Davill Design

It is all pretty zen really. Forget your profound metaphors of trees falling in the forest and the sound of single hands clapping. If you are on the web and can’t be found then are you really there at all?

Sure your website may well be the design statement of your generation. The flash interface worthy of a Pixar showreel. Your mission statement inspirational and your prices unsurpassed. But, and it is a big but, who the hell is going to know if you are hidden away in some dark corner of the dubya dubya dubya? Your mum was right. If you’re not prepared to blow your own trumpet then no one else will. Hide your site and unless you have very deep pockets to plug your URL to the world it will never deliver any meaningful return on investment.

Unfortunately many bean counters take this as a failure of the medium rather than of its application. Better to piss money up against familiar walls than think through the issues. Web marketing is still just basic marketing. It is important to understand that the four P’s (Place, Promotion, Price, and Product.) still apply they just have different elements and emphasis online.

The Place of importance is not a post code but rather a placing on the search results screen of a Google or Yahoo. For many it is indeed page one or oblivion. It is important to remember that these things rarely happen by accident.

Most discussion regarding search engine marketing tends to traditionally revolve around Promotion. Getting your site noticed by search engines is often difficult enough but getting higher rankings than your competitor without paying through the nose is often the true art. Most search engines now incorporate some form of paid listing using a pay per click model of some sort or other. Examples of these include Overture and Google Adwords. Increasingly web site owners are being encouraged to migrate to paid listings as the continual revision and refinement of the algorithms used to compile the free listings often arbitrarily cause dramatic fluctuations in the search results. A phenomena referred to in our office as the Google Dance.

Once upon a time search engine optimisation meant little more than sprinkling keywords through a pages meta tags and manually submitting your site to the various directories on offer. These days you are lucky if a search engine even looks at them. The Google revolution sparked the explosion in so-called relevance driven search technology. This movement fed on the frustration of users poisoned by the often dubious methods used by some website operators to gain high listings through misleading meta information and sneaky redirections. The result was a raising of the bar in search services as the listings became more useful and the world was Googlised. Recently, however, the increasing contamination of the search results with paid listings has tended to dilute the perceived integrity of the service.

Paid listings can be an effective complimentary tool in helping to boost your referral rates from search engines however they can never replace a high free listing result. Web users recognise them for what they are - paid advertisements. Like banner ads and advertorials they have their place in the web marketing mix however limiting your search engine strategy to paid listings is short sighted. To maximise your effectiveness in search engines you need to look at how your web site is set up as a whole.

On the web the Price element is often more meaningfully expressed in the inverse. That is the cost savings involved in time, money and effort to research are often of greater importance to a prospective buyer than the sticker price of the product itself. Let’s face it the vast majority of bricks and mortar companies are not going to be turned on their head by e-commerce. For every Virgin Blue there are a hundred widget manufacturers. It is not just about getting seen. It is about being found by the right people. Delivering motivated window shoppers to be exposed to your sales pitch and convinced to pick up the phone, walk in the door or send in an email enquiry.

Search engines are the key. What key terms are your potential customers searching for and how well does your site attract them? It is important to remember that for most companies the product of their web site is not the inventory in their warehouses. It is the information about that inventory and the provision of a convenient means of accessing it. Amazon is an online giant not because its books are bound better than anyone else’s or the stories contained within are better than the same title from the discount bookseller down the road. It is successful because it delivers it’s information product so well. If you doubt the importance of search engines in this process try typing a book title into Google and viewing the results. Smart marketers refine and update their optimization strategies for new products, brands and opportunities.

Ultimately it will be your sites content that determines its long term success however without effective search engine optimization to begin with they may never find it in the first place. Good search engine optimisation requires more effort than simply implementing a working website. It is about doing the little fiddly, time consuming and tedious things above and beyond that which is required to produce an operational web site. This is why so many websites perform badly in search engines. Unless you are informed and motivated you just don’t bother. Sometimes this could mean abandoning (or at least winding back) the multimedia extravaganza that your art director had planned, but experienced web marketers know that good design is about more than just gimmicks and search engine optimisation can still deliver striking sites. It is just that the optimised site is constructed to be appealing to the robotic eyes of the search engine indexing spider as it trawls through the site as well.

There is a cost to search engine optimization in this way, however there is also a cost to not doing it. The importance of search engines in the mindset of consumers is more than just a trend. Microsoft and Sensis are spending millions to get into the act as they can see it is the future. Whether your business is prepared for it will depend upon how attractive it is under the search terms that describe your core business. Try this experiment. Think up the core term (or terms) that describe your business best and plug it into Google (pages from USA) together with your city (eg. Web Design New York) and view the results. Who is there? If you are not ask your self why and how many people are you missing?

People don’t just stumble on web sites. They search for them. Poor old forgetful Jan’s boss should have remembered this. Long after the latest printed directory of either colour is consigned to propping up the wonky leg of the work bench in the garage, your website investment can continue to work for you. Provided that is that you take the time and effort to look after it. This means fresh relevant content and search engine optimisation strategies consistently applied

The commencement of first Internet marketing was is early 1990s with simple, text-based websites, which offers product information. As the time passed Internet marketing evolved into more than just selling information products, now there are people who are selling advertising space, more software programs, business models, and actually many other products and services. Today companies like google, yahoo and msn leveled the playing field of internet marketing. They offer local advertising to small to medium sized businesses; ROI has also grown while the bottom line has been lowered. This type of internet marketing is a backbone of modern capitalism, permitting anyone with a though, product or any service to reach the widest possible audience.

Houston Internet marketing is gaining popularity day by day. Actually, the internet marketing could cover any face of outline marketing as described above; latest used term internet marketing commonly refers to the use of direct response marketing strategies, which were conventionally used in radio, direct main, and TV infomercials, have applied to internet business space. This ability for careful analysis has become quite general now, that is why you would commonly see terms such as ROI, conversion rate, and sales letter generally come up when discussing about internet marketing.

Benefits

Some of the advantages related with Houston Internet marketing comprise the availability of information. Consumers could simply log onto the Internet and know about products and as well as buy them, at any hour. Companies, which use Internet marketing, could also save money because of a reduced need for a sales force. Overall, Internet marketing could surely assist in expanding from a home market to both national as well as international marketplaces. Unlike established marketing media (such as print, radio and TV), entry into the kingdom of Internet marketing could be a lot less expensive.

Compared to the other media marketing (such as print, radio and TV), Internet marketing is rising extremely fast. It’s also earning fame among small businesses and even consumers when attempting to monetize their blog or website. The calculation of the internet marketing as a media makes it very easy to experience ground-breaking e-marketing tactics, which would prove a better Cost of Acquisition than other media. However, in most urbanized countries, internet marketing and advertising spending is about 5% only, while TV, radio, and the print are far more.

Let’s face the facts; there are a gazillion websites on the internet. You don’t have the luxury of publishing a mediocre site when, at most, you have only a few seconds to capture the reader’s attention. Your site design is the web with which you catch your fly. Whether they stick and stay is up to your content. One of the main reasons Thesis Wordpress Theme has become so popular, is that it provides a clean, elegant design with enough flexibility to allow you to tailor it to any need.

Design - Thesis Wordpress Theme Version 1.3

Thesis Version 1.3 continues where previous versions left off, by providing stellar typography, user accessibility, interface design and search engine optimization. The overall look is professional, with sufficient gravitas to lend authority to your content. Elements of the overall design are endlessly customizable through the easily navigated user interface. Layouts and fonts are controlled without the need to fiddle with the site’s core code. Everything is laid out in an intuitive manner which doesn’t require an advanced degree in computer science to navigate. This attribute alone makes it a perfect choice for anyone deploying a site for the first time. The interface abounds with nice ergonomic touches such as the inclusion of an asterisk next to web-safe fonts on the selection menus. And let’s not overlook the “B.A. Save Button”! But even this trademark item is customizable, although Chris Pearson, Thesis’s creator, doesn’t advise it.

Changes from Thesis Wordpress Theme Version 1.2

Many improvements were added to version 1.3 however, there are three additions that deserve special mention. The new Thesis Layout Constructor allows you to mix and match the column order any way you like, maximizing the possibilities between one, two or three column layouts. Content can be located in the middle or either side of the sidebars, all with the click of the mouse. This is possible due to a new HTML module structure creating six new possible layouts. In addition to this added flexibility, Thesis Wordpress Theme now adds a Framework Selector which allows you to select between a page framework and a full-width framework. In full-width mode, your headers and footers carry to the edge of the browser’s viewable space. Again, the concept is flexibility without having to touch the underlying core code. The third major improvement over version 1.2 is a more robust hook system. Previously, if you wanted to customize your theme, you hacked away at the HTML for each individual template file. This process was time consuming at best, and a recipe for disaster at worst. Once you worked out all the bugs, you were off and running, but what if you decide at some point to change your theme? Guess what? You get to do it all over again. The hook system, which was introduced in version 1.2, solves that problem by creating one of the most critical ways to customize your theme without touching the underlying code. Even more importantly, hooks do their work while assuring forward-compatibility. Thesis Wordpress Theme now has thirty-one hooks which allow you to add and subtract content such as ads, pictures, design attributes etc.

Thesis Wordpress Theme And Search Engine Optimization

The whole point of a website and/or blog is to drive traffic to it so that you can share your unique content. To do so, you must optimize your code for search engines, without landing in the dreaded Supplemental Index. To begin with, Wordpress is designed to be very amenable to SEO, but even with that on your side, the way your theme(s) are built have an enormous impact on how search engines view your site. Thesis Wordpress Theme includes code that is optimized for search engine retrieval without any customization. With Thesis Wordpress Theme you can easily optimize the content of a page and manage keywords for better pass-through. Of course Thesis plays well with plug-ins like SEO Title Tag for more control, but out-of-the-box, Thesis handles SEO well.

Thesis Wordpress Theme - Pricing And Support

Thesis provides purchase options to fit the needs of every level of user. The basic package, or Personal License, sells for $87 and includes a single seat license for one production site and one development server. The catch with this package is that the footer information must remain intact, although this is truly a small nit to pick. For a little less than double the price of the basic license, or $164, you get the Developer’s License which gives you unlimited use of the theme on any number of sites and the ability to remove the footer link. If you’re unsure, and just want to dip your toe in the water, you can opt for the Personal License and then upgrade to the full-up Developer’s license later for an additional $77. What do you get for your money? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot: Theme upgrades are free for life. You get total access to Thesis Forums, free tidbits to customize your theme such as styles, images and the like, all available for download, and unbelievable support. This touches on an itchy subject. We all know that claims of superior user support are, more often than not, marketing hype designed to make you feel better about putting forth the green. Except that in this case, it happens to be true. The creator of Thesis, Chris Pearson is often the one providing support, often within a day of posting your question. But you don’t need to take my word for it, just check out the testimonials page.

Thesis Wordpress Theme : The Conclusion

Yes, there are thousands of free themes out there available for download, and yes, you can create your own with Wordpress template functionality, but why? If you’re a novice webmaster or just starting to blog, then you probably don’t have the requisite skills to do all the hard-core coding. On the other hand, even if you have god-like coding fu, why bother? You have far more important things to spend time on such as researching and writing content and managing your ad revenues. Especially if you are in the latter classification, Thesis Wordpress Theme will pay for itself rather quickly. There simply is no other Wordpress theme available that delivers so much for so little. That is why Thesis is one of the best choices of Wordpress theme available today. And for the same reasons, I use Thesis Wordpress Theme for my blog.

Thesis Wordpress Theme Version 1.3.2 is already out. And the newest version of Thesis includes more fantastic features that makes blogging more efficient. Some of the added features are: more SEO options and improvements, fixes on SEO plugin compatibility, improved multi-media box functionality, new page template functionality and hooks, design and layout changes, and MANY MORE!

What do you think of Thesis?

WordPress is a blogging platform that has podcasting support. A podcast is a pre-recorded audio program, very much like a radio program that is listened to on the computer. Podcasting is distributing audio or video content via RSS 2.0 or atom as WordPress creates all the necessary links for the site.

Using WordPress for Podcasting

WordPress works for podcasting. It starts with the creation of a video or audio that is intended to be shared. The file is uploaded to a server and the line to the file is posted in the weblog. WordPress automatically includes a link to the file in the RSS/Atom feed. Listeners will then subscribe to the feed where new files are downloaded automatically.

Podcasting is supported by WordPress 1.5. Linking to an audio file in one of the posts will result to WordPress automatically adding the enclosure tag to the RSS2 feed to make it usable as a podcast. It is important to use a complete and absolute URL when linking to an audio file or WordPress will not be able to make an enclosure for it.

The RSS2 feed should be made available by putting a linking somewhere on the page. As of WordPress 1.5, the RSS 2.0/Atom links are located at the bottom of the page by default. This only works for posts and not for static pages. When a linked file is inaccessible upon publishing of the post, WordPress will not be able to collect the information it needs from the linked files.

A change in the linked file would require refurbishing of the posts so that WordPress can update its file size information about the file. In order for WordPress to recognize m4a and m4b files as podcast, the web server has to be configured to serve the right content type. An XML at the end of the RSS/Atom URL may occasionally be needed for it to work properly.

Dedicated podcast feeds can be made by creating a category in the Admin>Manage>Categories panel for the audio files, and a post containing an audio link must be assigned to every category. If audio file are being hosted on http://archive.org, a custom field called “enclosure” should be added and the full URL is posted for the MP3 file in the value field.

Podcasting allows anyone to create his/her own audio programming and deliver it via the web. The usual way of distributing podcasts are through RSS enclosures as it allows the reference of binary data from within the RSS feed. Podcast readers subscribe to the RSS feed and download the audio files contained in the enclosures. The downloaded audio files are then moved to a portable audio player for later consumption.

Of WordPress Plugins

There are resources that will help in getting to know the WordPress blog platform better. The WordPress podcast features easy and understandable commentaries about WordPress plus a couple of plugins. It is a great learning resource for any skill or experience level. The Diagnosis plugin presents the detailed information about the server, operating system and the database. It is presented in a way that could be understood by the least technically-inclined person using it. Most will be able to appreciate its rich tech content.

The PodPress plugin is designed to make podcasting with WordPress as easy as possible. It has several features that will make its use fruitful to the user. It has full featured and automatic feed generation as well as auto generation of enclosure tag. It provides a preview of what the podcast would look like on iTunes. The podcast is able to download stats and there is support provided for premium content for pay accounts. This plugin makes adding a podcast to a post very simple and makes possible the viewing of MP3 files’ ID3 tag information. The contents of the ID3 tags can even be copied into the post.

It likewise provides control where the player will display within the posts. Support for various formats including video podcasting is given while it facilitates support for unlimited number of media files. It has automatic media player for MP3, MP4, MOV, FLV, ASF, WMV, AVI and others. It also includes in-line and Pop-up Windows support and provides preview image for videos.

The Mechanics of Podcasting

Podcasting’s publish/subscribe model makes use of the push technology wherein the information provider chooses which files to offer in a feed and the subscriber chooses among available feed channels. As a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program which is made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player, podcasting makes use of an automatic mechanism that transfers multi-media computer files from a server to a client. Podcasts are generally analogous to a recorded television or radio server.

The content provider starts by making a file available on the Internet usually by posting the file on a publicly-available web server. However, it is not technically necessary that the file be publicly accessible but it is required that it be accessible through some known URL or a general-purpose Internet address. He then acknowledges the existence of the file by referencing it in another file known as the feed.

The feed is a machine-readable list of the URLs by which episodes of the show may be accessed. One episode refers to the originally made file while the list provides other information such as publish dates, titles and accompanying text description of the series, and each of its episodes. This list can either be published in RSS format and less frequently in atom format.

Feeds may contain entries for all episodes in the series but are usually limited to a short list of the most recent episodes. A feed from one author is commonly used for standard podcasts but the practice of having multiple authors contribute episodes to a single podcast feed is fast becoming popular. The location known as the feed URI or feed URL at which the feed is posted by the content provider is expected to be permanent. This is to be made known to the intended audience.

The user enters the feed URI into a software called a podcatcher or aggregator which retrieves and processes data from the said feed. A podcatcher is a program which starts when the computer is started and runs in the background. A set of feed URIs is managed by it which is added by the user and downloaded at a specified interval. Any substantive change in the feed data from the time it was previously checked will trigger automatic downloading of the location of the most recent item to the user’s computer. Some podcatchers make the newly downloaded episodes available to a user’s portable media player. Downloaded episodes can be played, replayed, or archived like any other computer file.

If you are looking for a legitimate work from home job, consider Web Site Design. The beauty of this business is that it requires low start up costs. The only office equipment you would need would be a good computer, an Internet connection and website design software. You can also set the hours you want to work which suits me as i have already designed a chicken ark I want to market.

The web design software I recommend are Macromedia Dreamweaver (html editor) and Macromedia Fireworks (graphics editor). Microsoft Front Page and Adobe Photoshop are also excellent choices. If you lack web site design skills, don’t fret. The Internet is jam packed with free tutorials and advice on everything you would need to know about web site design and development. You would only be limited by your desire to learn. You can also purchase professional website templates to give you a jump start on designing web sites for your customers.

Have you ever thought about working from home? If you have, you know that the majority of the so called “work at home” jobs are scams. After being laid off from my telecommuting job I found myself looking for another at home job to replace it. After you’ve worked from home for a while, it’s hard to go back to the corporate 9-5. In my experience, most of the work at home jobs out there appeared to be scams. You shouldn’t have to pay an employer to work from home.

I thought I’d be smart and sign up with a website that specialized in work at home jobs. I Googled a website that promised to give you leads from employers who were looking specifically for people to work from home. The home page listed a lot of national companies (Bank of America, American Express, etc.). It appeared that these companies routinely posted jobs on the web site. All I had to do was buy a yearly membership and I’d have access to those awesome jobs. Those national companies may have been known to hire people to work from home but I quickly found out that they did NOT post any jobs on this website. The membership was a total waste of my money. To sum it up, it was a scam. Were there jobs posted on the web site? Yes, but the jobs were for telemarketers and sales. Nothing for a computer professional. It bugged me that the same stale jobs would be listed each day as if they were fresh!

That being said, web site design is a very exciting field to be in. The technology rapidly changes so there is always something new and exciting to learn, it’s a great outlet to release your creativity, you can make a lot of money quickly, and the best reason of all is that you can work from any location including at home in your PJs.

Given all of these reasons, many people wonder how to get started designing web sites for profit. As I said before, it takes very little money to start a successful online business. Once you learn how to design professional web sites (or use web templates), your only obstacle will be to market your business and win jobs. Sounds easy, but it’s not. There are many web site development firms out there who never win bids on projects. You could search the Internet for advice on winning web site design jobs. You can search for advice from business owners who are out there running successful web site design companies. This is a good approach but it does take time. I highly recommend visiting forums. Some of my favorite are Digital pint (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/) and Sitepoint (http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/).

Technorati Tags: chicken ark, web design, website design

If you wanted a cult DVD you couldn’t find in stores, are you more likely to spend a few minutes searching the Internet to order it online or drive from store to store for hours, asking salespeople disappointed? If you needed a vet for your new kitten, are you more likely to type “Vets in [Your Area]” into a search engine and read about each veterinarian online or take your chances on a one-inch ad you found in a phone book?

The Pew Internet & American Life Project (www.pewinternet.org) has found that 41% of the 70 million Americans who log on each day say that the Internet has helped make shopping easier and 81% of them research a product or service online before they buy. An estimated 4 million Americans buy a product or service online each day.

If your company doesn’t have a Web site, chances are that your competitors do, and you automatically lose the “battle” over a myriad of potential customers. If you have a Web site that’s visually unappealing or difficult to navigate, people are going to leave your site behind and head over to an attractive, easy-to-use Web site that comes up above your listing in a search engine.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t or can’t do any business online, the Internet is a more extensive phone book. Attract customers to your door with a well-designed Web site with search engine optimization so that your Web site comes up in search engine requests near the first results page. Let your potential customers know what your company does, what you charge, and where you’re located. Share some positive customer reviews.

If you’re a small business, you might benefit from a simple three-page Web site design package, with free one-year Internet hosting and a domain name, thirty free days of Web site updates if you come up with some more ideas after a few days of being online, and a completely original professional Web site design.

If you run your business completely online, a well-designed Web site with an effortless online shopping system is especially important as the Internet is your one and only place of business. If you have a store location, think of how much more business you could do by going global and selling your products online, too!

A lot of people are marketing online nowadays and there are tons of different options when choosing a platform for promoting your products or services.

A really effective strategy that I have found is called WordPress Marketing. You can use it for promoting affiliate offers - for example building a chicken coop.

If you are not familiar with wordpress it is a FREE blog service that allows you to create your own website (blog) for free! You can your own domain name (wordpress.com/nameofyourblog) and anybody with an internet connection can view your page by visiting that web address.

Now, you are online! You can promote products as an affiliate OR you can promote your own products or services from there too. Another popular thing people do when marketing online using a wordpress blog, is to write about something that is very popular at the moment (or always) and get traffic to your site that way. Then, you can place ads on your site for Google or Yahoo (also FREE) and YOU GET PAID anytime someone just clicks on one of the ads on your site!
This is a very popular way of making money online.

What else is WordPress Marketing good for?

Yet another awesome technique for making money with your blog is to build your opt-in list of email subscribers by giving away something of value for FREE right from your blog, in exchange for the email address of your reader. It may in form of e-Books, e-Courses, software or a short report. You would not believe that most people will exchange their email address with these free stuffs. If it is useful for them, they will be your loyalty customer in the future easily.

You can sign up for an auto-responder service for less than $20 a month and easily set up the email address capture form where the customer must enter their first name and email address in order to receive the free download (a short, informative report that you write on the same topic as your blog or promotion).

If you do not want to pay for monthly cost, you can try some free auto-responder services. But it would be a better idea to invest on the paid auto-responder service as it will provides a much more stability and durability.
Once you harvest their email addresses you can promote (legally!) products and/or services to them via email and then you can make some serious money!

If you want to make more money, just create your own product and promote them. If you do not want to create your own product, you may finding some affiliate products to promote. That is Wordpress marketing in a nutshell!

Seree Woradechjamroen
http://www.articlesbase.com/affiliate-programs-articles/how-to-use-wordpress-marketing-to-your-advantage-496332.html

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketing, building a chicken coop, web design, website design

Most of the companies today want to establish their business online. And the Internet Solution Company can help advertise and assist in every way possible to get the best Internet Solution for the company’s website. They are looking on the form of online marketing strategies called “website promotion”. It is a strategy that makes your website visible to the Internet. It is an effective way of getting good search engine ranking position in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

If you to have asked yourself “how do I go about promoting website online?” Here are the ways on how to advertise site online.

First, if you are launching a new site, your first step is to submit your site to search engine such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Search engine submission process is also a way to get exposure on the web.

Second, is submitting your site to Web Directories. It is the form of website promotion that will submit site through directories that are categorized by topics.

Third, is through Banner Advertisement, this is a website promotion that consists of placing banner ads that usually scroll bar at the top of the web page. In creating banner advertisement; make sure you understand who you’re targeting, the goal of your campaign, and how to creatively use the ad confines to get viewers to click on your ad, not away from it.

Fourth, Search engine optimization that refers to search engine position and placement, a concept whereby you improve your sites design and content to achieve higher ranking search engine. The use of keywords is the important element to achieved high search engine ranking and best described the web page. In search engine you must use keywords that are related to the website and most frequently used by the target audience.

Lastly, is through Link building, it is a website promotion that helps search engine ranking. This is the link that appears as anchor text of inbound links for the website. There are three form of Link Building. This are through - one way links, reciprocal links, and three-way linking. One way link is the way of endorsing the site through discussion forum that you can share expertise to other. Get active in online discussion groups and always include your URL in your signature. Another is through Article writing .The articles is used to get a link back to the site and it recognize of being an expert in that topic. Link Exchange is a complementary or competitor site that is related. It is your own link exchange by asking sites complementary to yours and to put your link on their pages and you’ll do likewise. It is the number of links pointing to the particular site that will increase traffic. Three-way linking requires at least one person in the trade of two websites. It has different domains and preferably should be hosted in different IP Address. They get traffic between the sites, and the two websites get full benefit of the inbound links.

This is the effective marketing tools for companies expanding their web promotion. In implementing internet marketing strategy you’ll be amazed of your effort. It gives you the opportunity to expose your business to World Wide Web.

Once you create a website for your business, you quickly figure out that people are not flocking to it. When you assess the different ways of driving traffic, your options include advertising your website address, promoting your website address through Public Relations and gaining media coverage, encouraging other sites to link to you and getting placed in online directories.

However, these marketing activities will deliver small and sporadic volumes of traffic. The single biggest thing you can do to drive traffic is search engine marketing. Here is why: it is estimated that 80% of traffic to most websites comes from search engines. There are roughly 500 million searches performed everyday and 88% of that traffic comes from the top 4-5 search engines, Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN. Of these, Google is by far the largest. Approximately 90% of people searching do not go past the third page of results and few go beyond the first page.

Therefore, if you want to drive traffic to your site it is imperative that you get onto the first three pages of Google and the other top search engines. Surprisingly, the majority of small businesses have not figured this out yet and for those who have, the majority are asking the question, How can I get my site to appear on the first page of Google search results?

Different Options

There are two main methods of appearing on the first page of search results.

Paid for results or Pay Per click (PPC)
This is where you pay to appear in the sponsored links section of the results page. In Google, this is at the top of the page and the right hand side. You decide which search keywords e.g. London restaurant, you would like to appear in. You appear in the search results and you pay for every user who clicks through to your site. The cost will vary by keyword and can range from 10p to several pounds or dollars per click, depending on how many other companies are bidding for that keyword.

Natural results achieved through SEO
Natural results are when you appear in the main list of results. You do not pay to appear or when a user clicks on your link. However, to appear on the first three pages of results, you need to implement a number of design and content changes to your website, which are termed Search Engine Optimisation or SEO.

Which is best?
Both have their merits, but natural results are by far the most preferable because once you have invested in SEO, you do not have to pay for the traffic that is generated.

PPC is a great solution if you:
Have just launched your website and you need immediate presence on the first page of result or if you have not yet successfully optimised your site to appear on the first page. Remember, there are thousands of websites all looking to appear on the first page of search results for certain keywords.

Spiders and Links: The Basics of How Search Engines Work

Without getting bogged down in the technical details of how search engines work, here are a few basics that you should be aware of.

Search engines want to ensure that the most relevant sites are displayed to customers who are searching for keywords e.g. London restaurants.

Each page is ranked by the search engine on different criteria.

Each search engine uses different criteria when calculating the ranking of the site, but there are some commonalities such as:
Automated Spiders are sent by the search engine to index each page on your site. These spiders log the content of your site. This allows the search engine to know whether the key words that a user is searching for appear within your site and on specific web pages. However, in addition, the search engines have decided that it is not sufficient to simply have the keywords appear in the site. They believe that the most useful and relevant sites for the person who is searching are those which have a lot of other relevant sites linking to it.

The important points you should take out are:
You want to make it as easy as possible for the spiders to visit and index your site.
You need to have relevant keywords on your site that are easily found by the spiders.
You need to have many other sites linking to your site.

Four Components of SEO

In order to optimise your website to appear in natural search results, there are four components that you will need to address.

1. Design: What to do when designing your website

Many small businesses make the mistake of designing their website and then start thinking about driving traffic to it. The problem is that the way you design your site can result in your site being ignored by the search engine spiders, which means you will receive very little traffic. When designing your site, ensure you avoid the following pitfalls and ask your marketing agency to confirm that they have been avoided.

Avoid flash sites
Sites are designed in HTML or flash codes. The spiders that are sent to your site by the search engines cannot read flash.

No frames
Some agencies design sites within frames. For example, the menu on the left might be within a frame and the main body of the page within another frame. It makes designing the site easier as the only thing that changes from page to page is the content within the frame. However, spiders cannot read what is inside a frame so you will not get indexed and noticed by search engines.

No dynamic pages
Some sites are developed with a database which generates dynamic pages. You can tell if there are dynamic pages on your site if there is a ? within the page URL. Again, most but not all of the search engines can read dynamic pages.

Text within graphics
To ensure text is read uniformly by different browsers, design agencies often put text within a graphic. It looks great, however, a spider cannot read what text is in a graphic and simply moves on.

Keywords
At design stage, think about the keywords you want to be found by on search engines and incorporate that into your design. For example, if you were to design your site so that a page was allocated to the most popular keywords, it would be easier to include more keywords on the page which would be found by the spiders.

2. Content: What to do when developing your content

Keywords

Choosing the keywords that you want to appear in search results for is one of the most important things you can do. Think of it as planning the location for a physical shop. Choosing keywords that people search for a lot (i.e. generates a lot of potential traffic) and then ensuring that those keyword are peppered around your site (i.e. more chance that the spiders will index them giving you a good chance of appearing high in search results) could result in your being positioned on Oxford street as opposed to a back alley.

Invest time in choosing the keywords. Think about how you would search for your product or service. If you are running a restaurant, you should immediately think beyond the generic search keyword of restaurant and consider descriptive keywords such as seafood restaurant or family restaurant. You also need to think of target keywords, so consider London restaurant or London seafood restaurant.

Once you have decided on your keywords, you need to place them throughout your site. The main areas are:

Web page title
This is what you see written in the title bar of the browser. It is also what you see when you bookmark a page. This should explain what the purpose of your site or your page is and include keywords, but always in such a way that makes sense to a user who reads it.

Meta tags
The tags are not visible to users but they explain what the content of the page is. Keywords should be placed in here as they are easily searchable by spiders.

Homepage content
Your homepage is searched by the spiders and you should ensure that your keywords appear near the top header. They should also be sprinkled throughout the homepage. See keyword density for guidance on this.

Keyword density
A question often asked is how many times your keywords should appear on a page. The guidance for SEO is that each page should have a minimum of 250 words; your keywords should account for 2 - 8% of the word on the page. That means they should appear between 4 and 16 times.

Two important points to bear in mind are:
1. You need to balance the need to write your copy for your users, in order to sell your product, and the need to write your copy for search engines, in order to be found.
2. To help you achieve both objectives you should focus on a couple of keywords for each page rather than a large number.

3. Links

Inbound links are key
To combat a lot of sites achieving high page ranking by simply stuffing their sites with keywords, the search engines have placed a higher weighting on the value of the number of sites which link into a site. The rationale is that if a site is linked to by lots of other sites, then it must be offering popular and relevant content.

Therefore, your site might be designed in a way that is easily searchable by spiders and your content might be sprinkled with keywords, but you need to have other sites linking to you in order to achieve success.

Audit your links
Ensure you know how many other websites are linking into your site and set a goal for increasing that figure. You should have at least 100 quality links.

How to get links
There are many creative ways to generate links to your site:
Ask friends, customers or suppliers to link to your site.
Post comments on forums or discussion groups with a link back to our site.
Register your site with sites such as stumbleupon and if users like your site, they will bookmark it, creating a link to your site.
Issue an online press release which should result in online media coverage and links back to your site.
Register your site with multiple directories.

4. Maintenance:

Once you achieve a high ranking in the search engines, it is important to realise that you need to maintain your ranking. The criteria the search engines use in the algorithms constantly change and what works today may not work next week. Your site will need to be tweaked to bring you back up the rankings

Evan Mangan
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/how-to-appear-on-the-first-page-of-google-search-results-107737.html

It was only a short while ago that the “Wordpress” developer team has successfully launched their latest version of Wordpress, called “Wordpress Ella”. Numerically, the version number is called version 2.1.  Now we’re already up to 2.8.4 with 2.9 in beta.

To the uninitiated, news like this seems like a normal announcement from software developers and are often passed on by. However, from the eyes of a trained mind and savvy businessman, the news of “Wordpress Ella” contain many benefits that online business owners can immediately tap into and profit from.

“Wordpress Ella” comes with the following enhancements which are a great resource for online business owners.

1. First on the list of enhancements from Wordpress Ella is an ‘autosave’ function that ensures you will never lose a post again. This is an invaluable tool especially at times when you have spent a lot of time in front of your computer screen, brainstorming on what to write to promote your business.

Imagine the horror or frustration especially in instances where the battery of your notebook died and you forgot to save. Or perhaps there was a blackout or you accidentally closed the browser window without saving your work.

“Wordpress Ella” autosave function is a real time saver and is an abosolute must for any online businesses.

2. Next in line on “Wordpress Ella” is the “Import” and “Export” functions. Let’s talk about the import function first.

The latest release of “Wordpress Ella” has an import function that allows you to import your blog created from other popular blogging platforms such as ‘Movable Type’, ‘Typepad’, ‘Livejournal’, ‘Blogger’ and so on, into Wordpress itself.

This way, you don’t have to lose any important data such as your blog posts and comments. This flexibility is another reason why Wordpress itself is so successful and continues to gain a huge following and user base.

Why would anyone want to transfer their blog from another platform to Wordpress? Well, one reason is because with most of these other blogging platforms, the user has to pay a monthly fee. Wordpress, as almost everyone knows is free, and you can easily install with a few clicks using Fantastico from within your hosting account’s Cpanel.

Another reason to migrate or transfer the entire blog to Wordpress could be due to the limitation of some blogging platforms. Blogger, for example does not support the use of categories, which are critical when it comes to optimizing the blog to rank high for specific keywords related to the business.

Now, let’s discuss about the “Export” function.

“Export” as the name implies, will export all the Wordpress posts and comments into a file (called XML). This file can then be imported into other Wordpress blogs. It’s like a cross transferring of data between similar or related “Wordpress Blogs”.

This is useful when one is starting a new blog and perhaps need to populate the blog with useful content instead of just displaying news feed. For example, if you have a blog on muscle building, and you started a new blog on weight loss, you can import the content (which are the posts and comments) from the muscle blog into the weight loss blog.

This way, when you drive traffic to your new weight loss blog, you can at least provide the reader with some useful content while you build up the content around weight loss. Naturally there is some correlation between these two topics. After all, if you want to build muscle, naturally you need to burn off the excess fats and turn them into muscles!

3. Another enhancement of “Wordpress Ella” is the new search engine privacy. What this means is that you can indicate whether you’d like your blog to be indexed or ping by search engines, especially Google, Yahoo or MSN, which are the three top search engines online.

Most experienced marketers know about the pinging power of blogs. Everytime when a post is published, Wordpress will ping or notify specific blog directories about updates to your blog, causing them to index or visit your blog, brining you that additional and much needed targeted traffic.

As crazy as it sounds, considering that most business owners would like to get their site listed in the search engines, there are also times when you might want to hide or mask your blog from the radar screen of search engines. This is true especially in cases where it’s only meant for paid customers only. For example, you might be providing some sensitive information meant for paid customers and you don’t want anyone doing a search on the search engines to stumble upon your blog and have access to the information.

4. Another powerful upgrade that “Wordpress Ella” brings is the ability to specify a static page as the front page for your site or blog.

Most savvy marketers employ the use of a mini site or a one page only sales letter when marketing their products or services. Normally such one page sites will also contain an opt-in box, where visitors and readers are enticed to provide their email address in exchange for a free gift, software, e-course etc.

When they do so, they will normally be enrolled in an autoresponder course that automatically does the follow-up with the said subscriber which either results in a sale or no sale.

With a blog, however, the main page or the front page will always a display of the latest chronological posts. You can create pages for a blog, however, in the past it was not that easy for the layman to do so.

With “Wordpress Ella”, all you need to do if you want a static front page is to select this option in the Wordpress control panel. It can’t get any easier than this.

These are just some of the enhancements that you can immediately benefit from “Wordpress Ella”.

This article assumes you already have some basic knowledge about the marketing power of blogs in terms
of its syndication power, targeted traffic and search engine optimization capability for keywords.

Brandon Hong
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/profitng-and-benefiting-from-wordpress-ella-103768.html