In Search Of Eldorado: The Hunt For Rank Position One

By Russell R. Collins

I have created quite a large number of websites, and if, like me, you have spent hours building yours, then it can be a thankless task when it comes to waiting for customers to hit your virtual door. Like any overnight success, it can take weeks or even months for your website to start to gain popularity unless you have the benefit of advertising in other areas, such as banner adverts, posters, flyers and so on. For the average site builder, the date of publication can come and go as though all your hard work has made no difference to the value of the internet.

But once you can see a trickle of people starting to dribble through to your website, you may wonder why it isn't a torrent. Perhaps next week? Or next month? You start seeing your creation as an investment rather than an overnight sensation that will see you retiring by the end of the month. Clearly people are starting to find you, and perhaps you have had a few comments or a few orders, but what else have you done to try to improve the popularity of your site and the overall number of visitors it receives?

Perhaps you have come across websites that talk about how to make sure your website is optimized so that it is more easily found. This mainly reflects on the way in which search engines find you and list your site in their search results. Bearing in mind how many millions of searches are carried out every day on the internet, making sure that the major search engines know your site exists, and list it, will be of huge benefit. However, being listed is one thing, being high up on those lists is quite another.

When someone carries out a keyword search for, say 'empty egg timer' and you just happen to sell these handy devices (useful for those who don't have to worry about how long anything takes) then you will need your website to be right at the top of the list, so that people will find you easily, and come looking to buy from you. On Google alone, a keyword search for 'empty egg timer' generates nearly half a million websites! That means that there are approximately 50,000 pages of results. Incredibly, only 3% of people ever look beyond the first page of results, which means that 499,990 websites will be missed, and only 10 sites seen by 97% of visitors! You can see just how important it is to make sure you're on that first page, and preferably at the very top of the list. If your website is on page 2, it might as well be on page 49,999, since almost no one will ever find it.

So what is it that helps you get to the top of your keyword search rank? Is there a single big secret that many SEO companies are aware of, and will only tell you for a huge fee? Certainly many companies do seem to suggest that they alone have the answer, and that only by going through them will the Golden Secret be revealed to you, and suddenly your site will rocket to the top. In fact, there are three things wrong with this. Firstly, there is no single solution - it's a combination of many varied factors. Secondly, no one single company can ever offer guarantees, promises or assurances that your site will be at the top, or near the top - they can try, and almost certainly your site will rise, but this depends on other factors beyond anyone's control. This might, for example, be because your website is in a mass market, such as insurance. With hundreds of thousands of keyword competitors, getting near the top is a huge endeavour, whereas if you're selling rainbow coloured light bulbs then there is likely to be much less competition, and so more chance you'll rise more quickly, and further. The third thing is that any rise is never going to be overnight, and any progress can take weeks, if not months or even years.

So what are these factors which affect the rank of your website? There are many different ways to win over the approval of a major search engine. The big factor used to be keywords, with search engines scanning through the pages on your site and identifying the relevant keywords. Unfortunately, many people took advantage of this and simply inserted great blocks of keywords, whether they were relevant or not, just to grab the attention of the search engines. This technique is more likely to lower your rank these days. One of the biggest factors is how many websites link to yours. Obviously if several hundred sites all have a link encouraging people to visit yours, that tells the search engines that your site must be pretty good, and so increase your rank.

I have actually come across a website which is able to analyze your website against these, and the myriad of other factors which affect the ranking of your site. I was surprised to come across it because it actually offers its service free of charge. All you do is enter your web address and contact details, and they carry out a whole range of tests to assess how well your site does for certain keyword searches, and what you could do yourself to improve it. Of course, they offer their services as far as making these improvements is concerned, but this is optional, and if you're happy doing the work yourself, it's a really handy service that will save you a lot of time, and a very great deal of money.

Knowing what your site does well, and what it doesn't, will help you go a long way towards getting your website listed higher. I have a site which was hardly visible at all in Google's results - even I got bored trying to find it. After spending a couple of days implementing a few very simple changes that made very little difference to the way the site appeared, I resubmitted it to Google. I checked it earlier today, and it's now ranked as number one! It's a niche market, but even so, it's now the first site people reach, and more and more people are finding it and spending money, which is great! For two days' work, it was well worth it. I'd certainly recommend you get your site checked out; from my experience it really made a big difference.

About the Author:

No visitors? Buried on page 20? If you want to be found by Google and the rest of the major search engines, you need to have an optimised website. Find out how simple it is to have a free evaluation and make your website profitable now.

Increase Website Traffic -- 4 Solid Techniques

By Kurt Schmitt

There are many methods that work to increase website traffic. Unfortunately, a number of the techniques being promoted are known as "black hat" and will either ultimately get you in trouble, or will only work for a very short period of time. Since you want your Web business to be around for a long time, it might be a better move to spend your time on something more lasting.

Instead of talking about sneaky methods and tricks, I'd like to cover a few of the "white hat" techniques that can bring lasting traffic. These aren't particularly flashy, but they produce results. The best thing about these techniques is that they'll keep producing traffic over many months and years.

Article marketing -- Using article marketing to increase website traffic offers several major benefits. The article marketing sites themselves often have high authority with Google and offer excellent backlinks, which can drive up your search engine rankings. In addition, because of the authority that these sites have, your posted articles will often rank high in the engines.

The high profile article sites create a viral effect and other website owners will pick up your articles and publish them. This increases your reach and your backlinks. On top of that, when people read your article and then decide to click through to your site, they're showing enough confidence in your content to want to read more. These are pre-sold visitors.

Social bookmarking -- Social bookmarking is an activity that can have great rewards for your site. It's easy to create a number of links back to your sites by social bookmarking a few pages. You can also encourage your visitors to do this for you by placing icons with links to popular social bookmarking sites. In addition, you can increase traffic to your own websites by bookmarking sites that link to yours.

Building content -- When in doubt, build more content. More pages on your site equate to more PageRank, more opportunities for adding in keywords that the search engines will pick up on, more pages to link to, and more information for your visitors. All of this adds up to increasing website traffic. I own a domain name because someone built an online store at the same time I was building a content site on the same subject, with almost the same name. The store is gone, my content site is still there, and I own that former online store's domain name.

Social media sites -- Placing your content on other sites is what I call a web-centric approach to success. Many people know about using Digg and Reddit to drive large amounts of traffic, but this is very hit or miss. Others are using Facebook but that is tricky as well. I'm not saying not to use those sites, but a better way to spend the majority of your time might be to use the user generated content sites. Looking at some of the most popular ones, Squidoo, Buzzle, and Hubpages come to mind. There are also a number of up and coming niche related community sites published on the Ning platform and others. All of these let you create valuable backlinks to your site in some way.

Increasing website traffic with these methods will produce lasting results, as opposed to some of the risky, flash-in-the-pan methods that so many are suggesting these days. Start incorporating one or more of these techniques, and you're sure to see an increase in visitor count.

About the Author:

Author Kurt Schmitt publishes several Web properties serving thousand of visitors a month, and writes about the benefits of social bookmarking, article marketing and other Web promotion strategies. See his website for at least 3 more ways to increase website traffic .

How To Choose An Affiliate Marketing Program

By Eddie Watkins

It is easy to use a good affiliate marketing program to make money, but it is how to choose the most appropriate that lets most people down. 95% of those that start internet marketing full of hope fail early on - it used to be 99% but people are getting better - because they either chose the wrong way to try to make money, or thought it was so easy that they didn't have to work at it.

These are still the two most common reasons for failure, and if you can overcome both these flaws then you will have a good chance of online success. Affiliate marketing is a particularly good entry program for those new to internet marketing, because they can bypass one of the most difficult parts: finding a product. Some people are blessed with skills that allow them to create products almost at will, but most of us are not.

It could be argued that if you don't have a product to sell, then why are you getting involved in online selling? A good logical question, actually, and the answer is equally good and logical. To make money. People have heard that you can make a lot of money online, so they try it themselves and hit a barrier right away: no product!

An affiliate marketing program solves that very problem for you. It provides you with a product, and usually it in the form of a electronically downloadable ebook or software that you won't have to replace. With these type of products you very easily can make 50% commissions along with the owner of the product.

You will want to choose a program where the owner is an expert in his field. All the customer service will be taken care of by the owner. Your job is to get traffic your sales page which in turn will make the sale for you. You won't have to worry about excepting payments or shipping the product, that's all taken care of for you.

Naturally you must have a product that people want, and also have your own website with a good amount of traffic, but otherwise that's it. So how do you choose the product? What's popular? Take yourself - why are you involved in affiliate marketing programs? To make money of course. So that would be popular. If you knew a bit about fly fishing or dog training, that might be popular in your circles.

Being able to package such a product is an expertise in itself. That leads us back to joining a program that is ran by an expert. There are programs out there that offer you opportunities at having multiple streams of income, all plugged into one website.

Not only that, but also with a traffic generation system included, and once you find that it works for you, then that is the way to choose an affiliate marketing program. If it works for you then you will find it a lot easier to persuade others that it will work for them. You don't have to push each income stream separately, but can promote the entire program. All you need do is suggest the click that takes the prospective buyer to the sales page of the program you are using, and you get a cut of the cash if that person subsequently makes a purchase.

Now you know how to choose a good affiliate marketing program. Find one that works for you, and starting promoting it to others. That's it. You will be confident it will work for others because it works for you. That's how you make money online.

About the Author:

If you are searching for such a affiliate program that is talked about in this article, then get your copy of Eddie Watkins free newsletter at Top Home Business Opportunity and receive some very valuable reading material about affiliate marketing affiliate programs

Getting Blogging Right

By Rex Stevenson

Creating a blog can be the best thing you do for your website or business. First it can create traffic for you very quickly, and in many cases can create a nice income for you too. Its just a matter of learning how to become a successful blogger.

Blogs are popular and are becoming even more popular, so if you haven't got one then you are probably missing out on all those readers that would be interested in your subject. Internet users love blogs and when they find one that they really like then they keep coming back. The search engines also like those blogs. They realize that it's the blogs that have the most current information, and information that is always changing too.

Choose a Blogger - Choose between one of the two programs for blogging, either blogger or Wordpress. You may have seen where these two companies like to compete against each other, and each has their advantages and disadvantages. The best way to choose between the two is to look at both sites and use the one that is easiest for you. If you ever want to change from one the the other, the process is fairly simple

Figure out what you want to do with the Blog - Choosing the wordpress or blogger platform is the hardest part of your decision making process but you need to decide on what your purpose is and follow your passion. A blog is like a daily newscast or journal so it needs to be something you are truly interested in learning about and writing about.

It is really important that you are truly passionate about what you are blogging about. The only way you are going to make your blog interesting is if you blog about something you really like. It shows through in your righting.

Did you know that there are lots of bloggers out there that make a four figure income and some that make even more, and you can do the same by learning how to get traffic on your site and what to market. You need to be well known among other bloggers and you need to have all the information that others are looking for.

Getting the Blog up is just the start- getting the blog up is fairly easy compared to all the other work that needs to be done. The work comes when you stat putting the blogs, pictures and information on the site. This is like your own journal and you need to post very often for the blog to be successful.

When you own a blog you will need to learn to increase your traffic - getting it up is easy but you will need to learn how to create traffic or your blog will flounder out there. Learning how to create traffic for yourself takes time and you will need to learn how to use new tools, and read as much about your subject and how to create traffic.

About the Author:

The best way to drive unlimited free website traffic to your site is to create a blog, and post optimized content. The Social SEO Guide is a step by step guide to help make this happen.

Best Web Hosting Companies

By Asif Khalil

With hundreds of web hosting companies in the market it is very difficult if not impossible to know which web site hosting companies truly provide an excellent good hosting solution at best price. When you have an established domain name with a good web hosting company, you can get stats 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 monthly service that ranges from $10 or $20 to the more expensive $50.00 per month. Plan to pay between $300 and $500 per year to your web host with any setup fee for new accounts.

Never try free or very inexpensive 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.

Be sure your web host can accommodate e-commerce and storefronts, wireless capability, bogs, forums, chats, online interactive helps and anything else you want to add onto your site, phone support, email support 24/7 days.

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.

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. Three things to look for in a web hosting company are:

1. Excellent Customer Support: Your hosting provider should be there for you 24/7 and give you instant access to the technicians you need to solve your problem. 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 if you get to a live, level 3 support.

2. A Sound Infrastructure: Check whether they offer a multi-homed network powered by multiple bandwidth providers to ensure redundancy. Some offer a 100% guarantee on network availability or network uptime.

3. Financial Stability: If you're running very critical operations, you can't afford to be with a hosting company that is not more old.

About the Author:

YoursDomain.Com is Cheap Domains and best domain and hosting company from 19.99 or you can find good and best Web Hosting Directory from AwebHostingSale.com

Pay Per Lead vs. Pay Per Click

By Josh Prizer

If you feel like you are spinning your wheels with the same poor quality leads from your lead generation service, you're not alone. In the past few years we've heard from more and more of our clients that the quality leads they used to get from their lead gen services are becoming worse and worse. More people are shifting their budgets to pay per click search where the quality remains strong.

Many lead gen firms use pay per click (PPC) search to attract their leads. Once they have a lead, they will ship it out to a variety of vendors, charging each the same fee. If you are seeing your leads get more saturated, it might be time for you to go right to the source instead of letting the middle men do that for you.

Jumping into Pay Per Click isn't just a matter of setting up a website and contact information. You can certainly get results doing that -- we see it all the time. But to truly compete and drive your cost per lead down, you need some sophistication.

One thing we continually preach to clients is the importance of fine tuning every aspect of your online lead pipeline.

The first place to begin is with your pay per click ad copy. It's fairly easy to place an ad and launch it. However, the pay per click engines are putting more emphasis than ever on "Quality" algorithms. If you are unable to make the daily effort to test your ad copy, you are going to fall behind those that do. A good PPC management company will run daily split tests for their clients. This is who you are up against more and more these days -- experts who double and triple the click through rates of their clients' ads.

So, why is this key? Pretty simple. Double and triple that relevant traffic and you can double and triple your leads. If you are not working on this, trust me, your competition is. It's worth the time and expense.

But don't stop there, look at your landing pages (the pages where you send your pay per click traffic). Are the contact forms too busy or too buried? Is your phone number buried? There are ton of things you can do to convert leads at a higher rate.

Optimizing your site's landing pages reduces the dollars you spend on each lead. You might be surprised, but even tiny changes can cut your costs per lead in half. We've seen it. So put in the effort or invest more funds in these mission critical spots.

If jumping into the paid search engines sounds like a lot of work, it is. You can roll up your sleeves and make it pay off over time, or you can hire a turnkey PPC management company. A good PPC expert will develop expansive keyword lists, mine keywords from your competitors, conduct daily split tests on your ads, and advise you on your landing pages.

Ditching those weak, watered-down leads and going right to the source can help your business boost its results dramatically.

About the Author:

Josh Prizer is a Senior Account Executive and AdWords Expert for Zero Company Performance Marketing, a ppc management company. Check out his website to discover more details on improving your PPC ad accounts and performance.

The Right Attitude is a Major Boost to Any Online Business

By Ken Bradshaw

When it comes to making money on the Internet, there are two factors that determine a Web marketer's success: (1) The technical skills and knowledge of Internet marketing techniques such as online advertising and search engine optimization, and (2) The right attitude to make money online. Unfortunately, most online resources are devoted only to the first one: the technical skills and knowledge. However, to be successful on the Internet, experienced marketers will tell you that having the right attitude to make money is just as important as having the right technical skills.

Thankfully, when it comes to one's attitude to make money online, companies and home Internet businesses can bank on a handful of tried and tested success strategies that can help Web marketers outperform their competitors. As a prelude to these three strategies, let's shed some light on one of the biggest myths about making money online.

The Fully Automated Internet Business Myth

Many people mistakenly believe that doing business on the Internet is easy. With the right product, they think they can just relax and let the Internet make money for them automatically. Some even quit their jobs believing that their online business can make them retire in a few months. This myth fosters the wrong attitude towards making money online. The truth is, there is no such thing as a fully automated Internet business. Overcoming this myth is the first step towards acquiring the right attitude to make money online.

Here are three success strategies based on having the right attitude towards an online business. They prove that you need the right attitude to make money online.

1. Your Internet business is like any other business. Treat it that way. Your Internet business is not your hobby. It is not something that keeps you busy only when the mood strikes. That's not the right attitude to make money online. To succeed, an online business has to be treated like a real business. Basic business principles such as marketing, advertising, product testing, customer service, site maintenance, billing and collections, etc. must come into play. If you can only give your business a part-time focus and part-time hours, then it can only be a part-time success, which means that it's a failure.

2. Give your commitment to your customers. Visitors on your site should feel that they can count on your support. They should be able to reach you if they have questions or concerns - whether by e-mail, phone or fax - and they should be able to count on you to give them what they need. Going the extra mile for your customers is one of the best ways to establish your credibility, integrity and dependability. Having the right attitude to make money online means that you are committed to helping your present and prospective customers and giving them what they need.

3. Experiment on different things to know what works and what doesn't. A desire to constantly improve the way your business operates on the Internet is a central part of the right attitude to make money online. This desire should extend to everything - from your Internet marketing and customer service to your customer's experience in finding and using your site. The key is to find out what works and apply that practice constantly and to discover what doesn't work and what can be done in its place. This kind of diligence will help your Web site become competitive and profitable.

Simply stated, there are two words that sum up the right attitude to make money online; total commitment. Having the right attitude to make money online means going the extra mile for your customers. Having the right attitude means giving your online business all the time and attention it needs. As long as you have the right attitude to make money online, you will control the high ground and be competitive in online marketing.

About the Author:

Ken Bradshaw can show you why a good attitude is important for learning How to Make Money Online.

Creating An Interesting Blog

By Stuart M. Gray

Blogs are the current trend in online marketing strategies and the majority of website owners maintain their own blogs with the aim of drawing in more web traffic. Even personal sites are now presented in blog format. Easy-set-up blogging platforms such as BlogIt and Wordpress are very popular and keep attracting hundreds of new blog writers every day. There are millions of bloggers from around the world making their presence known on the World Wide Web. With so many blogs, it's hardly a revelation when you find out not all blogs are interesting to readers.

The reason for this lack is simple. The majority lose interest once they've done a few blog posts. What they once wanted to tell the whole world stops becoming so important when other work and daily duties come in to focus. The content gets stale and people stop visiting them. Making a blog interesting takes effort and if you can be creative with words, it'll be even better.

The basics of maintaining an interesting blog include two methods, which will keep the visitors coming back for more. Initially, you must find a topic that interests not only you, but general readers as well. A common interest topic will always fare better online.

Blogging is about keeping your readers interested and not letting things get dull and boring. Topics must be broadened to include a variety of interests, which will get more people to comment and discuss their views. Never hesitate to blog about something you feel people will be interested in.

If you intend to attract many visitors to your blog, it's compulsory to talk about something interesting to the global community. But, politics, religion, controversial sciences and racism are best avoided in a personal or business blog, because the aim is to share opinions and ideas with empathy and without discrimination. Updating your blog at specific, set periods is also a wise thing to do, because new content attracts more visitors too.

The second rule of blogging is locating good links. Without writing long essays about things that may interest people, you can simply find some interesting stories, articles or discussions on the web and provide links to them from your blog.

Your blog posting space can be used to give some reasons about why you think your readers should visit the links you have provided. The technique here is to get visitors to your blog and then send them to where the actual content is - this helps you to keep your blog interesting while getting more traffic at the same time.

Locating the best blog on the web or creating it is quite a big task. Unsurprisingly, you'll run out of things to say on your blog at some point, so the trick is to keep looking for interesting things elsewhere and make the most of it.

About the Author:

Sometimes you come across an interesting blog that makes you instantly start thinking. If you feel the same, click on this blog which goes through peoples ideas on what the think the 'best' is...film, travel destination, invention, or whatever..great stuff.