• SEO Pyramid Scheme

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    I thought i would spend a little time to let you guys in on a little something i like to call the SEO Pyramid Scheme

    Basically, we all know the importance of targeting specific keywords and phrases however, this isn’t necessarily the easiest of things to do until now…

    Lets take a simple free site as our example, We know we have to have Meta Tags, Descriptions, Alt Texts and Body text on our site but how do we keep this all in within the theme of our site and, more importantly, how do we make sure we target as much of our niche traffic as needed? Actually the process itself is a simple one that has been around for many years however, very few people make good use of it.

    So we have our free site all ready and waiting to be optimized for the search engines the first thing we need to do is take a look at our sites content (read as images) and make a short mental description of them so for example, if we have a teen site the pictures may be of a ‘blonde sexy teen model wearing stockings’.

    That description is the basis for our keyword pyramid.

    We now have to construct our pyramid based on that brief description so we start o break it down word by word for example:

    Blonde
    Sexy
    Teen
    Model
    Stockings

    That is our primary layer in the pyramid already completed, not so hard really was it

    Now comes our second level in our SEO pyramid:

    Blonde Sexy
    Sexy Teen
    Teen Model
    Model Stockings

    As you can see from this we now have our secondary layer of the pyramid all worked out onto our tertiary layer:

    Blonde Sexy Teen
    Sexy Teen Model
    Teen Model Stockings

    Now we have our tertiary layer for our pyramid we can continue this for further layer like this:

    Blonde Sexy Teen Model
    Sexy Teen Model Stockings

    Again, we can break this down one more level like this:

    Blonde Sexy Teen Model Stockings

    We now have 5 layers to our pyramid.

    The next stage is to incorporate these layers into both your Meta Tags and, more importantly you body text.

    Take each layer in turn and, where possible include one line from each later into each portion of our HTML code from the Meta Tags, Alt Tags, Main Body Text, Hyperlink Text and, Image File Names.

    By working through each layer of this SEO pyramid at a time you will not only discover keyword rich phrases that you could otherwise be missing out on in the search engines but, you will give your sites a theme making your chances of being listed for the correct search terms even better.

    Article written by Le

  • Domain Name Registration Services What To Look For

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Domain Names | Response: 0

    Once upon a time, if you wanted to register a domain name, you could only do it by visiting Network Solutions at http://www.networksolutions.com/ and paying them whatever they asked for, about $35.00 per year.

    Then ICANN, http://www.icann.org/, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that is the non-profit corporation that was formed to assume responsibility for the IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management functions previously performed under U.S. Government contract by IANA and other entities, decided to change the rules.

    The initial testing phase of the new competitive Shared Registry System for the .com, .net, and .org domains quietly began to take place in April of 1999.

    It started with five participants who were the first to implement the new system for competition in the market for .com, .net, and .org domain name registration services.

    Previously, registration services in the .com, .net, and .org domains were provided by Network Solutions, Inc. under an exclusive contract with the United States government.

    In the two years since this program began, things have really changed.

    Just this last week, ICANN reported that two of their registrars, Tucows and New York-based Register.com, had recorded more new registrations for Top Level Domains (dot-com, dot-net and dot-org) than VeriSign’s Network Solutions.

    This marks the first time ever that VeriSign’s Network Solutions was out-sold by any of the registrars and signals that their past dominance of domain name registration is certainly fading.

    Why?

    Because besides others being allowed to make domain name registrations, these new registrars are also cutting prices.

    The Rules have most certainly changed.

    The Shared Registration System (“SRS”), ICANN’s accredited registrars program, allows people to submit application to become a registrar along with a non-refundable $1000 filing fee.

    After someone is accepted into the program then they must pay a yearly fee of $5000 to maintain their status as an accredited registrar.

    This situation has created a very competitive environment which can only be beneficial to all of us as the price to register a domain name has fallen like a rock from a very tall building.

    However, if you plan to register a new domain name using a virtual unknown registrar, make certain they do indeed have the legal accreditation from ICANN by visiting the ICANN web site and viewing their posted list of ALL accredited vendors:
    http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html

    It will only take you a few moments to make sure you are dealing with a reputable vendor of domain names. Those few moments will make the entire process legal and worry-free.

    Article written by Lee

  • Why Cant I Get Indexed By The Search Engines?

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    Unfortunately, this is an all too common question. If it makes you feel any better, you’re not the only one frustrated about the length of time it takes to be indexed, or the many pitfalls involved. It often takes anywhere from two days to as much as six months to be listed on a search engine. For example, last month Excite finally updated its index for the first time since last August! Luckily, Excite is the most extreme case lately, but waiting several weeks to a month can also be extremely frustrating especially when your livelihood depends partly on these search engines.

    The Web Position Submitter report will give you current time estimates for each engine so you’ll know what to expect. However, an engine at any time could choose to delay their indexing beyond the “norm” for maintenance or other reasons. On the flip side, you could get lucky and submit just a couple days before an engine does a complete refresh of their database. Therefore, submission times can never be an exact science since we’re all ultimately at the mercy of the engine.

    If you’ve submitted your site and have waited the estimated time to be indexed and there’s still no listing, what do you do now?

    Here are 16 tips that should help you solve this problem:

    1. First, be sure you’re not already indexed but just don’t know it. Unfortunately, none of the major engines are kind enough to e-mail or notify you as to if and when you’ve been indexed.

    The method to determine if a page or domain has been indexed varies from one engine to another, and in many cases, it’s difficult to tell for sure. Never assume that you’re not indexed just because you searched for a bunch of keywords and you never came up in the first few pages of results. You could be in there but buried near the bottom.

    In addition, it’s not very practical to check the status of a number of pages on each major engine each week. Fortunately, Web Position has a URL verification feature in the Reporter that makes this process much easier. Each time you run a mission, it will report which URLs exist and do not exist in each engine. If you’re using Web Position and are not finding your URLs after submitting, be sure to see this page for common pitfalls to watch out for:

    http://www.webposition.com/urlnotfoundhelp.htm

    2. Make sure you have uploaded the pages to your site before submitting them. This one seems obvious, but submitting a page that does not exist or submitting with a subtle typo in the URL is a goof we might all make at one time or another. If you’re using Web Position’s Submitter, there’s a checkbox on tab 2 that forces Web Position to verify that all your URLs are valid before submitting them.

    3. If you have information inside frames, that can cause problems with submissions. It’s best if you can create non-framed versions of your pages. You should then submit the non-frames versions of your pages which can of course point to your framed Web site. Alternatively, you can enter your relevant text within the NOFRAMES area of a framed page which most search engine spiders will read.

    4. Search engine spiders cannot index sites that require any kind of registration or password. A spider cannot fill out a form of any kind. The same rule applies regarding indexing of content from a searchable database, because the spider cannot fill out a form to query that database. The solution is to create static pages that the engines will be able to find.

    5. Dynamic pages often block spiders. In fact, any URL containing special symbols like a question mark (?) or an ampersand (&) will be ignored by many engines.

    6. Most engines cannot index text that is embedded in graphics. Text that appears in multimedia files (audio and video) cannot be indexed by most engines. Information that is generated by Java applets or in XML coding cannot be indexed by most engines.

    7. If your site has a slow connection or the pages are very complex and take a long time to load, it might time out before the spider can index all the text. For the benefit of your visitors and the search engines, limit your page size to less than 60K. In fact, most Webmasters recommend that your page size plus the size of all your graphics should not exceed 50K-70K. If it does, many people on dial up connections will leave before the page fully loads.

    8. If you submit just your home page, don’t expect a search engine to travel more than one or two links away from the home page or the page that you submitted. Over time they may venture deeper into your site, but don’t count on it. You’ll often need to submit pages individually that appear further down into your site or have no link from the home page.

    9. If your Web site fails to respond when the search engine spider pays a visit, you will not be indexed. Even worse, if you are indexed and they pay a visit when your site is down, you’ll often be removed from their database! Therefore, it pays to have a reliable hosting service that is up 99.5% of the time. However, at some point a spider is going to hit that other 0.5% and end up yanking your pages by mistake. Therefore, it pays to keep a close eye on your listings.

    10. If you have ever used any questionable techniques that might be considered an overt attempt at spamming (i.e., excessive repetition of keywords, same color text as background, or other things that the Web Position Page Critic warns you about), an engine may ignore or reject your submissions. If you’re having trouble getting indexed in the expected amount of time, make sure your site is spam-free.

    11. If your site contains redirects or meta refresh tags these things can sometimes cause the engines to have trouble indexing your site. Generally they will index the page that it is redirecting TO, but if it thinks you are trying to “trick” the engine by using “cloaking” or IP redirection technology, there’s a chance that it may not index the site at all.

    12. If you’re submitting to a directory site like Yahoo, Open Directory, NBCI.com, LookSmart, or others, then a human being will review your site. They must decide the site is of sufficient “quality” before they will list it. I recommend you read the submission guide on the directory tab of the WebPosition Submitter. It contains tips to improve your chances of obtaining a good listing on these directories.

    13. A number of engines no longer index pages residing on many common free web hosting services. The common complaint from the engines is that they get too many “junk” or low-quality submissions from free web site domains. Therefore, they often choose not to index anyone from those domains or they limit submissions from them. It’s always best to buy your own domain name (very important) and place it on a respected, paid hosting service to avoid being discriminated against.

    14. Some engines have been known to drop pages that cannot be traveled to from the home page. HotBot has been rumored to do this. You may want to consider submitting your home page that links either directly or indirectly to your doorway pages.

    15. Make sure you’re submitting within the recommended limits. Some engines do not like more than a certain number of submissions per day for the same domain. If you exceed the limit, you may find that all your submissions are ignored. Fortunately, WebPosition’s submitter will warn you regarding current limits and recommend you stay within them. Some submission consultants feel it is dangerous to submit more than ONE page a day to a engine for a given Web site. For those who wish to be ultra-conservative in their approach, the Web Position Submitter includes a checkbox to limit submissions to one URL per day per engine.

    16. Last but not least, sometimes the engines just lose submissions at random through technical errors and bugs. Therefore, some people like to resubmit once or twice a month for good merit in case they do lose a submission. Certainly if you’ve followed all the “rules” and are still not listed, re-submit! Sometimes a little persistence is all that’s needed.

    If any of the above scenarios apply to your submission, you should make the necessary adjustments and re-submit. If that still does not work, you should consider e-mailing or calling the search engine and asking them politely why you have not been indexed yet. Sometimes they will reply back with “Sorry, there was a problem with our system and I’ve now made sure you’ll be indexed within the next couple days.” Or, sometimes they’ll tell you why you were not indexed. In other cases, they will ignore your e-mail and you’ll have to keep e-mailing or calling them until they respond. Still, it’s definitely worth the effort to get your site listed with the major engines assuming you also take the time to optimize your pages so you’ll achieve top rankings.

    Article written by Lee

  • Basic Bookkeeping For Adult Webmasters

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Forms & Contracts | Response: 0

    Knowing how much you are spending on expenses for your online enterprise each month can be a very powerful tool. Taking out that shoe box at the end of the year and giving it to the Accountant is one way. But a very simple bookkeeping system can provide you with exactly how much you made each month after all expenses. In this article I will provide you with the knowledge to setup a simple system to track your revenues and expenses. Not only will you then know exactly what your Net Income or Loss is each month but at the end of the year you will have a nice neat little package to hand your Accountant. Which will result in lower accounting fees at tax time.

    The first thing you need to do is find a way to file all receipts. Your receipts are the backup for all your transactions. Go to your local office supply store and buy an accordion file labeled with monthly slots. Each time you receive a business related receipt, file in correct month. Remember you need to file all your receipts for your numbers to be accurate. When you receive an email receipt for content or hosting print it out and file it. File sponsor cheque stubs, credit card receipts, ISP bill, etc. At the end of each month take out all your receipts and divide into revenue and expenses. Remember you must have a receipt in order to claim the expense. The receipt should show the detail of the purchase, vendor, amounts and date. Ensure that the expenses are needed or used to generate revenue for your business.

    Now the next step depends on how much detail you would like.
    Revenue-Expenses=Net Income or Loss. For a quick snapshot of the month add up the revenue receipts, staple all receipts together and put the total on the front either adding machine tape or handwritten. Repeat with all your expense receipts. You can put a quick summary of the month in a spreadsheet program. Or for a very small investment you can setup a computerized tracking system. I recommend buying a very inexpensive software such as Quicken. Most major banks, credit cards and even paypal are setup to download transactions to Quicken. You can purchase the Personal Finance version of Quicken for around $70. There are several other inexpensive personal finance software packages that you can purchase that will work as just well. But I personally prefer Quicken. The software you choose will have a list of business accounts already setup. For an adult enterprise you will need to customize the account names. This is very easy and quick to do. Add in accounts for content purchase, hosting, isp, traffic purchase, etc.

    Once a week you will open up your program download your transactions from your bank account, credit card, paypal etc. If you have an expense that you pay cash for you will need to add that transaction in. I am assuming that all your sponsor cheques are being deposited into a bank account or paypal. If you receive a check and cash it, manually add the transaction in. After you have finished entering your transactions for the week ensure that the receipts that you have balance to what you have entered in the software.

    You will be amazed at how simple it is to use a software package such as Quicken to track your revenue and expenses. These software packages come with pre-made report tools. Such as income statement, analysis of expenditures, cash flow projections. You can even setup budget numbers for your business.

    If your business consists of a lot of transactions in a month you might want to consider using a bookkeeping/accounting service. There are many online and locally owned businesses that charge a very low rate for doing small business bookkeeping. Remember you don’t need an Accountant to do general bookkeeping. Many small business owners think they need an Accountant to do the monthly bookkeeping. This could result in unnecessary fees. Depending on the size of your enterprise and your passion for numbers sometimes employing a bookkeeper to do the data entry can be a blessing! Most bookkeeping providers will even provide customized reporting based on your needs.

    Article written by Lorna

  • Source Code – Eliminating HTML Margins

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    Since the inception of the very first HTML document, margins existed that surrounded the document, like in the case with this document.

    The margins are there to act as a cushion between the edges of the browser and the contents of the page, so it’s easier to read the content.

    As good as margins are, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to eliminate them in some cases, where the design of the page calls for their termination? While most webmasters think it is not possible to “flush out” the default margins of a HTML document, it actually is, although only possible in IE 3+, and NS 4+. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how.

    Eliminating The Document Margin In IE 3+

    To get rid of the document margin in IE 3 and above, so content presses right against the edges of the browser, use the IE exclusive “leftmargin” and “topmargin” attributes:

    <body leftmargin=”0″ topmargin=”0″>

    It’s as simple as that!

    Eliminating The Document Margin In NS 4+

    To get rid of the document margin in NS 4 and above, use the NS 4 exclusive “marginwidth” and “marginheight” attributes instead:

    <body marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″>

    Putting It All Together.

    By putting the two techniques together, we can create a document that flushes out its’ margins in both IE 3+ and NS 4+:

    <body leftmargin=”0″ topmargin=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″>

    Try out the above coding on your page, and you’ll see what I mean.

    Article written by Lee

  • Adding Images To Your Web Pages

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    The Basics

    Adding Images To Your Web Pages – The Basics.

    So you have just got into the online adult business but don’t know your ass from your elbow, you have the simplistic stuff relating to HTML down but, you want to find out how you can start adding banners and images to your pages here is a quick guide to help you on your way.

    What Is An Image?

    The answer, is, believe it or not simple, An image is a picture on a page of your website. There are however, many way to display images on your site from the size of it to the overall effect you want the image to have on your HTML page and from borders around the image and many other things.

    However, I don’t want to blind you with information at the moment considering you need to actually know the basics of adding images before you can start using fancy styles and the likes.

    Adding A Basic Image.

    The HTML code to add an image on any HTML based page is a straight forward one however, before you can use this HTML tag you need to know where on your page you want the image to appear.

    Now that you have decided where you want your image to display you need to use the image tag, the HTML coding to place an image on your page should be IMG. Also, you will need to tell your page where you want the image to come from or, in other words, you need to tell it the source of the image you want to use the HTML tag to do this is SRC.

    For example, lets say you have an image called porn.gif (you need to include the extension in your SRC coding) you would display this image on your page using the following code:

    <IMG SRC=”porn.gif”>

    Simple huh?

    Well, actually, maybe not, for example, what do you put if the images you are linking to is NOT in the same location as the page you want it to appear on? That’s not a problem, all you need to do is use the FULL location of the image in your IMG HTML tag like this:

    <IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif”>

    You should now be able to include images on your pages without any problems.

    Image Sizes.

    Ok we can now include an image on our pages but, what if we want to make this image fit the feel of the rest of our page / site, how do you manipulate the graphic to ‘look’ right?

    There are a number of ways images can be manipulated for example, if you want the image to be 100 pixels wide by 100 pixels high you can add the WIDTH and the HEIGHT tag to your HTML coding like this:

    <IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″>

    That will now resize your image into a square that is 100 pixels wide and high.

    Now we have the image on our page in the right size we require what else can we do with it? Read on..

    Borders + Colors.

    In addition to placing the image and resizing the image on our pages we can also add a border and, a border color to the mage to make it stand out if needed for example:

    <IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″ BORDER=”2″ BORDERCOLOR=”FF0000″>

    As you can see we have now added the two tags ‘BORDER’ and ‘BORDERCOLOR’. The first ‘BORDER’ tag tells your HTML what size of border you want around your image and, this can be any size you want to make the image stand out on your page. The second ‘BORDERCOLOR’ tag tells your HTML code what color you want the border to be again, this can be any color you like to match the rest of your sites pages.

    Linking An Image.

    In addition to resizing, adding borders and colors we can also link our image to a specific URL (the most common form of this is with banner advertising) and, if you want to link your image to a URL you would use the following coding:

    <A HREF=”http://www.sponsorsurl.com”><IMG SRC=”http://www.domain.com/images/porn.gif” BORDER=”2″ WIDTH=”100″ HEIGHT=”100″ BORDERCOLOR=”FF0000″>

    This will create an image that is 100×100 pixels in size, with a border size of 2 pixels in the color FF0000 that is linked to http://www.sponsorsurl.com

    Also, the order of the HTML tags we use is not important however, you should try to get used to arranging them in a certain way to make your work easier if it ever comes to editing your images.

    Hopefully this has been of use to you and you can now see that adding banners and images to your sites isn’t as daunting as you first thought.

    Article written by Lee.

  • Gay Adult Marketing 101

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    There is a myth out there that gay traffic is hard to convert because a gay surfer is reluctant to buy. This isn’t so. Conversions come down to two things:

    • The gay surfer is discriminating; a membership to a site that has exactly what we want
    • The gay surfer is loyal; I, believe, this comes from our experience as a community. When a Gay surfer decides to purchase a membership, it’s typically for a longer period of time.

    This is evident with the better Gay Pay Sites; conversions may be lower than a straight hardcore site however, membership tend to be longer than the industry average. The gay surfer is discriminating; we look for a long-term membership with a site that has we want whether it’s teens, bears, amateurs, etc.

    With that idea, I always advocate that age-old niche free site philosophy use a variety of sponsor programs on your sites. Typically, my free sites will have one main sponsor (I use Quality Males) then I’ll break my other banner slots down one Teen site, a Twink site and maybe a product like Viagra. But this will vary depending on the “flavor” or “personality” of your site – if you have a gay leather site, my main sponsor will be a Leather sponsor or product, with a variety of other sponsors (one mega site, a teen site, and maybe an adult toy store).

    One marketing option, I tend to see working well is the full-page ad vs. only banners. I, honestly, do not know whether it’s a quality issue, a larger ad or the surfer’s disgust with banner ads, but it works well in our market.

    One thing that experience has proven to me, it makes no difference whether you’re a webmaster to gay or straight traffic, you need to analyze your traffic. If you’re sending traffic out to sponsors and your not seeing the conversions, maybe you need to really look who your surfers are. If you’re lucky enough to know who your surfers are, then look for a specialty sponsor (whether partnership or click-thru program). It’s all a matter of finding the right sponsor programs and tweaking your site (and we all know how that can be). Don’t be afraid to experiment. It’s the long term that we need to be looking at. Remember that this isn’t “Who wants to be a Millionaire is 30 days or less”.

    Gay traffic isn’t difficult to manage as many people think. It’s a matter of patience and understanding your market. And the best way to understand that market, is to ask a successful webmaster in the gay adult market..

    Article written by Gary-Alan

  • Mirroring Adult Sites – Stage One.

    Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Promotion, Tutorials | Response: 0

    In this next series of tutorials I will be exploring the benefits of utilizing your existing content to build more sites in the least amount of time possible, in fact, after you have completed the steps in this tutorial series you should be able to build over 20 types of site within 5 minutes using a single set of 50 pictures.

    So, onto the start of our tutorial.

    Stage one in this tutorial is something we have ALL done before, so what you need to do is this…

    Build a 50 pic free site, this is using a lot more content than a ‘standard’ free site however, what we are actually going to be making is a set of AVS sites and several TGP galleries, along with some SE pages and also some links list mirrored pages using this set of 50 images by building just ONE site! Sounds impossible? It isn’t… read on….

    Your site should have the following on it:

    1) Warning Page (index.html)
    2) Menu Page (menu.html)
    3) Gallery Pages (5 galleries of ten pictures called gallery1.html, gallery2.html etc)
    4) HTML Large image pages x 50 (picpage1.html, picpage2.html, etc.)
    5) Multi Site FPA (fpa.html)

    Now lets break these individual pages down into sets of instructions for each:

    Warning Page.

    This should have your standard warning text placed on it, along with an enter AND an exit link. The ‘enter’ link should link to your Multi Site FPA and the ‘exit’ link should go to a program such as the ARS Discreet Browser tour page.

    Menu Page.

    This should be a page containing an odd sized banner, links to your 5 gallery pages, plus text links at the bottom of the page ideally, these text links should be in the same style as the niche tables we created for the surfer trap except they should only contain 4 cells instead of 8. These links should go to a different ‘niche’ as the one you are building your current site for and, link to the existing FPA’s of your surfer trap.

    Gallery Pages.

    On your gallery pages, ALL of the thumbnails should be linked to the relevant HTML page with a text link at the top and at the bottom of the HTML page (No Banners are to be used on the gallery pages!) Also, the file names of the images should be pic1.jpg, pic2.jpg, etc for the full sized images and, thumb1.jpg, thumb2.jpg etc for the thumb nailed images. your images MUST be named this way!!

    Multi Site FPA.

    This should link to the individual FPA’s that you should already have on your server if you followed the surfer trap tutorial series (If you did not create this surfer trap the tutorials can be found at this link) as well as linking to the Single Site FPA’s this should also have a ‘no thank you’ link which goes to your Menu Page.

    Images.

    You need to have 50 images, you also need to have 50 thumbnails for the content you will be using on this site. I usually select my content by the niche I am building for, rename the images using The Rename then, once renamed I use Thumbnailer from Smaller Animal to create the thumbnails for each of the renamed images. This will give you 50 full sized pictures with 50 thumbnails named respectively for the larger image.

    They are the basics, now onto the good stuff…

    Once you have created these pages you need to create some folders on your Hard Drive which will be the SAME structure you will have on your server. This folder structure should look somewhat like this once you have saved each of the pages we have just created into their respective sub folders:

    FreeSite/index.html
    FreeSite/AVS/
    FreeSite/FPA/fpa.html
    FreeSite/Galleries/gallery1.html, gallery2.html, gallery3.html, etc, etc.
    FreeSite/Images/pic1.jpg, etc.
    FreeSite/Images/Thumbs/thumb1.jpg, etc.
    FreeSite/LinkList/
    FreeSite/Menu/menu.html
    FreeSite/PicPage/picpage1.html, picpage2.html, etc.
    FreeSite/Recips/
    FreeSite/Engine/
    FreeSite/TGP/

    This will give you 5 folders with HTML pages in them, one folder with the full sized images, one with thumbnails in it and five empty folders.

    At this point we will end the first stage in this tutorial as this should take you a couple of hours to complete.

    Article written by Le

  • Search Engine Optimization, Is It Worth It?

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    One of the trendiest takes on Internet marketing these days seems to be the notion that securing top search engine rankings “no longer works.” Where it started, I have no idea.

    But rarely does a week go by when I don’t see one or more Internet marketing “experts” claiming that search engine positioning is largely a waste of time and should not be a primary focus of Website owners.

    Well, as the saying goes, “there are two sides to every story.”

    But let’s not make this article about my side, or your side, or anyone else’s side. Let’s forget about my opinion and other “expert’s” opinions and stick to the indisputable facts, as reported by highly credible third party sources:

    According to a Forrester Research Media Field Study, getting a loyal audience in the first place is best done by Search Engine Placement.

    According to a GVU Users Survey, 84.8% of Internet users use Search Engines to find Websites.

    In a study released by ActivMedia Research in September 1999, Search Engine Positioning was ranked as the #1 Website promotional method used by eCommerce sites.

    And look what I just found in the April 2000 issue of Target Marketing Magazine.
    “Top Ways Websites are Discovered”

    Banner ads: 1%

    Targeted email: 1.2%

    TV spots: 1.4%

    “By accident”: 2.1%

    Magazine ads: 4.4%

    Word-of-mouth: 20%

    Random Surfing: 20%

    Search Engines: 46%

    You’ve now seen the numbers and know that search engine promotion is very much alive and kicking. But let’s take this a step further. Let’s talk about the *quality* of prospects coming to your Website through search engines as opposed to other advertising mediums.

    Every time your potential customers use the search engines, they qualify themselves as *hot prospects* by conducting searches on keywords that are directly related to your product or service. Their choice of keywords is proof that they have a genuine interest in what you offer. These people spend their valuable time exploring the search engines for your type of product or service.

    Think About That.

    They didn’t stumble upon one of your ads, or wander past a hyperlink to your site. And they didn’t get a banner ad thrown in their face. They made the *decision* to actively search the keywords that brought them to YOUR Website. And when they get there, they are ready and willing to do business with you. At the very least, they’re seriously considering it and, that’s the most powerful sales tool you can have!

    But merely getting your Website “indexed” or listed in the search engines is not enough. In order to get any significant traffic from the search engines, your Website must be listed within the top 30 search results (preferably the top 20).

    Very rarely will anyone look beyond the first 30 results returned from a search. This makes perfect sense because the most relevant sites are always listed at the top. So if your prospect doesn’t find what they want within the first 20 to 30 listings, they’ll simply do a new search.

    If your site falls anywhere below the 30th listing, you don’t stand a chance against anyone in the TOP-20. Hence, it should be your goal to achieve Top 20 positions.

    How Do You Get Your Website Listed In The Top 20?

    1) You can attempt to gain these Top 20 rankings yourself. However, this can easily become a full time job. (I think this is why so many marketers advise against focusing on search engine positioning.)

    2) You can hire a reputable company who can achieve AND maintain your Top 20 rankings for you (be sure they guarantee their service and have several verifiable clients that currently have multiple Top 20 rankings).

    3) You can do nothing at all. But as you’ve seen from the third party statistics referenced above, search engine positioning is something you can’t afford to ignore.

    Whatever choice you make, I hope that your eyes have been opened to the tremendous profit potential that exists with top search engine placement.

    Article written by Lee

  • Saving Time Online – Shortcut Keys

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: General | Response: 0

    The one thing that i have started to do just lately is use shortcut keys. These are actually very easy to get used to and, will save you a lot of effort over a period of time.

    Below you will find a list of the more common shortcut keys in both Windows and Internet Explorer.

    Even if you get used to using one or two of these shortcut keys you will notice the time you start save over a week, hell, i don’t even type the whole domain into my IE address bar anymore!

    Here are the shortcuts for Windows along with the description of what they do:

    Alt + F – File menu options in current program.
    Alt + E – Edit options in current program
    F1 – Universal Help.
    Ctrl + A – Select all text.
    Ctrl + X – Cut selected item.
    Shift + Del – Cut selected item.
    Ctrl + C – Copy selected item.
    Ctrl + Ins – Copy selected item
    Ctrl + V – Paste
    Shift + Ins – Paste
    Home – Goes to beginning of current line.
    Ctrl + Home – Goes to beginning of document.
    End – Goes to end of current line.
    Ctrl + End – Goes to end of document.
    Shift + Home – Highlights from current position to beginning of line.
    Shift + End – Highlights from current position to end of line.
    Ctrl + Left – Moves one word to the left at a time.
    Ctrl + Right – Moves one word to the right at a time.
    Ctrl + Backspace – Delete word to the left of cursor.
    Ctrl + Del – Delete word to the right of cursor.
    Alt + Tab – Switch between open applications.
    Alt + Shift + Tab – Switch backwards between open applications.
    Ctrl + Esc – Bring Up start button.
    Alt + Esc – Switch Between open applications on taskbar.
    F2 – Renames selected Icon
    F3 – Starts find from desktop
    F4 – Opens the drive selection when browsing.
    F5 – Refresh Contents
    Alt + F4 – Closes Current open program.
    Ctrl + F4 – Closes Window in Program
    Alt + Enter – Opens properties window of Selected icon or program.
    Shift + F10 – Simulates right click on selected item.
    Shift + Del – Delete programs/files without throwing into the recycle bin.
    Holding Shift – Boot safe mode or by pass system files.
    Holding Shift – When putting in an audio cd will prevent CD Player from playing.

    The following list are shortcut keys when using Internet Explorer:

    Alt + Left – Back a page.
    Alt + Right – Forward a page.
    F5 – Refresh current page / frame.
    Esc – Stop page or download from loading.
    Ctrl + Enter – Quickly complete an address.
    Ctrl + N – Open New browser window.
    Ctrl + P – Print current page / frame.

    Hopefully this list of shortcut keys will get you saving some time even if its just a few minutes a day. After all, we all know the one thing webmasters need more of is time.

    Article written by Lee

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