Web Business Resource

by Sebastian De Masi

Have you ever known someone that didn’t like to receive things for Free…? Neither have I. In fact most people can spend hours searching the internet for free quality content.

If you want to build targeted traffic to your site you have to think outside the box. Search Engine Rankings and Advertising campaigns are not the only ways to drive people to look at you site. By adding free downloads you will attract visitors by hundreds, if not thousands.

Downloads are extremely popular, especially when they are free. With many sites charging outrages prices for the littlest download, a freebie will be more than welcomed by your audience.

You might be wondering “what can I offer as a free download?”. There are plenty of options to choose from. The most popular item is an ebook. If you have a certain expertise, you can apply your knowledge and write articles about a certain subject. You can later compile them and offer them as a Free Ebook. If you lack of knowledge or simply don’t have the time to write an Ebook, you can download/purchase ebooks that give you resell rights so you can distribute them with no problem. (Always verify that you were given the resell rights on a written document) .

Other formats of Freebies can include MP3s, Videos and Software. (I repeat… You must own the rights to such items before giving them away).

The benefit of Ebooks over other types of Freebies is that we can recycle the information in it by publishing its content in article directories to help increase even further the number of clicks, but we won’t talk about that right now.

Needless to say, if your website is about computers, your freebie must be of a related topic. The beauty of offering free things is that people visit your site and receive more value than they had expected. This will encourage them to visit your site again, o even bookmark it, and refer them to their friends.

Because a downloadable freebie is an electronic document which can be shared, it is wise to include a link to your website, in case this document is passed on from a user to an outsider. For example, if you decide to use an Ebook, you should write after an article about Local Area Networks LANs For more information on how to setup a LAN visit www.yoursite.com

Adding Free Quality content will dramatically benefit your credibility amongst webusers and will help you create a relationship with them. It is strongly recommended that you update your freebies on a regular basis, and if you already know when you might be able to release a new Free Download, it will help if you tell them when these new Freebies will be released (eg. New E-book “How to build a PC from Scratch” Available FREE from October 15)

Sebastian De Masi is the Founder of 06WebDesign.com. 06WebDesign.com provides resources to help you create an effective and lucrative online solution for your business and establish an online presence amongst the most reputable companies World wide.

For more information visit www.06webdesign.com

by Sean R Mize

Traffic generation on your website is an essential thing for the survival of your business in the online world. The more frequently your website is visited, the more chances of you getting sales and god results.

Keyword usage is one of the best techniques to generate traffic. Always keep a track of the most sought after keywords, words which people are more likely to use or type in while searching for something they need. Use keywords which give you more quality traffic, always give a month to test the usage of keywords, then retain the ones which give good results and leave the ones which did not yield anything.

The quality of traffic coming towards you should be important, keep in mind the rate of returns of your keywords, and the conversion rate if each keyword into a prospective customer The layout of your website is another important aspect of attracting visitors to your website. Keep the layouts clean and attractive, with emphasizing on what you offer, rather then cluttering too many designs and colors on your website. A first look at your website should spell business, your website should give a serious look which would make the visitor explore further.

To be ahead of the competition, it is mandatory to know how to reach up to your prospective customers, and how to attract them towards your website. Therefore, in order to keep up with the competition, one should keep monitoring and tracking what gives you the best results.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks.

by Richard Burckhardt

The first step is to brainstorm and make a list of, say, 25 of what you think might be keywords and phrases a web searcher would use to find your page. Come up with both single words and phrases. We’ll use some neat tools to narrow these down and even discover some nuggets you might not have thought of.

As a rule, optimizing for a single word is a lesson in frustration. For instance, can you imagine how many pages on the web would be competing for a single word like cars? Millions!

However, using a single keyword to search for those hidden nuggets is, well, priceless!

Keyword Research Tools Next, you will need some tools to help you find those perfect keyword phrases for your site. Although there are tons of commercial tools on the market, I am going to concentrate on some freely available tools that I have found of particular value. These will help you find out how popular your keyword phrases are (how many times they are searched for in a given time period) and how much competition you will have with your phrase. And, because this article is targeted to the newbie SEO, these free tools give you a chance to kick the tires before you buy the top of the line model. My favorite is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. What? You say you are not running any AdWords pay per click campaigns! Why would you use this tool?

The answer is that it is free for anyone to use. You do NOT have to be running any AdWords PPC campaigns and the tool gives valuable keyword research information in a graphical, easy to understand format, perfect for the newbie!

And, yes, this tool is based on AdWords, so the search volume reflects PPC search and competition, but these estimates will apply to organic search as well.

Here’s a perfect example of how what you think you want to rank for might be in opposition to reality.

I live in Palm Springs, California and have done web design for real estate agents in the past. We must have 10,000 real estate agents in the desert and each and every one of them has a web site and each and every one of them would like to rank #1 for the keyword phrase palm springs real estate.

To demonstrate how difficult and impractical a task that would be based on the competion, take a look at the screen shot I took after running the Keyword Variations tool of the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (be sure to check the Use synonyms box for a more comprehensive list).

The trick here is to find more green in the Search Volume bar and less green in the Competition bar. In this example, you’ll see 100% competition for a moderate search volume for the phrase palm springs real estate. This tells me that optimizing for that phrase is probably not worth the effort. It would be better to try to target other phrases with less competition for the search volume.

For instance, the Palm Springs area has a large gay population and there’s no competition (no green bar) for palm springs gay real estate which has a moderate amount of search volume. If this is a community that you’d like to target, then this is the kind of search phrase you want to look for - search volume with little or no competition. Look around. You never know what targeted keyword phrases you will discover.

See how you can think you know what to target as far as keywords and how easy it is to be way off?

Try running your single keyword ideas through this tool and you are likely to find good keyword phrases with little or no competition for you to target as well. And, the Google AdWords Keyword Tool makes downloading the keyword lists you generate a snap for offline use.

Then, select the keyword phrases that look like they might work for you and run each of them through the tool again to create a list of even more highly targeted keywords.

Another free, non-graphical tool you might want to try is the Free Keyword Suggestion Tool from WordTracker. WordTracker also offers a good paid version, but the free tool is enough to get you started.

Unlike the Adwords Keyword Tool, this tool takes data from DogPile.com and Metacrawler.com, so the results are more organic in nature, but, as you will see, somewhat similar.

Using the same test phrase palm springs real estate, we get the following results - screen shot.

As you can see, you get a list of keyword phrases and the volume of searches for them in the past 90 days. This gives you a great place to start looking, but it does not give you any idea of the competition as the Adwords tool does. My suggestion is that you use both tools, comparing the lists to see what you might have missed on one or the other.

This should get you started in your keyword research. This article is intended as a companion piece to SEO 101 which can be found on my blog. I go into more detail in my SEO 101 workshop, offered to web site owners and small businesses. Check my blog for more information or contact me to set up a custom workshop for your business group of five or more people in the Palm Springs area of Southern California. Travel is possible for large groups.

Richard V. Burckhardt, also known as The Web Optimist, is an Internet marketer and trainer based in Palm Springs, CA with over ten years experience in web site development, optimization and marketing.

The Web Optimist blog can be viewed at http://www.weboptimist.com

by James Krawder

Many people create website thinking to make a killing on the net but the fact remains that very few are actually able to make anything out of it. If you really intend to make profit with your website the one thing that you would have to consider would be active promotion of your site. Without site promotion you won’t achieve much online. Here are a few tips that could help you in this endeavor of promoting your site and making more money.

Make use of discussion forums. Yes, it is a site that allows you to post your views and comment on the views of others. This means that you get to discuss on topics that are relevant to your site. If you have the resources to start a forum on your site that is quite well otherwise you can always make use of forums on the site of others. You just need to find a forum that is related to the topic of your site or is related to the product you sell. You just need to read a little bit and then post some interesting reply to someone else�s views. Never forget to put a link of your site at the bottom of your post. It would promote your site quite well and you won’t have to spend a dime for it.

Joining some social bookmarking site would also work quite well. You would find that social bookmarking communities have great networks that have members having different tastes and different views. You can take advantage of it and use it for your site promotion.

Want to learn more about it? Download the free ebook, Steps to Article Marketing Success.

by Fabian Tan

If your site receives many visitors every month, it�s certainly time to think of how you are going to monetize it, if you are already not. This article is for you if you own a blog or a website with a loyal following. In fact, if you own a forum with many members, these tactics apply to you too.

Here are 3 surefire methods to sell more advertising space on your website, and make more profits:

1) Promote your customer�s products

In addition to the advertisement your customer will get on your website, you can further promote his products and services by posting at your forums about his product, or writing an article on the main page.

2) Offer bonuses to your advertisers

If you own any products of your own, such as an ebook or a software, you can offer to give it away if someone buys your advertising space. This is a great incentive because they are also getting something which is useful to them. Be sure to offer relevant bonuses which relate to your website.

3) Offer discounts on advertisements

Hold seasonal sales, or offer additional free ad space if a customer orders advertising space for a specific period of time or a specific size. This gives your customers more value for money and they will love you for it. This fosters good relationships with your customers and they will become repeat advertisers.

Selling advertisement space is one of the best ways for website owners to earn residual income month after month. The basic rule is this: offer your advertisers good value for money, help them in reaching their goals, and you’ll have many repeat customers.

Fabian Tan makes a short trip to his office everyday � his home! In 2006, he �murdered� his job and now earns a solid income online. Go behind the scenes to discover more of his job-killing strategies and secrets at MurderYourJob.com

by Debbie LaChusa

Having a website is definitely one of the marketing must-have’s, but it doesn’t stop there. You can have the greatest website in the world but if it isn’t getting any traffic it’s not going to do much to build your business.

So how do you get traffic to your website? Especially if you’re marketing on a shoestring budget?

Here are 3 cheap, but effective, ways to drive traffic.

1) Article Marketing

This is my favorite way to drive traffic and it doesn’t cost a dime!

Simply write 300-500 word articles about your area of expertise.

Include a Resource Box at the end of each article, with links to your website and a call-to-action, and post the articles in online article directories. EzineArticles.com is one of my favorites.

I have written and posted over 100 articles in the past two years and it continues to be my favorite, traffic-generating activity.

2) Do online PR

Writing and post press releases online is another one of the easiest ways to get tons of exposure all across the web.

You can post your press releases on a variety of press release websites. Many are free. My favorite is PRWeb which costs as little as $80. Just make sure to give people a reason to visit your website in the press release.

I have a client who posted a press release several months ago and is STILL getting traffic and sales from it!

3) Find Related Websites to Trade Links With

Do some web searching and identify other websites that complement yours.

Sites that you would be willing to include outbound links to, on your website.

These might be resources you recommend to your clients, or sites with content you think they would enjoy.

Link to these sites and then ask them if they will link back to you.

I’ve used this technique very effectively with my Twin Connections website; I have an entire page devoted to news and links and many of these sites also link back to me. And, all I had to do was ask!

Your Marketing Step
Take a look at your website statistics. How’s your site traffic? Are you only getting a handful of visitors every month? Do you wish you were getting thousands of visitors?

If so, create an online marketing plan this week using these 3 traffic drivers. Start writing and posting articles every week. Issue a press release once a month.

And, make a list of the websites you can trade links with and start asking. Then watch your website traffic soar!

Debbie LaChusa created The 10stepmarketing Systemto make marketing your own business as simple as answering 10 questions. Learn more about this unique, step-by-step system and get a free Marketing E-Course when you subscribe to the free, weekly 10stepmarketing Ezine at http://www.10stepmarketing.com

by Jason Steeper

There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A �spider� is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site’s Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don�t create a site with 500 pages!

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

Example: Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page

For more information on Search Engines like; Some Essential Feaures Your Web Site Must Have, The Importance of Referer Logs, etc. Please visit http://www.searchengine01.com

by Ron Coleman

Cartoons can be used as a tool to give you free advertising for your website or products you sell online. It’s called viral marketing and it works.

How often have you received a funny joke or cartoon in your email from a friend? And when you do, how often do you forward that same email on to friends of your own? If each of those friends sends it on to their friends, and their friends do the same with their friends, you can see how a funny cartoon can wind up being viewed by thousands of people.

Using this fact, you can do some free advertising for your website or for products you sell online. Just add a small line of copy at the bottom of the cartoon email, one with a link to your website or product. You don’t want to make it too hard-sell, just a brief note to entice some interest. Your note will then get forwarded along with the cartoon and you could reach potentially thousands of prospects.

It’s important to keep in mind, though, that cartoons are copyrighted. You can’t use them without permission, or you could subject yourself to serious legal problems. A good way around this problem is to simply contact the cartoonist for the cartoon you want to use. Ask him if you can put a link to his cartoon page in your email. In most cases they will be happy to do so. It’s free advertising for him. I do this with the cartoons on my website because I find it increases my own website traffic. Although I don’t charge a fee for this, some cartoonists might. It’s up to you to decide whether their fee is reasonable for what you expect to accomplish.

Your advertising message at the bottom of these emails can simply be a link to your webpage. If you have advertising on your website or you are selling products through affiliate links, this extra traffic can bring you some additional income. Some affiliate programs will also give you links you can use in your emails, and you could add one of those links to the bottom of the email containing the cartoon link.

In most cases you will not actually attach the cartoon to your email. If you do, spam filters will often block it. People are reluctant to open an email with an attachment because of the fear of contracting computer viruses. A far better solution is to send the email with a link to the webpage where the cartoon appears. In most cases you’ll be required by the cartoonist to do this anyway. That’s the only way he can benefit from your efforts.

How well this works depends on the cartoons you select. You want to select cartoons which are very funny, and which touch home with how people are feeling. These are the types of cartoons which will get forwarded.

Try this technique of advertising. It is free and it works.

About the Author: Ron Coleman is a freelance cartoonist whose work has appeared in hundreds of magazines and trade journals. He maintains several cartoon websites and you can see more of his work on his own website: http://www.coleman-cartoons.com

by Raymond Nesa

Pay per click advertising is surely the quickest way to divert quality traffic to your site. There are a number of benefits to it. You don�t have to spend ages to see traffic to your site. You don�t have to spend astronomical sums on advertising and it can be set up instantly. And now you have one of the biggest and perhaps one of the most efficient PPC programs in the form of Google AdWords. These are the ads that you would find in the right hand column in a Google Search.

It is fairly simple to understand. You would have to prepare a 4-line ad for Google and then have a series of corresponding �keywords� for it. As per your directions, when the keywords are searched for in the search engine, your ads would be displayed. If someone clicks on your ads, you would have to pay some money. Other PPC programs also function in the same way.

There is one more thing. The frequency with which your ads would be displayed and the position of your ads on the page; both would be governed by your budget. It goes without saying that the higher your budget, the more frequent would be the display of your ad. You also get the option of �bid� for the cost of the ad. The more your bid would be the better placed your ad would be on the page. But you would have to be careful when you use this PPC. You would have to choose your keywords well.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, �Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide�

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

by Jeffrey Wendland

If you are new to internet marketing, it can be a little intimidating to figure out the best way to promote your website with out spending a fortune. There is hope. It is not necessary to by into adwords or to pay for advertising banners on a host of websites to generate traffic to your site.

A very easy way to get your websites name out there is to use as many forums as you can. Be sure they are relevant to your website or to internet marketing though. These forums will be a great crash course for you. You should start by reading several of the posts and the stickys to pick up the culture of the particular forum you are on. After familiarizing yourself, you can begin to make posts.

Don�t start out by just plugging your site. Join into conversations and you can even start your own threads with your own questions. Joining in these chats will be a good way to get your website�s link in front of some eyes. Not by spamming your link in every message, but by posting your link in your signature box.

That way, with every post you can simply write about relevant topic to that thread and your links will show up in your signature box. This is a great way to drive some traffic to your site and to get an education by participating in the forums. There are thousands of forums out there too so if you work this, you will be driving some traffic to your site with out spending any money on advertising.

Another great way to get your site out there is by submitting your link, title and description to web directories. While some directories do require a fee or a reciprocal link, there are thousands of directories that provide free one way links. Submitting your website to directories will help you in two ways. One is when ever someone uses a directory for a search, they will find a link to your site. This really is a great way to drive traffic as not everyone wants to use the giant search engines for their searches. The second benefit of submitting to directories is that it provides links to your site which will help your search engine ranking. The higher your search engine ranking, the more traffic will come to your site. The majority of people do find their websites by submitting a search term to a search engine like Google or Yahoo. If you can get your website to the top page or two of these search engines you will be getting tons for free traffic with these organic search results.

My favorite way to generate traffic and links to your website is by submitting articles to article directories. Odds are good that you know a great deal about the theme and topic of your website, otherwise you probably would not have made the site.

This knowledge can make you an expert on this topic. You can write articles from 500-1500 words on any theme related to your site and submit them to the many free article directories on the net. This will work somewhat like the web directories except you are writing an article. At the end of your article, you will put a link to your website in a resource box.

Submitting your articles will help to bring traffic to your site in many ways. First, anyone who visits the article directory and reads your article is likely to follow the link to your site. Second, many other websites submit to an RSS feed which stands for really small syndication.

These RSS feeds will be picked up by other websites and posted as content, each with your resource box and a link to your website. This is yet another way to drive more traffic to your site. Submitting articles to article directories will also greatly improve your search engine ranking which will help to bring traffic to your site from people doing searches much like it does with the web directories.

Articles are even more effective then web directories because the article will be loaded with keywords that people search for with the link to your site being at the end of the article.

If you keep things simple and follow these steps, you will bring traffic to your site. It may take some time and work, but you will not have to pay a penny to advertisers. Like anything worth having, this will take some work, but the results for your website are worth it. So, what are you waiting for, get out there and start promoting your website today!

The author of this article recomends visiting (http://www.yourinfoconnection.com) for more information on Internet marketing.

by David Marc Fishman

Why use Pay Per Click advertising? Using Pay Per Click advertising you can measure and statistically calculate ROI in a market within a few days for hardly any money. The popularity of pay per click advertising has generated plenty of interest from online and offline businesses.

Both pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. In the pay-per-click world, your business depends on first impressions. Webmasters with open wallets have found that pay-per-click can provide traffic within hours or even minutes of a website�s launch. When looking to advertise online one of the best advertising for your money is pay per click, since you only pay when some clicks, and if a potential customer clicks they are interested in your product.

PPC ads are found on websites, search engines and advertising networks these ads show up as text ads and appear on the sites, these ads will adjust themselves to what ever the theme is of each page. Of course, there�s really a lot more to a successful PPC campaign, but that�s it in a nutshell. The benefits of PPC are numerous.

Since there are so many companies on the World Wide Web you need to make your site and product stand out above all others. One marketing technique is to be listed in search engines � but again, with thousands of companies offering the same products and services as you, how can your scream for attention be heard.

Now, there any more cost effective marketing method. 1: Using Pay Per Click Advertising is a very inexpensive way of advertising. One thing that matters the most is how many visitors or should we say targeted visitors you can get to your site, the more qualified they are the more sales you will make. The biggest stumbling block for most home business owners is marketing their business.

When advertise on search engines you purchase clicks, you pay for only clicks you receive. When you look at search engine results and rankings don�t believe all these results are from free traffic, many gurus use paid advertising to get the results they want and to get to the front page of the search engines. Businesses buy advertising on specific search phrases, and are then charged each time a person clicks through to their web site. Using the pay per click advertising you can get you site up to the top 10 in no time.

Pay per click advertising companies provide targeted traffic to your website, meaning everybody who comes to your website are looking for your products or services. Its very easy to place a pay per click ad, find the keywords your want to use, write the ad header and the body, put you link in and choose the amount of money you want to spend.

In order to get the most from PPC campaign, you have to know what keywords are going to work best for your field and what keywords are going to generate the most traffic. Choosing to bid on the right keywords can be key to your pay per click success. Choosing the wrong keywords will negate even the most well planned Pay Per Click.

David Marc Fishman is the owner of Linknetics, article submission and directory site. The link marketing software that promotes link exchange

by Alfred Aquino

Submit to Google directly

If we follow the normal procedures, most likely we�ll use this link to submit our site to Google. After you�ve submitted your blog, you�ve got to wait. But how long? It may take several weeks or even months. The worse case, for whatever reasons, you blog don�t get listed at all! According to Google,

We add and update new sites to our index each time we crawl the web, and we invite you to submit your URL here. We do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.

From the above, we know actually there are chances that your blog will be indexed when they crawl the web. So, no doubt you can get your blog listed even without submitting it to Google. Below are some other measures that could help your blog to get listed to Google even without submitting to it.

Make use of the signature�s place

Join some famous and popular forums like Digital Point and put the URL of your blog inside the signature. Of course, just putting your URL in the signature is not enough; you�ll also need to participate in the discussion with some posts to show your URL. Remember, don�t just put your blog�s title in the signature, add a simple description to it also.

Bad: ABC�s Blog Good: ABC�s Movie Blog - Movie Review and News

By doing this, you�ll enjoy the benefit that next time when Google crawl such popular places, it will see your blog. On the other hand, other members maybe interested in your blog and offer to exchange links. What is better than killing two birds with one stone?

Link exchange with similar blogs

Besides of joining the forums, you could also ask the webmasters of similar blogs to exchange link with you. This will increase your chance of getting indexed when Google crawls those sites.

Share your articles

Remember my article of getting some free contents to fill up your blog? There are sites that provide free articles and let you to republish in your blog. This time, instead of using those articles, why don�t you submit your own articles to it? Just remember to submit the article with your resource box in it(usually placed in the end of the article). The resource box will include some information of you and most important, the URL of your blog. Next time, when Google crawls it, it will notice your blog�s link in the resource box.

Register with other search engines

Finally, always remember to register with other popular search engines like Yahoo, MSN and DMOZ also. Your blog will probably get indexed by Google if it is listed in other famous search engines.

Good luck!

Alfred Aquino is the webmaster of http://moneybloggers.net which focus on various methods to monetize a blog or website.