Not Asking For Comments

Bloggers always agonize over the lack of comments. But the problem is not that people don’t read the blog or don’t want to comment but the blogger hasn’t given the opportunity for readers to comment. Just like asking for people to order a product, you’ve got to coax people to spend their 3 or 4 precious minutes to comment on your blog. Ask for opinions. People love giving it. Ask for reader’s experiences, input or help to accomplish something. Ask people to suggest something to you e.g. You’re getting incorporated, ask people for suggestions, tips and recommendations. Asking also tells people you’re open to suggestions and alternative views, further improving the image people may have of you.

Not Hosting On Their Own Domain

Give thought into your blog. Don’t just jump on the bandwagon. You need to figure out where it’s taking you before you hop on for the ride. Like any web site you may build, think of your blog as a long term marketing communication channel. A Blogspot or Typepad URL is not only unprofessional, you don’t own it. Nothing against these blogging services; they’re excellent tools but for long term marketing purposes, go for your own domain.

This way you control where you want to publish the blog to. Tomorrow, if you outgrow these services, you can easily export your blog to another tool, another host without losing too much established traffic. A domain is also easier for people to remember and easier for you to publicize.

Not Maximizing Their Blog Content

Many businesses quit blogging because they feel it’s too much work. True, like everything else, you gotta work on a blog but you don’t have to break your back over it. Sometimes you may have a paragraph here and there about a topic that just isn’t big enough for an article. You know what? You’re going to have many more of these impromptu thoughts and ideas publish it to your blog. Later, you can come back and gather these paragraphs, compile them into a complete article or even a book.

That’s only one way of maximizing your work. Have you written articles in the past? How about e-courses, audio transcripts or books that aren’t in publication anymore? Recycle. Break them up and post them on your blog. In fact, if you have lot’s of this type of content, you can even get your assistant to post them for you.

Publishing Too Often

I know what you’re thinking. This sounds like complete the opposite of everything you’ve ever learnt about blogging. Truth is, the blogging world changes. What works yesterday may not today. This is one of them. There are countless blogs already jostling with you for your reader’s time. More are being started by the day.

Who has the time to read so many blogs? It’s come to a point people are forced to cherry pick the blogs they read. Even when they do read yours, you’re not safe yet. If they can’t keep up with your blogging pace, they’ll drop you no matter how good your information is. Keep a balance. Feed information to your readers not dump a truckload on them. Every market is different. Some can tolerate higher number of posts a week, some can’t. You should know your market and test accordingly.

Falling For Short Term Methods

Ah, this is my favorite. If you can have a favorite pet peeve that is. Every week, you hear about people dishing out the newest, coolest blogging tactic, best blogging tool that’s sure to sky rocket your business to success or bull doze your way to the top search engine listings. Consider how any offer will help you advance your business two, five or tens years from now. Is it really in line with your marketing direction? If it isn’t drop it. It also helps a lot if you can have a reliable source whom you can consult and help put things into perspective for you. One of the most powerful qualities of a blog has nothing to do with search engines, tagging or pinging. These things do have a place, but they aren’t as powerful as the relationship opportunities between you and your customers.

Although these mistakes are common, they are also very easily rectified and don’t cost much money. All of these suggestions are born out of my own trial and error and they’ve worked out nicely. Try it yourself.

5 Common Blogging Mistakes is a post from: Free Bahais Web Hosting And SEO Tips

Quick online payday loans can be received from the banking establishment, although they may not really be as fast as different other options. Money leaders will want a proof of sure income during the past 3 months in the least, a testing financial credit, and observance with the least amount age conditions. Rapid payday loans are also a bit more complex to obtain from banking organization as the volume is rather small. The aim of the bank agent is to talk you into certain other offers and plastic cards that will have to be paid on prolonged base, and not something short termed that you will repay in full within your next wage.

The inhabitant might obtain payday loans from a quantity of different places, although definite organizations and processing times will certainly be a lot quicker than others. You are able to go to a local hockshop, look on line through a quantity of payday loan proposals or go to the banking institution to get the loan. The quickest mean of obtaining your emergency money is to log on line application and receive the money within minutes. But ultimately the resolution is yours and it is going to depend on your individual attitude and the type of funds emergency you are now experiencing.

The ease of the online questionnaire is satisfying and you may comprehend the procedure of payday loans rather quickly. You can choose a creditor, fill in the form and wait for approval. You are not going to wait long until you can actually hold your wherewithal and use it where necessary; be positive, the money will be sent as fast as it can be. Thus you may estimate this way of getting the payday loans to be the quickest and most appropriate.

Where Can People Address to Have Rapid Payday Loan? is a post from: Free Bahais Web Hosting And SEO Tips

Start a Community of Websites
One of the easiest ways to gain backlinks is to start other websites and have them linked to yours. Blogs are a great way to get traffic because theres no cost, they provide free traffic, and are easily searchable throughout the blogging community. Ive seen other various websites that target a younger audience even using myspace as a source of traffic and backlinks. And the list goes on and on for other quick sites you can start with a good amount of traffic.

Email Campaigns
Some people are hesitant to do this because they think no one would ever go to their site if the email even gets opened, or they have no idea who to email a promotion letter to. While the person who doesnt have an idea of his audience can easily fix this problem, Id say for every website that has updated content that isnt gibberish, somebody has to like it and for every email sent out, there is probably at least 10% that the email gets opened if you target your audience precisely. Give yourself some confidence, and keep in mind that none of these techniques would get your website blacklisted or has any risk to it, except for wasting your time. But if you have the time to waste, research on who your audience is, get a list of emails of your audience and compile it in an excel sheet, and start your email campaigns. One person that I work with has a job site, which gets employers and job seekers together. Well all job sites needed jobs, so he started emailing to a number of colleges and got links for Rutgers, Harvard, and other colleges across the nation. Doing this boosted his Google rankings from 2/10 to 6/10. Just keep in mind that 1 email will not do the trick. You need to keep emailing the people in your excel sheet, but change the content of the email each time you do so.

Unless you dont a good amount of time to spend on getting backlinks, I wouldnt worry about how well your methods are working. Most of the techniques listed above as well as others you might think of should give you some increase in traffic that would last a very long time, as well as boosting your search engine rankings. These things suck up a lot of time, but the rewards can be high.

Backlinks, Anyone? is a post from: Free Bahais Web Hosting And SEO Tips

According to Internet expert Sydney Johnston, of http://Auction-Genius-Course.com, The great thing about a feed is everybody wins. The article writer gains exposure, the reader learns about something valuable or interesting, and the online seller gets an endless source of pertinent content for their web site.

What Can a Feed Do for My Online Business?
Feeds are useful in a number of different ways:

They Eliminate Spam Filters.
Theyre 100% opt-in, so readers can subscribe and unsubscribe at will. Feeds are delivered directly to your subscribers, so you dont have to contend with filters knocking you out of your customers’ inboxes.

They Provide Free Content.
One of the best ways to differentiate your site is with quality content. Supply readers with interesting material; educate them on topics relating to the product youre selling. If you sell preschool toys, you may not want to study child development and write numerous articles on the subject so find someone else whos already done that and make their feed available to your customers. The constantly updating, applicable subject matter gives your visitors a reason to come back again and again.

They Can Improve Your Search Engine Rankings.
In the past, search engines were unable to read feeds, but software is now available to translate them into live links the engines can see (check out http://CyberWS.com). Search engines love fresh, dynamic content, so feeds are ideal. They provide relevant information that updates automatically. Not only do your customers get the facts theyre looking for, but the search engines like your site and give it better positioning.

For Affiliate Marketers, Theyre an Alternative to Banners.
You not only give your customer valuable knowledge, but if they click through and purchase something, you get credit. And unlike with banners, you dont look like youre putting up junk ads or spam.

They Can Increase Your Traffic.
Anything you write, you should make available as a feed. When other sites pick it up, its free advertising for you. All their traffic is able to click through the feed to your site, so you gain new potential customers you wouldnt have otherwise.

Feeds on any subject are easy to find. Theres a whole collection of search engines created just for feeds, like http://Plazoo.com and http://Feedster.com. Says Johnston, The future of the Internet for entrepreneurs is feeds. If people dont master them, theyre going to get left behind. Period.

5 Benefits Of Using Feeds – How Feeds Can Help Your E-Biz is a post from: Free Bahais Web Hosting And SEO Tips

Defining technically backlinks are the inbound links on the website. They are the links placed on other webpages and are directed towards your website, these are also known as incoming links, inlinks, and inward links. Quality inbound links add weight to the website popularity and search engine ranking. 95% of SEO focus today revolves around quality backlinking.

There are a number of ways to build quality and effective backlinks for your website. Submitting your site to directories, article sites, Online Press Releases, placing signature links in the forums, leaving comments on the blogs etc. are some easiest methods for inbound linking. You can use reciprocal link exchange program with quality websites to get related with them.

Importance of backlinking for the SEO game can be discussed under following points:

Quality backlinks attracts search engines to find your website. Here, quality of the links dominates over the no. of links directed towards your website. Important thing to be noticed is, a web site linked to you having content relevant to your website will perform better than the website having content unrelated to your website.
Backlinking is a part of the entire ranking algorithm process for all the search engines. If two sites are similar in content and design, search engines have a tendency to prefer site having more inbound links but again quality links dominate. Linking with a bad site will cause a drop off for your websites on the search engines.
Quality backlinks drive not only search engines but are a crucial factor to attract the web users towards your website.
Backlinks helps to point towards your site. Backlinks found on forums, blogs and other sites across the internet boost up your website popularity.
In todays PR obsessed internet world inbound links are an effective tool to gain better Google PR. Google always consider number of inbound links while raking the websites.
Not only Google but all the biggies like Yahoo and MSN now use link popularity and link anchor text as the most important factors in determining their rankings.
Linking to the relevant and standard websites enhance your credibility in the World Wide Web.

You can increase your website PR and web traffic through the inbound linking with trusted resources. Add some quality links to your website and see your web business rocking.

Backlinking plays a vital role in SEO and also termed as backbone of the website. is a post from: Free Bahais Web Hosting And SEO Tips

Worthy content

The first thing you want to consider is if your content is worth the time for millions of people to read. Make sure that the content you present is clear and precise. Having content that is new and presents fresh ideas is far better than any internet marketing strategies. You want to give readers information they have not seen before and change the way they view things.

Original content

A majority of the content on the web is the same from website to website. If you truly want to set yourself apart from others and generate higher website traffic, give the readers something they havent read before. Presenting fresh content to the public is guaranteed to get them coming back. Once they read one post of yours that is new and intriguing, they will be more inclined to come back to see what you have to say the next week.

Treat visitors as human beings

Remember that your content is being read by real human beings. Developing a personal relationship means that you genuinely want to help every one of your readers and watch them succeed. Website marketing and other strategies to increase website traffic tend to be based towards computer numbers. If you can look past the fact that youre writing and posting on a computer and see that you are changing and affecting the lives of millions around the world, this will set you apart from others.

Link Exchange

Link exchange is one of the most effective internet marketing strategies to generate more website traffic. This consists of you joining a link exchange program and surfing other peoples sites. As you arrange to exchange links with other companies, usually ones that are pursuing the same target audience, you can get your link posted on other peoples websites. This will get your website link on the web more, thus enhancing the chances of people seeing your link and clicking on it.

E-mail and signatures

Using the e-mail is a great way to generate higher website traffic in a couple different ways. Sending out e-mail newsletters to your targeted customers is very effective. Be short but concise when sending this out so that readers are not bombarded with information but get the gist of it. At the bottom of every e-mail you send, set up a signature file. This feature allows you to type in a brief message and statement to add to the bottom of every e-mail message.

There are hundreds of methods you can use to generate higher website traffic. In the end, having a personal contact with readers and making them worthwhile will help build a relationship and in turn drive your traffic up.

5 Aspects To Help Increase Your Website Traffic is a post from: Free Bahais Web Hosting And SEO Tips

The 1990s
Alan Emtage, a student at the University of McGill, created the first search program in 1990 called Archie (still in use today), to archive Web documents. The following year, Gopher started at the University of Minnesota, and this is when the concept of search engines began. In 1993, Matthew Gray created the World Wide Web Wanderer, the earliest known search engine robot that assists with ranking Web sites. But search engines as we use them today were born in 1994. In that same year, Galaxy, Lycos and Yahoo! were all started, two of which are still widely popular search engines today.

Yahoo! was among the first to implement SEO techniques, even though at the time they were unaware of the potential growth the industry would soon have at the turn of the century. Yahoo! Founders David Filo and Jerry Yang were trying to get their site seen by others on the Internet by giving it more exposure. Some excellent structure and tricky hand-coding, their site became more available for new visitors. They were not questioned about ethical business practices because nobody was sure what was considered ethical or unethical there were simply no standards in place yet.

As the initial search engines were cataloging the early Internet, many business owners soon learned to appreciate the value of their Web site being listed in the search engines, as they first saw increases in visitors to their Web sites. They began submitting their URLs on a continuous basis, and changed their sites to support the needs of search engine robots. SEO companies started showing up, when they began experimenting with the concept of search engine optimization, with the emphasis initially on the submission process alone. Soon afterwards, the first automatic submission software was released, and it was then the notion of Spam came into existence.

The 2000s
SEO professionals have been seen in a negative light over the last five years, due in part because in early 2001, enthusiastic webmasters quickly realized they could overwhelm search engine result pages by over submitting Web sites. Unfortunately, as the Internet industry developed, search engines quickly became cautious of new SEO companies attempting to generate visitors for their clients at any cost, however unfair or unethical. Tactics such as keyword spamming, doorway pages, cloaking, and hidden white text placed on white backgrounds proved too much for the search engines to tolerate. As a result, the search engines replied with numerous countermeasures, created to filter out any techniques considered spam. That is good news, although it forced ethical SEO companies to start using more subtle techniques to assist their clients Web sites with obtaining rankings in the engines.

The big 3 search engines, Google, MSN and Yahoo!, have recently come to the realization that SEO as an industry is here to stay, and to maintain effective results, they needed to accept the industry, even embrace it, and engines eventually partnered with successful, ethical SEO companies to establish typical standards for fair and ethical optimization. This is important to help keep information relevant and beneficial to visitors while still being unbiased to people who create the content on their Web sites.

The Current State of SEO
Today, there are major differences in how search engines work and how to get ranked in them. With the assistance of proper search engine optimization, Web sites can now have a equal fighting chance of obtaining high rankings. Because SEO is a highly specialized trade that requires both technical skills and business marketing knowledge, it is only through the combination of these two skills that one can properly implement SEO techniques to obtain high search engine rankings. Many SEO specialists have since now realized it is search engines or bust.

Back in Time to the Advent of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a post from: Free Bahais Web Hosting And SEO Tips

If you operate a retail store, you have less than one month to make a big success of this holiday season.

I’m sure you know how to run your store but Id like to give you some tips to contribute to your success.

1. Few stores have enough staff working the floor. Schedule more staff than you need to work the registers and stock the floor. It’s stupid to operate with only sufficient staff to ring up sales. The goal isnt to get the customers out the door as quickly as possible. Shoppers at this time of year have no idea what they want and are highly suggestible. You should schedule enough staff to keep the lines short at the cash registers and have sales people circulating the store suggesting items to customers. The goal is to sell as much as possible. If everyone is ringing up sales, no one is selling. Adding staff to work with customers will produce more sales. Retail help is CHEAP. A floor person can generate at least $100 per hour. Don’t be cheap, be smart.

2. Train your people. Retailers make the mistake of treating the holiday season as a “busy” time. It’s not just a busy time. The rules of engagement are completely different in November and December than they are for a busy Saturday in August. First of all, people are not buying for themselves at this time of year as they are during most of the year. This changes the whole shopping dynamic because people know what they like for themselves but find it much harder to choose something for someone else. The customers need more assurance. They want to know that their selections are good ones.

Teach your staff to help people shop for other people. NEVER ask, “can I help you?” Try this, “Hi, may I ask who are you shopping for? I might be able to suggest something great.” Do you want to knock your customers over with great service? Ask them “Is there anything I can do to make your shopping easier?”

Another big difference about this time of year is men will be shopping in stores or departments where they do not normally shop. Help them. Men are looking for a way to buy their way out of the season. Theres an old expression in retail that says women browse for a pair of pants and men hunt down a pair of pants.

Lastly, budgets mean nothing in December. People who had carefully planned to spend $50 on mom will spend $100 to get mom checked off their list.

3. Keep the goods on the sales floor, not in the back room. The stores shelves must be full. When the amount of goods on the shelves begins to thin, the available selection looks picked over. That’s another reason to keep plenty of staff working. Small stores tend to stock and organize when things slow down. That’s the Sears way of doing things. You want your store as nice and full as possible when the most people are shopping in your store. As obvious as that sounds, you’ll seldom see it in practice. As soon as things slow down, around 9:00 p.m., everyone is folding sweaters and bringing out goods. Dont bring carts on the floor during the busy time. But you can bring out goods in a constant flow of small boxes. When you bring a box out, watch the crowd flock to it.

4. Shock your customers with service. Offer to carry bags to their car. Offer separate receipts for each item. Sure, that’s a pain for you but it’s a wonderful service for the customer. Have envelopes handy and offer to put receipts in envelopes. You could run off some nice stickers for the envelopes saying something like, “gift receipts from Mandy’s Boutique”.

Get a pile of $5 cards from the food court or a near by coffee shop. You can probably get a big discount from your own food court vendors. If a customer spends over a certain amount, give them a card and tell them to take a break on you. Don’t advertise this. Just do it. Building goodwill through service is a lot cheaper than marking everything down 3 weeks before Christmas. Make it so fun to shop in your store your customers will tell their friends about you. Sell everything and you wont have to take mark downs.

5. Offer gift boxes before the customer reaches the register. Show them a particular item in a box. You are selling convenience. Customers see your wonderful staff doing half of the project of wrapping their purchases. Thats much better than asking customers if they want some boxes at check-time and then just putting flat cardboard in their bags.

If you don’t have gift boxes, go get them, dummy! ANYTHING in a box will sell as you get closer to the end of the season. Display lots of items in boxes. Guys especially will appreciate seeing things boxed. It completes the picture. They see a robe hanging and think, “maybe she’ll like that”. They see a robe in a box and think, “I’m done shopping”.

You don’t need to box everything in the store. You can box samples for display. Next to the hanging robes, put one in a box. Your staff can switch it for the customers correct size and color. That’s a service, right? You should have a box for everything you sell. When people see a boxed item, they buy it.

5a. More about the box thing. If it’s in a box, suggest it. When guy buys a robe, suggest a nice boxed pair of gloves. Add-ons are easy to sell when boxed. Go to Sears and look around. They put screwdrivers in boxes during the holidays. Sears gets that part of the season right.

All 5 of these items relate to giving good service. If you train your staff to provide extraordinary, remarkable, outstanding and incredible service, you won’t be discounting your inventory as early as your competitors.

Holiday shoppers want to finish their shopping, not to shop. Make it easy and fun to shop at your store and people will try to finish their shopping chore with you.

Do not run out of boxes. That’s inexcusable this time of year.

Have a great season!

Chris Reich, Author of TeachU’s Business Talk Blog
Chris@TeachU.com

5 1/2 Holiday Retail Tips is a post from: Free Bahais Web Hosting And SEO Tips

But it can also be a big disappointing nightmare.

A lot of businesses have pumped a lot of time and money into search engine marketing efforts (SEO) only to find them useless.

One main cause of this is “putting the carriage before the horse.”In other words, you attempt to get high search engine rankings before you have a solid, sound web site.

What often happens?

Your web site can get rejected or even banned from search engines if it is created by a web designer who is not aware of search engine technicalities.
You can waste your money when you try to register with search engines.

Some charge a non-refundable fee for submitting your web site and it does NOT guarantee you will be included. If your site isn’t well done, you get rejected lose your money.

Your pages become invisible. If your site isn’t coded the right way, then a lot of your content won’t get into the search engine for people to find or they are listed on page 1,334,203 … which virtually no one will visit.

On a more content-based level, if your site is not interesting and valuable, others will be hesitant to link to it. Good links are vital to getting good rankings.

If your site isn’t effective at converting traffic, you won’t sell as many products or attract as many clients. You won’t get as many newsletter subscribers.

With all the information and hype out there it can be easy to get wrapped up in the dream of high traffic leading to tons of business. I’ve seen others make this mistake. I’ve blundered myself.

So, how do you saddle-up your horse and oil the buggy to get the most from your search engine marketing?

There is a lot of information on developing a good web site. Be sure to focus special attention on the “marketing”of a good web site. Here are some main points to guide you.

Make sure your site works “without search engines.”That is, make sure the traffic you are sending to it now, such as people from networking, are doing what you want on your site.
Make sure your site is “search engine friendly.”This means to make sure that the code was designed to enable search engines to access the information on your site. This means getting a technically savvy search engine expert on hand during the creation of your site.
Make sure you have a target audience. This is a good idea in general for your business, but it’s also critical that it’s expressed on your web site. Make sure your site is appealing to that target audience.
Make sure your site answers basic usability questions such as, “What is this site about?”"Where do I begin?”and “Why should I be here and not somewhere else?”Answers to these questions will get your visitors moving through your web site.
Make sure your site is easy to navigate. Sit down with at least one person who is in your target audience and watch them use your site. Seeing people do everything other than what you intended is often an eye-opening experience … even for the most advanced web designers.
Make sure your site will capture your target audience in different “buy states.”Some visitors will be ready to buy into subscribing to your newsletter. Some will be ready to buy an ebook. Some will want to buy your one-on-one service.

Search engines are great. They can take your business to higher levels. But without solid horse and buggy combo, you may be in for a bumpy ride.

Avoiding The Carriage Before The Horse is a post from: Free Bahais Web Hosting And SEO Tips

Bloggers have access to the same potential audience as the New York Times. Artists of all kinds have equal opportunities to find an audience based on their talent and drive; not on money or privilege. Two students in a dorm room with a good idea, a little ingenuity and some skill can create a multi-billion dollar company.

And it gets better since every internet user is pretty much guaranteed access to any site they want, whenever they want it and at the fastest available speed. It doesnt matter if you log on to Google or eBooks About Everything, the internet access is equal. In other words, the bandwidth available to me as a small business is exactly the same bandwidth available to a huge corporation.

There are always those who are suspicious of freedom. People who want to control a good thing for profit, for morality or just because they think they can. So it is not surprising that big telephone and cable companies (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner) have set their sites on controlling access to the internet and its content.

These (and other) big companies lobby the Federal Government every day for control of internet access, speed and content. In essence they want to transform the freeway model of networking to a toll road version. They will magnanimously allow the government to collect part of the toll if they can control who gets to use the fast lanes.

But some of us are fighting back. A large number of internet pioneers. industry leaders, bloggers and ordinary citizens believe the internet was created provide equal access and that the access should remain equal. We actually believe that the world does not need one more thing controlled by Government and/or Big Business! And because freedom of speech is still allowed a movement call Net Neutrality has sprung up.

Net Neutrality simply means that internet access will always be free, fast and available. That innovation, not money or politics, will determine who succeeds in the market place of ideas and technology.

To find out more, you can do a simple Google Search on Net Neutrality or a scan of Wikipedia. I promise you that you will get more information than you can absorb in one sitting.

I love the fact that the internet is open, free and somewhat wild. I suppose it is the last vestige of my 60s rebel persona. And as a former rebel, nothing makes me sit up and notice faster then when the government (or anyone else) wants to start controlling something.

As we move into election season protecting our freedoms has become an increasingly important agenda for me. I have a few action items:

I will only vote for candidates who support Net Neutrality.

I am stepping up my writing/email campaign to my current representatives to tell them that Net Neutrality is vitally important to economic growth and development

I have joined Save the Net (http://savethenet.org) and Hands off the Internet (http://handsoff.org)

I will support these organizations with money and time

Please join me in these doing these four simple things. One of the things I have learned over the years is the awesome power of fingers on keyboards. Enough of them pointed at a single target can change the world. That is democracy in action!

4 Ways To Make Sure The Internet Stays Free is a post from: Free Bahais Web Hosting And SEO Tips