All Amazing Articles

Part 1 – Preparations

Introduction
Today the internet is very different to it used to be. Several years ago, if you made a website you were assured of visitors as there were so few sites on the internet. Now, with several hosting companies having over half a million web sites on their servers it is much harder to get the visitors. Just recently, the search engine Google announced it had information on over 2 billion web pages.

Luckily it is not all bad news. Today there are over 200 million people on the internet and thousands of people are getting connected every day. The main problem you will face is getting your site noticed above all the others because, even if you have the best site ever, nobody will know that until they visit it.

Where To Start
There are thousands of places and ways to publicize your site. Basically, you must think to yourself, “How do I find sites?” The first thing you are likely to think of is Search Engines. They are the first place you should publicize your site. Secondly, you probably follow links from other pages. This is a very important way, which we will cover in more detail later.

To publicize your site well, all you need to do is follow this tutorial. We cannot guarantee that your site will be very popular after this but you should certainly get enough visitors to make your site worthwhile.

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To increase the rank of your website/blog and therefore get more traffic you should build links.  I have said this a few times already on my blog but it is important to keep stressing this fact because it will increase the rank of your website and ultimately get you more traffic.  If you rank high on search engines such as Google then people will click on the link to your website first and if they like it they will hopefully stick around and read some of your website.  Below is a list of a few things you can try to get more links to your website.

• Build a “X list”.  Meaning a list of however many things you want on your topic.  Example: 10 Ways To Make Money Online. People like to link to these type of posts/articles
• Create a 10 easy tips on your topic type article
• Create a list of the top 10 myths for a specific category
• Create a list of gurus/experts.  Like how I have done with this post
• Make your content easy to understand and follow so that people are more likely to link to it
• Put in some effort to minimize grammatical or spelling errors.  I have said this before and it is helpful so people can follow you posts more easily
• Add a privacy policy and a picture of yourself to build authority on your website/blog
• Submit your website to article directories

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On the latest State of the Blogosphere report, Technorati claimed that they are tracking over 133 million blogs. That is a freaking lot of them. If we take into consideration standard websites as well, this number will be even bigger. The result? Hundreds, if not thousands of blogs and websites on virtually every single niche on the web.

You can also bet that a good percentage of those will be offering outstanding quality content just like you do, so the competition is fierce.

Under those circumstances, how can you make sure that your blog or website will stand out of the crowd and attract visitors?

In one word: branding.

Bricks and mortar businesses have discovered the importance of branding decades ago, but on the web this is a relatively new trend (just five years ago you didn’t have that many websites around after all).

Below we are going to cover 10 ways to brand your blog or website efficiently.

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This article takes a look at the overall goals of your site and why a plan is needed for its success. Whether your site is designed to send traffic to an offline business, convert traffic to online sales, sign up people for further information, or is an exclusively informational site, you need to determine those overall goals and objectives.

Every website needs a promotional plan to ensure that the goals and objectives of a business’s website are achieved. In the make believe world of the movies, they may be able say, “if you build it, they will come”. In the real life of business, however, a much more active approach to marketing and promotions is required.

Your site needs a promotional plan to reach its goals. In order to formulate a strong promotional plan, you need to know what those goals are for you and for your website.

Your website needs a goal and a purpose. What you have to do is to decide what your site is supposed to be doing for you and your business. While most promotional articles offer the nuts and bolts, we will take this opportunity to look at the overall goals of your site, and why a plan is needed for its success.

For many people the website is a tool to gain added business for an offline company. For others, the website may be the entire venture in itself. Still other websites may be designed as informational sites and targeted and qualified traffic is not a concern. A good promotional plan needs to consider these factors.

You must know who, either businesses, or consumers, or even both, constitute the target market for your business. If you are going to use your website as a vehicle to convert those potential prospects into paying customers and clients, you need to identify who they are first. Some preliminary market research will be required to answer that question.

Another need is to decide where and how you are going to communicate your promotional and marketing message to your identified target audience. There are virtually unlimited methods to reach your potential customers. You must select the avenues that are right for you, your business, and your promotional budget.

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Blogs sport strong Google PageRanks and often loyal readerships. Adding a blog to your existing website can bring a human element and a sense of immediacy to your site, as well as potential new customers and clients to your business.

You have probably heard much discussion about the new phenomenon of weblogs, more popularly referred to as blogs. Long dismissed by serious webmasters and business people, blogs were thought to be the sole province of angst-ridden teenagers, and a few self-indulgent writers. That is not the case any longer.

Blogs have stormed onto the Internet, sporting strong Google PageRanks and often very large and intensely loyal readerships. The worlds of politics, sports, and business have seen an explosion in the number of blogs over the past year. Blogs are everywhere on the Internet. Along with providing a boost to your Google PageRank and to your search engine results pages (SERPs), blogs are a tremendous promotional tool for your website and your business as a whole.

By adding a blog to your existing website, or as a cross-linked standalone site, a blog will pay heavy dividends to your business. By adding a human element and a sense of immediacy to your site, a blog will add not only potential new customers and clients to your business, but a healthy injection of goodwill as well.

Blogs provide a powerful promotional vehicle both online and offline. Perhaps it’s time to consider starting a blog.

Promotional Benefits that Blogs can Provide
Blogs build regular readership traffic. Because of their frequent updates, often daily, readers will return very frequently. A traditional static website has far fewer changes, and often requires coding and the assistance of a technical person. There is no such requirement for blogs.

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How can posting on Internet message boards and discussion forums publicize your website? This article offers tips on finding the message boards that are right for you and your website and how to establish yourself as a respected expert in your field, as well as increase traffic to your website.

Everyone is searching for ways to promote and market their websites. I’m sure you are no exception. Simply building a website and placing it out there on the Internet doesn’t guarantee success in Internet marketing. In fact, by failing to publicize and market your website, it is almost certainly doomed to failure.

The old idea of “if you build it, they will come” might work for a movie script writer. It won’t likely work in the real world of modern online business. You need to find simple, low cost ways to market your website to potential clients and customers.

One proven technique that is well known and practiced by the Internet marketing pros is posting on Internet message boards and forums. By posting on the message forums, savvy marketing people gain visitors, establish themselves as experts in their field, and multiply their success many times over. You can too.

All you have to do, is start to think like a marketing professional. The Internet discussion boards, and even some of their other members, will do much of the marketing on your behalf.

What are Internet Message Forums?
Internet message and discussion forums are everywhere. Their many members discuss topics ranging from baseball to photography to crafts to search engine optimization. Whatever your business or hobby, there are numerous Internet message forums awaiting your membership.

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Your website and online business promotional efforts can be multiplied many times over by being the topic of a news story. A mention of you and your online business in any of the online or offline media will get your business story out to a wider audience than almost any other method.

By being the subject of a news story, your site and business receive an implicit endorsement that no amount of money spent on advertising can match. People tend to put more confidence in a business that is covered in a news article than they do in any paid advertisement. It should be part of your business promotional strategy to get your message into the various news media.

The established road into the news media is by way of a press release.

Why Send a Press Release?
Your online business has a newsworthy story. It may not be immediately recognizable, but there is news within your business. Because your business activities have news value to some members of the media, you need to get your story out there to be written. The standard means is by way of a written press release.

Your first step is to find a newsworthy story. In the news business, that is referred to as the “angle”. To find a news angle, many people suggest thinking like a journalist. An even better idea is to think like an editor. The publication editor will always want to know the news value of the story and its angle. It’s up to you to provide it for them. Send them a press release.

There are many story ideas lurking in your business right now. You may have a new product that serves a specific need. Your website may have been redesigned in a new and unique way. Your staff may have had additions. Your site may have some special holiday or seasonal value. You may be involved in some unusual promotional or charitable events. There is also the good old human interest story.

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Experiment with your user logs to measure how successful your site is at adding new readers and retaining your regular customers. Any good business has to know who its regular customers are and how the new customers are getting their information. From this research, you can then build lasting relationships and form new ones for long-term website growth!

If you are like most webmasters or bloggers, you are constantly searching for fresh ideas to add content to your website. You are already well aware that adding more pages to your site will enhance your search engine rankings. You realize that you require more keyword phrases to find their way into searches. The question arises as to where to find ideas that appeal to your visitor traffic. The answer may lie in your own visitor traffic logs.

Hidden in the pages of those ubiquitous, but often overlooked features of every website, are some gems waiting to be mined. Keywords used to find your website are one of the most ignored, yet very valuable prizes found in your visitor logs. By using those keywords, in a manner consistent with the main theme of your website, you can gain additional search engine referrals.

Visitor logs also provide useful information on the activities of your visitors that can helpful in adding fresh content to your site and in improving conversion rates from tire kicker to customer status.

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Avoid ugly error 404 pages that turn visitors away. Give them the option to stay on your site by giving them a custom error 404 page that looks and feels like your site. Having a broken or old link gives a very bad impression and can lose you a customer before you have had a chance to impress them with your well-designed site.

An error 404 page simply means that the web browser could not find the file you requested. This is termed as a “page not found” error. The server generates an error (404), and enters it in the error log, then it returns the page that it is set up to return as standard. These pages are usually very ugly and look nothing like your site, furthermore they look nothing like what the visitor was looking for.

Why You Need an Error 404 Page?
If you think that this does not apply to you consider the following: In 2 years’ time when you added several sections and changed names, etc., your site will have mutated into something else. The fact is that mistakes can be made, links missed or spelled incorrectly and not checked. Even if your site is perfect, someone can still put a link to your site and spell a file name incorrectly – giving a bad impression of your site through no fault of your own. A custom error 404 page will help to keep a site visitor even if they turn up at a page that wasn’t quite what they were expecting. A custom error 404 page should tell the user where they are, what page they are on, the likely cause of being there and where they can go to find the information they require. It is all about keeping that visitor and turning them into what they were before they got that error 404 – a potential customer.

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A forum is a great tool which can increase a hosting site’s link popularity and, more importantly, provides a value-adding community to visitors. Without mentioning the technical aspects of embedding a forum into a website, I shall explain the factors critical in the creation of a successful forum.A forum is a great tool which can increase a hosting site’s link popularity and, more importantly, provides a value-adding community to visitors. The fact of the matter is that a forum has a number of additional benefits. Those benefits include:

1. Intelligence: Allows you to get to know what’s really going on in the minds of your potential/existing customers by simply observing and interacting with forum posts.

2. Providing visitors with a sense of security/reliability: Thanks to the existence of recent posts, visitors feel that the site is ‘alive and kicking.’

3. Differentiation: A site with a winning forum, led by wise, open, and communicative moderators, and is home to constructive members, can provide an organization with a strategic differentiation and a competitive advantage.

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