myContentWebsite.com

Sessions are important when you need to store user specific data when the user is navigating from page to page. For example, think of a shopping cart or a secured page. Each time that the use clicks on a link and navigates to a different page, you do not want the shopping cart to empty itself. In these cases, the user session needs to be preserved.

PHP maintains sessions by default. This is done by appending a PHPSESSID variable to all urls where it is not explicitly set. This session id is usually a non human understand-able string which gets passed from page to page. Though session id’s are a nice way to maintain sessions, it may be to your disadvantage when you do not need them. PHPSESSID’s make your web page urls ungainly and some search engines are known not to spider them very well. This SEO blog has a lot of information on this and similar topics that you may be interested in. It also talks about how you can disable PHPSESSID’s when you do not need them. Read the rest of this entry »

A good website can be identified by the graphics it uses. With photoshop being some what difficult to use, dotAlex.com presents some tutorials to create stunning graphics for your site.

Each tutorial contains detailed step by step instructions to ensure that there is no ambiguity and no room for unexpected results. For an example check out this tutorial on how to create an attractive banner.

Also available on this site are some HTML and PHP tutorials and more tutorials are expected to be added soon. The pudding on the cake is the 200 free psd logos that you can download for free. For a sample of some of the logos, please visit this page.

To be successfully ranked in the search engines, it is important to have quality sites linking to you. This link building process can be done in multiple ways - each important in its own way. Here we look at some of the most common options.

• Exchange Links with like-minded sites. In order to make such link exchanges more valuable, you may choose to go for a 3-way or 4-way exchange. This means that all links would be one way. Also opt for in-content backlinks, if possible. For example, links in blog posts or articles.
• Post in forums to get high quality and relevant links. When you post in forums and your link appears in a post, you are out of the Google sandbox much quicker than normal. But please ensure that you do not spam the forum, otherwise you will get banned before you can say ‘links’.
• Signatures are an effective brand building tool. Forum signatures and signatures in your email are very effective in sendng some much needed traffic your way.
• Write articles and submit to various sites. Good articles submitted to established article directories result in a good link and relevant traffic.
• Buying static links is expensive but at least you can ensure the quality and ROI. With various link brokers around you have a lot of choice to select a site to place your link. Ensure that you know what you want to buy - a site with PR, traffic or both.
• Give away freebies to build a lot of links. Templates, ebooks, scripts etc are all in a lot of demand. If you have your own and distribute them free with your link on it, very soon you will have a larger number of sites pointing to you.

The link building ideas above are by no ways exhaustive but is a good place to start. Depending on your site’s niche and how well each of them work, you will have to evolve your own link building methodology. We welcome you to share with us what works best for you.

Webmasters know how difficult it is to rank well for their sites on the major search engines. This is the reason niche websites are rarely disclosed in the webmaster forum discussions. It is, but natural that once a niche category has been identified, the webmaster tries to capitalise on the lack of competition.

As a webmaster you should also be on the lookout for such niches. Another way where the potential is yet to be completely tapped is websites in regional languages. There are comparitively very few websites with content in non-english languages. Some time back, we featured a turkish language article website. This website would be facing very little competition when compared to a equivalent site in English. Read the rest of this entry »

A website/online business, like any other traditional business, is a lot about planning. It cannot be treated with contempt and decisions taken ad-hoc. Planning does not necessarily mean having a board of directors getting together to decide how the site needs to be run. It means deciding on your objectives, charting out how you want to achieve the same and doing course corrections at the right time.

For example how many webmasters plan their hosting needs or the marketing budget before hand. Correspondingly, even the smallest traditional business would have their marketing budget approved, finalise the intranet strategy, estimate the growth of their business and workforce etc. We cannot stress enough how the same is important to an online business too. Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous story, we disussed about whether offline marketing is important. We discussed how, for the right kind of site, the synergy between offline and online marketing can propel a business to new heights. In this article, we look at how newspapers and magazines can be used to further your online business.

Newspaper classified advertisements have been found to have a very high ROI for sites related to jobs, games, secondary education, business opportunities, financial advice type of sites. This would be so due to the cross section of people who would be interested in these topics. With the price of a classified ad being very affordable, it makes sense to go this route to drive up sales/traffic. Based on a trial ad, you may go for a 3/6 week insertion in your local city/state editions or even in the national editions. Usually there are good discounted schemes for ads that appear over a period of time across multiple newspaper editions.  Read the rest of this entry »

Today, on www.myContentWebsite.com, we show you a hidden treasure. This is a site where you can fnd over 500 MB of downloadable content and resources. Templates, scripts, images, sound clips and more. The site we are talking about is torex.org.

On this download page, you will find over 250 MB of scripts, predominantly on PHP and mySQL. There are scripts available that can be used for blogs, auctions, classified sites, contact us forms, polls, search engines etc. Read the rest of this entry »

English Information article directory contains articles on five niche topics - biography, business, health, travel and technology. All these five are comparitively varied and niche topics. So, if you are looking for articles on these subjects, then you can find reasonably good information on this site.

As the site’s name suggests, only English language articles are published. But looking at the travel section, it is apparent that by no means only English speaking countries are covered. There are articles on Afghanistan to Brunei to Zimbabwe. New articles are being added everyday - so checking back the site often would be a good idea. Read the rest of this entry »

More and more webmasters are opting to sell a part or the full advertising inventory directly. This means that they solicit (directly or indirectly) the advertisers, finalise the terms and conditions of the deal, implement the advertisement and handle the billing and complaints, if any. This benefits both the publisher as well as the advertiser since they save on the cost that would otherwise have paid to the intermediary. Also with direct contact between the advertiser and publisher the needs of each other are understood in a better way. Also a number of webmasters have used this model to sell other services from their online store/site. Read the rest of this entry »