myContentWebsite.com

The other day, I was reading an article on whether directories really help in SEO. The author was of the view that given the competition, every link counts. Even though most of the link directories are of not very good quality, there are some that provide very good service. And it is not necessary that the best directories have to be expensive. For example, the best general directory costs less than a dollar for a reciprocal link and a low one USD for a regular link. If you need more visibility for your website, you can always opt for featured links which are also very affordable.

A lot of webmasters also submit their sites to directories to benefit from the PR on those pages. Directories which already have a PR are more expensive than the ones that are yet to get a PR. Look at it like a good investment. If you see a directory with low PR but high potential then buy. Read the rest of this entry »

ROI, which stands for return on investment, is a standard term used to calculate how much net income you get from specific investment strategies. For example, you have invested a sum of $10,000 on a TV advertising campaign. If you can measure a net sales increase of 100,000 units and each unit gives you a net profit of $1, then your ROI on the campaign is $10 for each dollar invested.

The same principle is applicable for online marketing too. If you have employed a search engine marketing firm to kick start your online store, it is important to measure if your money is spent well. The way this ROI is calculated could be slightly different though. Instead of measuring direct sales, you may need to consider other ‘user actions’ too. These actions are usually called leads in online marketing parlance. Read the rest of this entry »

As regular readers of this blog would be aware, we constantly provide ideas to market your website better and monetize them more efficiently. In our search for better methods, we sometimes come across sites that are a collectors item. One such website is Marketing Chat. This website deals more with internet marketing than with monetizing websites. And it does a reasonably good job too.

A well designed site that is pleasing to browse, the homepage stories are very informative to read and presented in a simple way that even a newbie can understand. One particular story caught our eye. It is to do with social network optimization. It tells how webmasters are getting affected by the new range of social network sites and how they can keep pace with them. Read the rest of this entry »

A good idea has to be put into action to be called successful. An excellent idea or concept, if badly implemented is a failure.  The same applies to websites too.

If you are looking to succeed in an online project, then it is of utmost importance that you give enough importance to the design and development of your site. Web development companies can do this job if they are good enough. Consider DataDial. This company, based in London is an excellent example of a great web development company. With over 150 clients DataDial has designed websites that are developed to generate leads, what the company terms ‘ a compelling call to action’ for users. Read the rest of this entry »

Seobull.com, a wordpress powered webmaster blog has ‘Tips to make a high traffic website’ as its tagline. Over a period of the last three months, some very interesting articles have been authored by the team at Seobull. Most of these articles cover SEO tips and tricks. For example, consider this article - ‘Are you asking Google to penalize or ban your website?’. This article that catches your imagination immediately goes on to explain the things that you should not do in order to remain indexed in Google.

The current home page stories link to a couple of simple but useful scripts. One is a bulk Google PageRank checker while the other is to check for domain availability.

Seobull also has a PR3 web directory - a SEO friendly directory. Free submissions are still open - so get in a link before this offer is over.

In case you have an online business selling goods or services it is extremely important that you can accept payment via various methods. Not all customers can pay through PayPal while mailing a check may take too long for some occasions. Some customers may not prefer to pay using a credit card via PayPal while wire transfer may not be an option for others. As an online entrepreneur, it is important that you do not lose any customer because you cannot accept payment in a certain form.

While PayPal is widely used, it is also a good idea to tie up with an online credit card processing company so that you can start accepting credit card payments on your site itself. This combination of PayPal with credit cards will cover nearly all prospective customers - so you do not have to worry about losing customers. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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 »

Are you looking to buy text links for your website? Then ensure that you consider the following before you make the purchase.

1. What is the purpose of the purchase? Are you looking to improve PR or increase traffic? Based on it, get the relevant information from the advertiser like PR of the page where the link will be placed, traffic to his site etc.

2. Demographic of the visitors to the advertiser site. If the site in question is a forum then the number of unique visitors will be less. In such situations your link will be more useful for transfer of PR rather than anything else. Read the rest of this entry »