Archive for January, 2007

Search engine optimization (SEO) should be considered as an important element of any Internet marketing strategy. This is important because there is so much which can be gained from SEO in terms of Internet marketing and advertising. If you do not optimize your website for search engines you may lose a considerable amount of traffic in terms of free advertising which one get from ranking high in search engines.

SEO is a strategy in which a website is designed to obtain higher search engine rankings in popular search engines like Google or Yahoo. Higher ranking can be achieved in a variety of different ways and optimal SEO strategy is combination of variety of different strategies to complete one well orchestrated SEO campaign. There are several elements to consider when attempting to optimize your website for search engines. This may include prominence, keyword density, Outblound links, META tags, titles and inbound links. Keyword density is one of the most common SEO strategies and essentially involves using relevant keywords often in the content of a website to demonstrate the relevance of these keywords to the website. This is important because search engines are likely to rank high websites with optimal keyword densities, in an effort to provide their users with the most relevant websites for particular search terms.

The prominence of keywords should also be considered. This includes how close the keywords are placed to the beginning of the website. The common mistake which many webmaster do is that they they add keywords in the first line of visible text on the webpage. This is not correct because search engines crawl the code of a website as opposed to the visible content on the website. This means there are multiple opportunities to incorporate relevant keywords long before the actual visible content on the website. This might include the code for the title as well as the META tags. Website owners who realize the potential for incorporating keyword into the code gain an advantage over competitors who only incorporate keywords into the content on their website.

Another area of concern which is very important for those who are interested in SEO is inbound links. Inbound links are essentially links which reside on other websites and direct traffic to your website. These links are considered important because many search engines place a value on inbound links because they are essentially an example of one website recommending another website. However, when obtaining inbound links it is important to do so from other websites which rank well with search engines because many search engines consider the rank of the original website when determining the value of the inbound link.

SEO is consider very important because most Internet users highly value the results of search engines and are likely to only visit to higher ranking websites when they search for a particular keyword. Internet users trust search engines to serve the most relevant content first and are therefore chance of visiting lower ranking site is very less. This means websites which rank well essentially are receiving a great deal of free advertising from search engines that place their website in a key position. Website owners and webmasters who do not invest time into optimizing their websites loses a great amount of web traffic.

ashok

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Yesterday I received an email from Ashish, telling about blogg-buzz. He told that this site is similar in working like digg, but trageted for small bloggers who do not get a chance to make their story at the home page of digg.

I checked it, it is very much similar in functioning as that of digg. It is started by Johntp and Shivranajan. Containing some other cool feautures like trackback also it is exclusively for bloggers.

The USP they claim is that bloggers post will not compete with news sites like CNN or BBC as blogg-buzz is exclusively for bloggers.

Let’s see how it goes. I have joined their community. Have you joined yet?

ashok

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Some business owners opt to start an affiliate marketing campaign as part of their overall marketing strategy. In most cases the affiliate marketing campaign is only a small portion of the overall marketing strategy but there are many merchants rely exclusively on affiliate marketing. The main purpose of doing this is to save money while still achieving valuable advertising. However, once a business becomes more successful they should consider being more proactive and combining affiliate marketing with other types of Internet marketing such as placing banner ads and orchestrating an email marketing campaign.

In affiliate marketing other website owners place ads for your business on their websites. These website owners are known as affiliates. It is important to understand how this type of marketing works. In general the affiliates are given code for your banner ad to place on their website and given the freedom to promote their own website as they see fit. In promoting their website they are also attracting attention to your website because of the banner ad directing visitors to your own website.

One of the most appealing elements of affiliate marketing is the affiliate is paid when he produces a result. This means the business owner is not obligated to pay the affiliate unless the affiliate is successful. Success may be defined generating a sale or lead. The compensation for affiliates is generally based on cost per lead or cost per sale. Cost per lead are usually paid in terms of a flat fee which is awarded to the affiliate each time an Internet user performs a specific action like submiting his email or filling up a form. Cost per sale may result in the affiliate being awarded a flat fee or a percentage of the sale depending on the agreement between the merchant and the affiliate.

Another important aspect of affiliate marketing is which contribute to success or failure is the design of your banner ads. It is important to remember affiliate marketing is viewed the same way other types of marketing are viewed and care should be taken to create banner ads which will be appealing to your target audience. This means everything from the colors of your ad to the size and style of the font should be carefully considered to create an appealing advertisement.

Although you can start your affiliate campaing independently but many affiliates including me prefer third party tracking for eg. via Commission Junction or Shareasale

You can get a review of shareasale.com here.

ashok

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After I started web hosting business, I thought I should write some articles on webhosting also. Although I previously wrote two articles on my experience of free web hosting and shared webhosting.

In this article I am writing on how to choose a good web hosting company.

With hundreds or may be thousands of web hosting companies in the market it is very difficult if not impossible to know which web hosting companies truly provide an excellent hosting solution at good price. When you have an established domain name with a good web hosting company, you can get reports on your traffic and which of your pages your customers are visiting most often, as well as many other statistics.

Your web host will charge you a fee ranges from Rs. 200 to Rs. 2000 yearly. In India generally trends is pay yearly, whereas in American or European countries web hosting companies charge on monthly basis.

Always avoid free web hosting services, because you may experience bouts of server downtimes and you are likely to have significant limitations in storage, number of email addresses, FTP upload etc.

Make sure your host can accommodate e-commerce and storefronts, wireless capability, bogs, forums, chats, online interactive helps and anything else you want to add onto your web site.

Estimate what your growth needs are and ensure that this web host can serve you as you grow. The last thing you want to do is change host mid way unless you absolutely have to do so. Changing host is although not very difficult, but it really a cumbersome job and may result in loss of data and downtime.

Check your bandwidth capability to be sure that, if your website traffic grows rapidly, your customers will not have to wait to download or view information. The important things which you should look for in a web hosting company is Excellent Customer Support: Your hosting provider should be there for you 24/7 . Ask them how long it takes for them to typically respond to your problem. A good test is to call them in the mid night to check their support.

ashok

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Internet marketing is a very wide term which can be used to encompass a variety of marketing techniques which are used online. Search engine optimization, banner advertisements, email marketing, article marketing, website promotion and affiliate marketing all fall under the umbrella of the term Internet marketing but there is even more to Internet marketing than those concepts. Promoting your website or business on message boards or discussion forums can also be considered to be Internet marketing. In fact this is one of the simplest and least expensive Internet marketing options available.Some savvy business owners can use Internet message boards wisely, whereas some use it in such a way that it become ineffective.

Discussion forum are essentially online meeting places. In general most forums are focused on a particular niche subject and encourage those who share an interest in this particular subject to get together to discuss relevant issues, ask questions, provide advice and even just socialize. Message boards can focus on any subject imaginable they may focus on a particular footballl team or just the sport of football in general. Message boards can focus on subjects such as bands, politics, television shows, jobs, hobbies, current events or any subject under the sky. Savvy Internet marketers can take advantage of these message boards to reach a target audience without investing a great deal of money.

Consider a business in which the focus of the business is to assist people in finding jobs which offer telecommute options. The concept of working from home is becoming increasingly popular and there are many websites which focus on this subject. Likewise there are also many message boards devoted to the topic of working from home. Here those with an interest in the subject meet to discuss issues such as finding employment where working from home is an option, working around the schedule of your children, setting up a home office, dealing with friends or family members who don’t respect your working hours and paying taxes on freelance assignments. A business owner who actively participates in this message board can take the opportunity to post a link to his website when it is relevant and offers something of value to the conversation. This is worthwhile because the message board features a high concentration of your target audience members.

When using message boards to promote your business, it is important to ensure you are following the rules associated with the discussion forums. Forums may have restrictions regarding the posting of links and not following these restrictions may result in you being banned from the message board. For this reason it is important for anyone who is interested in using message boards for promotion of their business to carefully read the user agreement to ensure they are not violating any of the rules. It is also important to simply use common sense when promoting your business on a message board. Just because the rules do not restrict posting links, does not mean you should spam the board with your link. Take care to only include y our link when it is relevant. This will prevent message board users from assuming your link is just worthless spam.

Finally, when using forums to promote your business it is important to be courteous to other message board users and to keep all posts professional. This is important because you and your business are much more likely to be taken seriously if you act professionally and responsibly. You should maintain this degree of professionalism even in posts which do not include your business link. This is important because other message board participants will remember you by your user name and will not be likely to take you seriously if you have previously made posts which were offensive, mean spirited or inaccurate. For this reason it is important to act as a representative from your company at all times.

ashok

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Few days ago Payperpost had announced that they are going to acquire select Performancing assets. The thing on which PPP eyeing was Performancing’s metrics tracking technology , which can provide real data about a blogger’s traffic and what’s being clicked on their blog.

Now hardly one week passed Payperpost has backed out from the deal. According the Clickz the reason which is being speculated for this backout is that Performancing has chosen to no longer provide the free blog metrics service

ashok

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