and which will provide yet more instructions. Which in turn will help you to appreciate more the tools and applications which come with this particular website building software package.

Finally a big advantage to be had from using XSitePro is that it offers the best customer and technical support to those that purchase and use it. The company that developed and designed XSitePro have realized that it is important to provide good quality support to their customers even after they have made their purchase.

Therefore if you really want to make a go of your own online business and can not afford to get a website developer to create and build a website for you. Then you should seriously consider investing some money in buying XSite Pro.

About the Author:

Four easy ways to boost your search engine ranking

by Roger Gordon

Preparing your website for search engine submission is a vital process for achieving high search engine rankings. Having said that the steps to follow are not difficult to master if you follow the following four simple guide lines

Tip #1 Choosing a search engine friendly headline

Most WebPages will contain more than a single heading. The headline situated at the top of the webpage is the main heading. In the html language this is referred to as the H1 tag. It is very important to insert your main keyword here. This simple and quick piece of coding can have a very positive impact on how the search engines rank your site

A second or third headline, H2 and H3, may also be included. Just make sure to have the right keyword phrase included in each of these, as well.

Tip #2 Including Keywords In the main body of Text

The actual impact of this technique is in my view not as important as it used to be and I would not spend too much time worrying about this. Indeed if you try to stuff your text with keywords this may be perceived as spamming, and is to be avoided. I would suggest a good rule of thumb is to include the keyword at the start, right near the end and once in the middle if it is a large passage

The search engines do not recognise JavaScript, graphics, and many types of graphics, so avoid the temptation to cram your sites full of flashy effects. It might look great but is not much good if you are not getting the visitors to see it. Pages need an element of text to do well with the search engines. You should aim for something between 100 and 400 total words.

Tip #3 Placing Your Keywords in the page title

You should always include your main Keywords in the title of the page. This is the information that appears at the top of your browser window.

It is often the case that this description will appear in the search listing for the highest ranked sites for any given keyword search. This shows the importance attached to this by the search engines.

Tip #4 Using Alt tags for your images.

Alt tags need to be included in image descriptions. This results in more attention for your keyword and helps the surfer to understand what the image is about should it fail to load.

Once again we need to avoid the danger of spamming here, so cramming a load of keywords into your alt tags is not a good idea

This entire process should not take you too long and is well worth the effort to help improve your search engine rankings.

About the Author: