AngleBracket

Analyzing Website Statistics

2008-09-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

I was looking through AngleBracket's visitor statistics and found some interesting things:

-The average visit length to Anglebracket was less than five seconds. Have to improve on getting people's attention.

-Google provides most of the hits to this blog. One more reason to polish up on your SEO so Google will rank your pages higher, by reading some of AngleBracket's SEO posts.

-91.96% of hits from search engines were from Google.

-Most visitors were from the U.S. Next was Finland. Very strange, I agree.

-More visitors came when AngleBracket was updated more.

-Firefox 2.0 was the prevalent browser. In second place was Firefox 3. In third place was IE7, and in fourth, Firefox 3.01. Firefox rules! (Actually, in fifth place was IE6)

-99.39% of visitors had screen resolutions higher than 1000xSomething.

And finally, some interesting search terms I noticed:

firefox friendly make you website

how to make a form where ppl enter stuff on a website
glossy.css,
ftplive safe

Awesome Free CSS Navigation Menu Software

2008-07-08T18:48:00.000-07:00

Creating beautiful, glossy CSS menu, both horizontal and vertical, has always been a pain. This free program changes that. Simply pick a style (out of the 60 built-in styles), enter you link information, and receive the code and images. CSS Tab Designer is lightweight and allows you to save and load projects, previewing them before you export.

And it's free. Get CSS Tab Designer. Or get it from Download.com here.

Seven things to look for in a web host

2008-05-24T09:21:00.000-07:00

1. Stability
Make sure your host makes a big deal of this. They should be boasting about their stability, praising the worthiness of their redundant servers, touting the dozens of (maybe that's an exaggeration) backup backbones--you get the point. If they aren't doing so, you can be pretty sure they haven't taken the necessary steps to ensure stability. A sure sign of an unreliable host: pages on their own site don't load, take too long to load, or sometimes load and sometimes don't.

2. Professionalism
The generic images of a server on a silver grey background give a bad impression. Unless you are looking at a free host (even then, try to avoid hosts that seem generic), never go with hosts that are generic or seem unprofessional. These are simply hosts that are meant to be bought out by other hosts. Hosts with "Under Construction" or any dead links are never be used. Keep your four ninety-five for a nice juicy hamburger instead.

3. A "logical" price
For example, $1.99 a year for an ASP Windows host probably shows that the host is just desperate for clients and doesn't provide good quality hosting. After all, if the host is good, why won't people all rush to get on the bandwagon? And if they are really a great host, how can they be so cheap?

Normal prices should range from $4.99 a month to $10.99 a month for basic plans.

4. Logical features
Unlimited bandwidth? Unlikely. If it's unlimited, how are they going to pay for the added costs? Unlimited storage? Impossible. Every host has physical servers, and there is absolutely no way the servers will have an unlimited amount of space available even if someone keeps uploading large files. What is more likely is a large amount of storage space, for example, 1000 Gigabytes of space. Many people hardly use 50% of their storage space, so the host ends up with a lot of extra server resources for others to use.

Look for at least five to ten times the amount of storage in the amount bandwidth they offer.

Also, do not underestimate how often you will need customer service, so make high quality customer service a prerequisite for your host.

5. Affiliate program
A sure sign of quality services, confidence in their own company, and a relatively long period of peace before another host will acquire that company. Web hosts with affiliate programs take a great risk: they give away hundreds of thousands dollar's worth of commission to affiliates--they must therefore both have a very good service and a lot of confidence in themselves in order to give away that money in advance.

6. Rave Reviews
Need I say more? Oh yes, I do have to say more. Websites with affiliate links to hosts tend to be biased.

7. Money back guarantee
Sometimes, even when you've taken all the precautions above, the host still turns out to be a sour lemon. Make sure they have an unconditional money back guarantee so that you can start all over again.

What to Learn: Coding, or Coding Software?

2008-02-24T21:14:00.000-08:00

The question always exists for novices: should I learn to do everything with code, or should I just create the site with an editor?

Some answer, "Use the editor: nothing can go wrong, and it's easier."

Really? Not really. The built-in inflexibility of webpage editors makes it ideal for small webpages, but impossible to use for slightly more complex sites.

Take this for an example. A friend was creating a website with Dreamweaver CS3, the newest stuff, only to have three PHP errors inside the code because DW didn't know the hierarchy of the files it was creating.

Adding three "../"'s fixed the problem.

Here's one thing to remember: If you learn to program in code, you will have no trouble using a WYSIWYG editor, but if you learn to go the (seemingly) easier way may produce more troubles than you desire.

PHP vs ASP??

2007-09-30T16:13:00.000-07:00

Yep, there have been many blog posts elsewhere about which one to use. And they all point to... PHP. I agree.

Point 1: You'll find that because PHP is open source, hosts that support PHP are cheaper. And with some hosts, ASP servers usually cost quite a bit more.

Point 2: On hotscripts.com, a website providing an innumerable number (not really) of scripts, there are more than four times as many PHP scripts as there are ASP ones.

If you are talking about functionality, basically anything that works in one language works in another; that is not to say that both are interchangeable, just that they both have equivalent functions.

For those that don't know what these languages are, they are server-side scripting languages that allow people to view pages (containing PHP/ASP and HTML) that have been processed in the server, then only the HTML part is sent to the browser. This makes the webpage much more useful, for simple applications

ExitExplosion.com | Get Free Traffic From Exit Traffic

2007-08-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

In the email used to promote this tool to me, the marketer described it as 'legally stealing,' which it is, in a way. The phrase 'legal stealing' has been used so much, it's long lost it's response.

All in all, Exit Explosion is a Javascript code and an account. That's it. When someone tries to move their mouse over the back button or to the location bar (address bar), an on-page pop-over pops up (forgive me).

The pop-up has the ads of other Exit Explosion webmasters, and their pop-ups have yours. They have a higher click through rate (they're REALLY eye-catching). They're non-intrusive.

Here's the down side: you get to show your ad once for every twice you show other people's ads. That sucks. But hey, it's free, what did you expect?

You've got traffic. Check it out. Grab the code.

12 Ways To Increase Sales

2007-08-14T14:40:00.000-07:00

If you're here at this blog, chances are, you have an online business. These strategies will assist your growing business.

1. Make your web site a resource center on a certain topic. Choose one subject and expand. You will get repeat visitors that are interested in that topic.

2. If you claim to have something free, make sure it's 100% free. If it's not, you will lose the confidence of your prospects.

3. Add a online chat or forum to your site.

5. Make sure your site looks good in all browsers, especially Firefox and IE. You could be losing sales because it looks distorted in some web browsers. Take into consideration that IE6 is still popular in some countries.

6. Invest a percentage of your profits into your business. Spend it on marketing, product improvement, customer service, advertising, etc.

7. Give your visitors a good time so they will visit your web site again. Use a few jokes or puns, and funny stories.

8. Build trust with your prospects by them teaching them something. Give them free ebooks, articles, tips, and the like.

9. Keep each page of your web site consistent or similar. Use similar text fonts, colors, graphics
and background on every page. This is also a good web design practice.

10. Create traffic generators that people can add to their site without doing all the work. It can be an article directory, freebie directory, web tool, etc.

11. Challenge your visitors to find fault with your product or service. People love challenges. Tell them if they can find a flaw you'll give them a refund.

12. Form alliances with other related but non-competing businesses. You'll be able to beat your competition by selling to a larger audience.

Top 17 Ways To Get Traffic - by Aurelius Tjin

2007-07-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a special report by Aurelius Tjin on 'laser-targeted' traffic. Download it here for free.

The key here is to actually implement these tips.
You have to put your tools to work.

YOUR Suggestions for AngleBracket!

2007-07-17T14:29:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since Anglebracket has been started, and most people enjoy the information in the blog. However, AngleBracket is not going to stop at simply the blog stage--it's going to go further.

Imagine a webmaster friendly website with a blog, webmaster articles, forums, and other details that will be disclosed later.

Are you a webmaster? What would YOU want in a webmaster resource site that NO other site has already done? What info do YOU seriously need and see lacking on the net? What format do you want it in?

Do AngleBracket a favor and LEAVE YOUR COMMENT below.

Thanks!

Lunarpages | Fantastic Paid Host

2007-07-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

Well, I have just finished a web site for a client of mine. I tried to look for a host that would meet his needs. (don't worry about my review being biased, because the affiliate commission is the same for both of the major hosts, bluehost.com and lunarpages.com) This was a painstaking process.

The technical details were reviewed again and again. At this point, Lunarpages and BlueHost were close, but BlueHost had a slight advantage because of it's 'Unlimited Domains' hosting offer.
Others' reviews of both hosts revealed that Bluehost's support was not very good. I checked out Lunarpages. The support was emailed three times just to see if they responded. They replied pretty quickly. Then I thought, maybe the amazing speed of their replies was because this was a sales representative, not a tech support representative.

Anyways, with time running short, I chose Lunarpages for my client. Shortly after the order was processed, I emailed their tech support with a domain name question. The reply came within half an hour. I thought, maybe the quick reply was due to the fact that the hosting plan came with a 30-day money back guarantee.

After 30 days, I emailed them again multiple times, with the replies coming in within an hour. I was completely satisfied with Lunarpages.

If after reading this rave review about Lunarpages, you feel like signing up for their one of their plans, go to their website at: Lunarpages.com

If you feel like supporting AngleBracket, then go ahead and sign up through my affiliate link (it makes no difference to you):
http://www.lunarpages.com/id/thatimayknowhim

SEO Knowledge 2

2007-06-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

The second in a series of SEO knowledge posts, this post is going to discuss reciprocal links.

What are they: You link to a site, and ask them to link back. If they do, these links are called reciprocal links.

Let's say that you are now reciprocal linking, hoping that because the site linking to you has a high PR, you will get a higher PR also. Used to be that way, but not anymore. PR is Google's measure of a pages importance, and hence the ranking of a page in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Thus, beside that fact that the links might bring some visitors from that site, your reciprocal link will not do you much good in terms of higher PR

However MSN and Yahoo! Search still count reciprocal links as 'backlinks,' and thus reciprocal links are still effective in raising your rank in those two SEs.

Remember, the most effective PageRank-and-SERP-rank-raiser is still the one-way link to your site, from a high PR site.

SEO Knowledge 1

2007-06-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

This is the first post of what will be a series of Posts on general SEO knowledge.

If you haven't already read the first post on basic SEO, read it now.

Here are a few things every SEO should know:

Google does not like duplicate content. Do not copy other's articles, or content, because that will not help your ranking at all. Google actually knows which website had the content first, so they won't rank that one down.
The text on links have less effect on what the page ranks well for, after some people created thousands of links to President Bush's website with 'miserable failure' as the link text, and when one searched for the string 'miserable failure,' his website would come up.
Write naturally. SE's like naturally styled content, not keyword stuffed trash.
Avoid buying links. Google does not like them and might penalize your site.

That's all for now. Check back later for more tips!

Useful Firefox Add-ons

2007-05-28T01:49:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of some very useful addons for FireFox (get it free here), listed in order of usefulness:

SEOQuake - View the Google PR, Alexa Rank in this bar; the number of pages of this website that are indexed in Google, MSN and Yahoo are shown all at once.
Cooliris - Preview another page from any page.
AngleBracket - Get notified of new AngleBracket posts and breaking news from around the world, includes webmaster links. Customizable to include weather forecast, email notification, gadgets, and more
Google NoteBook extension - Take notes to your Google NoteBook from any page.
Measureit! - useful for measuring your screen in pixels
IE Tab - View webpages with MSIE that is embedded in Firefox. Very useful for checking if pages work in both browsers
FireBug - Error console with editing and debugging abilities
ColorZilla - Advanced color picker letting you revealing the color code for the any element on the screen

firefox extensions

On PLR And Recycled Content

2007-05-21T21:45:00.000-07:00

As Private Label Rights become increasingly popular due to their completely editable and resellable nature, what should webmasters and internet marketers take note of when gathering content for their websites?

Content, is king. This is true when applied to search engines and most importantly, your visitors. For an internet marketer who regularly provides helpful tips through email to his subscribers, he is pressed for information to provide to his prospects -- and turns to PLR content, which is often already 'recycled' two or three times before landing in the hands of the marketer, who then condenses it and presents it to his subscribers. But they have seen it before, somewhere, from someone else.

That's the case with PLR editing, what I call recycling.

But here's another thing about information compiling -- some people will say compilations are now original content; but more often than not, people have already seen this information before -- from different sources, just that now, the information is put together.

In both the website content and the email examples, your customer will slowly get tired of your 'original' information that he has seen somewhere else, and eventually unsubscribe, or in the website content example, he would forget about the website and never come back again.

If you have no original stuff, have none at all. It is a waste of your and others' time. Be creative, original, and informative. PLR should be your last choice for content.

Article Writing: Road to PageRank

2007-05-19T19:05:00.000-07:00

Many people know of numerous ways to increase their PageRank, but ironically, because there are so many ways to do this, most don't know where to start. Of all the methods I've tried before to increase my PageRank, the most effective and least time-consuming method is - Writing articles. It is by far the most powerful PageRank increaser.

My PageRank jumped from zero to one in a week, and to two in three weeks. Before I had started writing articles, I had mostly said to myself something like, "Yeah, yeah, when I get more knowledge about the topic, I will write articles."

But eventually, still without a lot of knowledge, I tried writing articles. There was a month in which I didn't check the PageRank, because the Google Toolbar wasn't installed on that machine. One day, I used one of the online PR checkers and found out that there was PR2 on my website! I was shocked at the effectiveness of article writing.

For those who aren't familiar with the whole business of article writing, here's a short explanation: first, you write an article, then submit it to an article directory, such as ezinearticles.com (do a quick search on Google for 'article directory'); next, someone who has a website takes the article and puts it on his/her website as content -- but with your resource box. As more and more websites put the article on their sites, you now have hundreds of one-way backlinks to your site!

Writing an article about something you are interested about is the best. Keep the article between 300 and 500 words. And the critical part is to create an interesting 'resource box,' a box with a link back to your website.

Many people don't write articles because they don't realize how much they have underestimated it's power.

Here are a few tips for writing articles:

- Don't put many links to other sites in your articles. This increases the PageRank 'value' of each link on the page, including the resource box link to your own site.
- Make the article interesting. Website owners won't put the article on their site if they think the article is boring.

Try to realize that writing articles is a kind of 'investment' on backlinks to your website, then start writing your articles.

Splash page tricks

2007-04-06T04:37:00.001-07:00

Here's another use of forms: many internet marketers use 'splash pages,' pages with a two-field form for signing up for their '$199 Value Internet Marketing Course. Sign Up Now!' newsletter. People who have become savvy in the internet marketing field will simply avoid all these splash pages, knowing that people are trying to get their email to sell them things. Making the visitor comfortable with sending you your info is the key to more sign-ups.

Make your splash page 97% free of things you would see in other splash pages. Make your form and copy short. Make sure you don't use 'conversion-pulling, action-packed' words in your copy. People who've become acquainted with these words simply ignore these words and the page.

Remember that a funny headline, a comical graphics work to bring more opt-ins! If they feel that you are not some professional web copywriter trying to sell them the latest great e-book, your will nearly double your chances of generating a productive lead!

I remember that I saw a GREAT funny opt-in page with a few icebreakers:

The website says you can double your income in a month? Billy G. and Warren B. can't and neither can you!!
How many hours did he spend before So-and-So Internet marketing guru could make money lying on his bed?

And so on. These help build trust with your potential subscriber. So basically, short or almost no copy, no over-used industry terms (that's no hype), no powerful words, lots of humor, and make the page short. Now, double your subscribers by next next next Monday. Have fun.

Website Form User-Friendliness

2007-04-02T06:14:00.000-07:00

Here are some tips on form user-friendliness. A good rule of thumb is to ask, 'Will this form be inviting people to fill it in?' This article has a few examples of making your forms friendlier.

Website forms can be convenient, but are also intimidating. A form should be as helpful as possible - try to clearly identify all your fields, so that all people, from 'dummy' to geek, can easily see specifically what the field is for.

Text labels can be a great help when filling out forms. Try to direct the user to the field you want them to fill in. A subject field in a comments form can be used to nudge the user to help them say what they want to say. Of course, there would be more than five, but keep it to less than seven.

Details for what is to be filled into the form can be placed inside the text field, like the AngleBracket Newsletter signup form to your right. This is a real space-saver, whether you're tight on it or not.

A helpful form element utilizes Javascript to guide the visitor in entering their information. Try clicking inside the text input field to your right, then clicking out of it:

About the OnFocus event handler: when the user focuses (puts his/her cursor) inside the box, it turns the text into ' ' and when the user clicks out (onBlur), then it turns ' ' into 'enter email address.'

Another type of form is a website opinion poll. Many webmasters have four to five fields: name, email, 'do you like [website name]?,' and a huge scary 'comments' textarea. Here's one thing to remember: textareas are scary. If you can, try to avoid using textareas and use checkboxes, radio buttons, and <select>ion boxes (see the pic).

A great way to avoid the textareas would be to replace them with radio 'rate this feature' buttons, or just a yes/no qeustion, 'Do you like this feature?'

Last, but not least, one important factor that influences the friendliness of a form is color. White seems very cold for an inviting form (sadly it's the default color). Inserting this code into your <input> fields can brighten the field and make it friendly:

<input type="text" maxlength="10" name="name" style="background-color: #ffffcc;">

Here's the conclusion to everything above: a good form will have the visitor fill it in without hassle or hesitation. They will feel at ease filling in the form. Keep this in mind when looking out for more ways to make your forms more user-friendly.

SEO Basics | Finding Keywords for Your Title

2007-03-31T01:33:00.000-07:00

The title of a page may be the single most important onpage factor that can boost your search engine rankings. When you make your webpages, make sure to include your keywords in your title. This is a must. If you don't know what you want to be ranked highly for, you won't rank highly at all.

I had seen more than fifty times "research your keywords" but have never payed attention -- until I Googled 'AngleBracket.' AngleBracket is a relatively new site, so I had expected it to be far behind in the results. But no -- this site was ranked number one -- even though it has a Pagerank of zero. The reasons? AngleBracket is in the title, and the term 'AngleBracket' has virtually no competetion.

The trick here is to come up with a bunch of keywords that will attract a small amount of visitors each, but combined, will provide a steady source of visitors.
Here's how to come up with keyword (about your page) specific enough for the SEs to rank you relatively higher. If you were looking for the kind of information that's on your page, what phrases or terms would you look for?

If you have now come up with some keywords, (in this example) "website tips," "website SEO," and "website design," and you put something like

"ABC.com | Website tips, Website SEO, and Website Design"

in your title, this not only looks unprofessional, but also, there are three unnecessary words. In this case, our keywords should be condensed to "website tips, SEO, and design."

"ABC.com | Website Tips, SEO, and Design"

The more unnecessary words there are in a title, the less 'value' each word get, therefore lowering your ranking for the more important keywords, and giving you 'useless' ranking for a way-too-general term 'website.'

This is just a tip on how to optimize your site. Make sure you do not overload your site with keywords. This is considered 'keyword spamming'; the search engines can detect it, and will actually rank your site lower... so here's one good rule of thumb for on-page optimization:

Make pages for visitors, not search engines

That way, you will keep your site natural, search engines like you, and of course, your visitors do too.

Creating the User-Friendly Website

2007-03-15T08:07:00.000-07:00

A site with lots of CPM ads covering the face of the website means it is a high-traffic site, but what do those ads say about your website? You care more about 'revenue' than about aesthetics.

A site with lots of 'helpful' links and banners, scrolling marquees, blinking text (that works only in FF), and fancy logos and backgrounds: what do these tell about your site? You're a novice. Those add-ons don't necessarily equate with un-user-friendly; they're usually signs of web novices who don't have content for their website. When you have real content, you won't have room for those add-ons.

There are uncountable gazillions of websites on the net, with reports popping up all over say that there are thousands of new websites every day. Which of those are considered user-friendly?

Here are a few guidelines to give you an idea of what a user-friendly website should have:

Keep every site within one to two clicks from your home page. Not only does this make it easier to navigate, it lets the search engines index your site more easily.
Create a contact page with FAQs instead of giving out your email address or creating a mailto link.
Keep the page clear of leaks. A leak is something that distracts the visitor from what you want to achieve. If you want to capture the visitor's email address, you wouldn't put ads on the page, or the like. If your site is about, say, basketball, you wouldn't put an affiliate link to DreamHost just because it'll bring you money.
Make a sitemap for your website. Even if you have search on your website, you would want to make a sitemap for two reasons: 1. Sometimes people are simply 'surfing,' and not looking for anything specifically. A link to the sitemap from the website's home page would tell them what you have on your site. 2. The search engines find it easier to find and index your pages when you have a sitemap.
Keep the navigation in one place, i.e. don't put some navigation menus here, and some there. It's okay to have some 'featured' content like Yahoo does, because the featured content is not hard to find. The thing is, if you have some menus here and some there, the page looks very disorderly.
Align your page elements. I have seen pages with huge gaps on one side of the two column layout because there wasn't enough content. See, that's the problem when you have an inflexible template: it doesn't expand and shrink to fit your content. When you have such a template, make sure you add something to, uh, fill the gap.
Here's the rule to making the user-friendly website:

DON'T MAKE ME THINK! (Sorry Steve Krug.)

Yeah, that's the name of a great thin book that talks about web design. The book's central theme is don't make your visitors think. Don't make them look for what they need. Put the most important info where they would see it first.

Make it easy for your visitors to get around in your site, to use the features on your site. That's user-friendly.

Search AngleBracket

2007-03-10T22:10:00.000-08:00

10 Free Ways To Get More Visitors

2007-03-05T22:38:00.000-08:00

Here are 10 ways either to increase or get free traffic.
With these methods, you don't even have to be listed in the search engines!

NOTE: As with any and all things, do not SPAM any service. Even if the Web 2 sites have no strict Terms of use, don't take advantage; all websites are made so that their visitors will benefit. If people do things that are not good for their user's experience, they will eventually ban the activity. What would you do if you had a website and hundreds, if not thousands of webmasters are taking advantage and using your site as a free classified ads section? You get the point.

Using Forums

1. Write helpful answers in forums and use your website as your signature. Better yet, write the helpful answer in your website, mention a little bit about the answer, and link to it from the post. This is guaranteed to bring traffic.

Using Yahoo!'s Free Services

Yahoo! actually provides two extremely good sources of traffic: Yahoo! Answers, and Yahoo! Groups.

2. First of all, let's talk about Yahoo! Answers. Many of you are familiar with the service: it is an extremely high traffic 'forum' with just about any topic. Find the topic your site is about, write a nice answer, and say on the bottom 'Check out my site, it's got lots more helpful things in it. It's http://www.yoursitehere.com' or something similar.

3. Y! Groups is also a great way of getting the word out and also helping people. Find a group about your subject and join. When someone asks something, jump at it and quickly reply (with your website as the footer, or again, tell them the answer is on abcfg.com).

Using Free 'Viral' Advertising

4. Submit your site to LinkReferral. This is a program that does not rely on 'credits' or 'points' to show your site: this is the good part, because this means you will never 'get off the list.' Here's how it works: you visit others' sites for 'ranking' in their directory. When you review sites, your reviews will be reviewed by moderators. The better your reviews are, the higher you''l get ranked. This programs is one of the few out there that actually work for me. Join here.

5. InstantBuzz is a free ad program that utilizes a toolbar that sits on your browser to earn you credits . The credits are used as money to advertise your site (as of right now, 1 credit equals one impression).
Tip for those of you who use InstantBuzz - A report I read shows that if you advertise on Thursdays, your CTR will be highest, on Friday, the conversion rate will be highest, and ads shown on Tuesday and Wednesday have the worst percentage of clicks and conversions.
Here is the code for 100000 free credits: 167829. Click the InstantBuzz icon on the IB toolbar, and select Member's Area. Click Your Ads, then click PowerPack, enter the code, then click redeem.

6. TrafficSwarm is another viral program. You can read about it in this post

Using Web 2.0 to Promote Your Website

Web 2 is powerful. You may have used it without knowing-- del.icio.us, Digg, MySpace, and YouTube are all 'Web 2.0'. User-powered content, that is. You can use this effectively to promote your website.

7. Write a little about yourself and your website on MySpace. Include a link to your website.

8. YouTube, recently acquired by Google, generates a ton of traffic every day. In the video description, include a link to your website by typing your URL along with the http://www. into the description.
Creating a video isn't as hard as you think-- just take some videos that relate to your topic (e.g. sports sites, sports videos; money-making sites, video tutorials). Camstudio is a free software to record whats happening on you screen, and you can input audio from your microphone or your speakers.

9. Get a Squidoo Lens. A Lens is a page that lets you put content from your RSS, text, and links, and other 'modules' onto it. Another benefit of Squidoo is that it has built-in Adsense, and you can earn money from it!

10. Track your results. This really isn't another way to get more traffic, but can help you as much as the ones above. Find out which program works best for you. You can choose to use StatCounter.com to check your stats and also use multiple 'landing pages' to check where the visitors come from. Then you can focus your energy and time into that effort. For example, I would create a page called ib.html for InstantBuzz, and in IB, I would point my ad to that site. On ib.html, I would put the StatCounter and also put a Javascript redirect to my index.html. Then I would do the same for TrafficSwarm, Squidoo, and each individual forum.

Implement these free ways to get more visitors. They will NEVER work if you never use them. Don't say 'I'll use them later' either. Use them NOW.

Website Magazine | The print magazine for webmasters

2007-03-01T23:20:00.000-08:00

This magazine has been running for a few years now; it's called Website Magazine. Topics include SEO, search engine marketing, web development, general Webmastery, and more! It has two versions, print and digital, and both are free if you are in the United States. Check it out now>>

They also have an affiliate program that lets you earn money for letting people know about this great magazine! Visit their site

SEO Tips / High-Pagerank Web Directories

2007-02-26T05:40:00.000-08:00

Here's a note on just which sites to get links from.
Google ranks pages by the quality of the sites which link to yours,
by the quality of the sites you link to, and the PageRank of the two types of sites above.

By this, I mean that if you get a link from, say, Yahoo!, your PR will leap up, because Yahoo! has a PR of 9.

So, the conclusion is??

Submit your site to high PageRank directories, and never, never,
link to websites of bad quality. By bad quality, I mean sites with no real content (Just ads), and banned sites.

You can tell which are high PR and which are banned by looking in the Google Toolbar. White means PR 0, while all green means PR 10,
the best. Grey means that the site is banned.

The Google Toolbar can be downloaded with Firefox to the right or on the bottom of this page.

On to something else----
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Here are examples of good directories:

Getting a link from these directories like these not only sends more
visitors to your site, but also increases your PageRank.