For this reason, inbound linking is very important. In fact, acquiring back-links may be the most important of SEO. In theory though, a website owner shouldn’t have to ’scout’ or ‘hunt’ for links. If the presented content is of interest, useful, and/or important, there is a natural tendency among web users to link to information. This is the basis for the Google PageRank algorithm.

With all due respect, submitting your site to the search engines can’t hurt. Plus, it only entails about 5 minutes of added work assuming you only submit to the big guys. And once is enough… you don’t need to submit your site more than once. It doesn’t help or get your site crawled any quicker or more often.

It should be noted that submitting your site to Google, Yahoo, MSN, and many others doesn’t cost a fee. Many SEO companies assert that you need to pay to be indexed. This isn’t the case and I would stay away from these companies. They are money hungry and aren’t looking out for your best interest.

Would you ever consider going on a vacation across the country without bringing a map? It is hard enough to find your way in some places with a map. How hard would it be if you tried this adventure without one? Yet, this is exactly what people do every single day in the online world. They tried to build their own businesses online without having a roadmap to success. Then, after months or years of just wandering around online, they give up in frustration and quit. They walk away saying that the Internet doesn’t work for them. The reason it didn’t work is that they didn’t pick up a map and follow it!

You don’t have to end up lost in the online shuffle. Below I will give you ten steps to help you map out your course and get you started in the right direction. It isn’t everything that you need to know by any stretch of the imagination, but it will give you a basic foundation to build upon.

Consider it your beginner’s map to Internet marketing profits.

1. Choose a targeted market

The biggest mistake most people make when starting a business is that they choose a product and then try to find people who want to buy it. If that is the direction you are starting from on your journey, then you are going the opposite direction from your destination. Wise businesses operate from a different concept. They pick a market first, and then they pick a product those people are searching for. In other words, instead of trying to find leads to sell their product to, they find targeted leads and then ask them what they are wanting to buy.

Don’t even consider starting a business until you know exactly where you are going to get your leads from. Think targeted customers first. Then, you can come up with a product for those individuals. Would you rather have 1,000 hits a day at your site of a general audience OR 10 hits a day of people who are desperate and willing to pay any price to buy your products? If you are smart, you will choose the people who are ready to buy!

2. Develop a Product

Next, you need to develop a product or service for this market. Don’t just jump on the bandwagon of affiliate programs when you come to this step. There are three major ways to selling a product online:

a. You create your own exclusive product.

This is the best opportunity you have. If you develop your own product, you can pick it’s price, sell reprint rights to others, set up an affiliate program, etc. Don’t tell me you can’t do this. Tens of thousands of innovative entrepreneurs have used their own information products to get their careers started. You can to.

Throughout your life, I am sure that there is something you have learned that you can share in a How-To product. Maybe you know someone else who has the right knowledge for a How-To product and you could offer to help them create a product if you both shared the rights to it. Don’t just jump past this opportunity and say it can’t be done.

b. You buy the rights to a product or you JV for an offline product.

You can buy the rights to successful products for $500 – $20,000. If someone else has created a product that you know your targeted market is interested in, offer them a large up-front fee for the rights to it. This way you can get your own product and never have to pay a penny in royalties. You can also search through magazines your targeted market reads and look for products people are selling. Then, give them a call and ask for the exclusive Internet rights to their product for a certain percentage of the profits or an up-front fee.

c. You join an affiliate program.

If you are just starting out online, this can be a good choice. You do have to keep in mind though that it doesn’t offer quite the profit potential that creating your own product or obtaining rights to one has.When choosing an affiliate program, make sure that it is something your targeted market cannot be without. They absolutely have to have it. Also pay special attention to the profits you receive from each sale.

If you are only be paid 5% commissions on the sales of $10 books, you will only be making 50 cents per customer. It would take 2,000 customers just to product $1,000 in profits. You cannot make money like this online! Look for higher priced products and higher commissions…especially commissions in the 25% or higher range.

3. Create a USP

Create a Unique Selling Position for your product or service. Too many companies are just trying to be me-too companies online. You cannot be just like the next guy and expect to make a profit in a global economy. Just going to the next guy’s web site to order is too easy for your customers.

You have to create a Uniqueness to your product or offer. What can you offer that no one else can? Can you offer better guarantees, better customer service, more technical support, faster shipping, or lower prices. Think of something that will set you apart from all of your online competitors and tell in complete detail what it is.

4. Pick a Domain Name and Hosting Service

The next step is to pick a domain name that describes your company, USP, and offer. Try to keep them as short and descriptive about your business as possible. Avoid using dashes or misspellings of your product. Both of these things will cause people to leave out part of your domain if they type it in. Someone else will be getting free traffic that you worked hard to obtain.

For hosting, I personally choose to use Virtualis since they have the Fastest customer service and technical support in the industry. Test them out. They will respond to you within the hour…anytime 24 hours a day. No other company I have ever been with has even come close!

5. Develop a Customer Friendly Site

The next step in the process is to develop your web site and put it up for the world to see. If you are planning to own a full-time Internet business, I recommend that you learn how to design the site yourself using one of dozens of programs which are readily available at any software store.

You will save so much money if you can do the work yourself on just the editing alone as your site grows. If your main business is offline and you are just adding a secondary income, then you may want to consider having a professional do your site for you.

When designing your site, keep the customer in mind always. Provide order forms for online credit card orders. Make all of the links easy to understand. Try to keep your site simple. Think like a customer, not the business owner.

Your customers are not nearly as interested in your business as you are. Make sure to put the benefits of your site and your USP right on top of the site. More than half of the web surfers never drop down past the first screen full of information. So, you have to give them the information they need as quickly as possible. The rules for any type of business are Benefits, Benefits, and more Benefits.

6. Offer a Freebie

One of the major keys to developing traffic and sales at your site is to always offer some type of freebie as a drawing factor. For example, I offer dozens of free reports, weather reports, news, and more. My greatest drawing factor throughout the past 8 months though has been the two free e-books which we offer on our site to people who subscribe to this newsletter.

You need to come up with a freebie no matter what type of business you are in. Create a free report and give it away. Add in a message board or some other type of CGI program on your site. Give a free demo of your software. Create something that you can give away for free on your site to draw in the visitors.

7. Start Your Own Opt-In List

Almost every full-time Internet marketer I know has developed their own Opt-in email list of some type. For most of them, it is a weekly newsletter they send out by email. For others, it may be a Tip of the Day. Other people might just have a list that they send out important updates to.

No matter what you choose to do, odds will be on your side if you concentrate on building a list of loyal email subscribers. Very rarely do customers purchase from you the first time they visit your site. Most of them will get on your list, hang out for a few weeks or months, and then they buy from you. They have to get to know you before they are willing to spend their money with you.

I have found that the most effective leads come from offline advertising. For example, you could purchase ads in a popular targeted magazine for your business. You could also purchase a postcard in one of the card decks. Start up a co-op and get 10 other people to advertise with you and run your own ads for free. Offline leads which come to your site often turn out to contain a much higher percentage of buyers than any of the online advertising methods.
Once you put our short 10 step outline together you have a basic map to creating your own Internet success story. You wouldn’t consider going on a trip without a map. So don’t try to go it alone online without a map.
Terry Dean’s Brand New Fr-e eBook, “10 Quick and Easy Ways to Increase Profits to ANY Web Site Overnight!” Reveals More Time Tested Proven Internet Marketing Secrets Than 99% of the Paid Products Available…Showing You Step-By-Step How to Increase Your Traffic, Drop Your Expenses, and Drive Your Profits Through the Roof

On the other hand, you can be penalized for illegitimate external linking. It is highly advised that you not link to any website or group of sites that may be involved in shady or unethical search practices. Doing so could result in being black-listed by Google, ultimately ruining your SEO strategy. Avoid this situation at all costs and ensure that all external links point to trusted and reliable sources.

Having been involved in the internet industry for a large part of my working life, I have spent a lot of time researching and browsing the internet and reading websites, mainly for client design research, but also for occasional personal use. The one thing that I find most disappointing, is the apparent lack of thought going into website creation and it’s purpose, which in turn creates a missed opportunity for many e-businesses to become successful.

My personal perspective on e-businesses and their websites, is that if they don’t take pride in their websites and show to their customers a passion for what they do, chances are, they won’t take pride in their products, and the passion for providing good customer service will also be missing.

What you must remember, is that your web site is a direct reflection of you and your business. The appearance of your site is the most important factor in determining your potential success rate. In short, if your site doesn’t look professional or pleasing to the eyes at first glance, the majority of people will assume your products and/or services to be of similar poor standard.

At the other end of the scale, you could fall into the trap of going overboard with the design and over complicate things with incorporating high costing flashy graphics. You may end up with a great looking and highly aesthetic web site, but the danger with this is that your site may prove unreliable and at times may take too long to load. There is nothing worse for a customer than trying to visit a slow loading site, and most will close the browser window in complete frustration. As i’m sure you will be able to work out, this will ultimately cost you business.

The other major consideration (if not the most important) when designing a website is your content. Not just links, but content with passion, relativity, and understanding to the customer. When someone is searching for something in particular and they visit your web site, they’re visiting for a reason. Your site has something they want, Whether this be your product, service, and/or information. If they are unable to obtain what they’re looking for, they move on to the next site and so on. To be able to get your visitors to stay and look around your website, you must give them a reason to. Providing them with quality content will achieve this goal.

There have been countless other lists and articles on the subject of website designing mistakes, but I have compiled my own list, from a designer’s perspective, of some pitfalls to look out for when considering either designing a website or purchasing a template. Remember that the simple, clear, informative and well designed sites are the most successful. If you are a current e-business and your sales aren’t what you had hoped, consider the above and take some time to look openly and honestly at your site. Spending money on improving your website is a much better investment than throwing money away on trying to advertise and market a site that just isn’t good enough to sell your product or services.

If you are looking for a template or a custom designed website, be aware of the above and be prepared to ask your chosen designer or template provider questions to ensure that your hard earned money doesn’t go to waste on an inferior design, which contains any of the above. Asking questions won’t cost you a penny, and in doing so could actually save you a lot of money over the long term. Getting your website right first time is vital in terms of saving money and time. The earlier your website is up and running properly, the quicker you will be able to reap the rewards of a successful e-business.

The prime mistake Newbies make is to put their website name into the Anchor Text. Unless your website contains your keywords this is a waste of a perfectly good link. Remember that Google puts a very big importance on those Anchor texts and they should always use your keywords.

The second mistake is trying to put every single keyword into your anchor text and give that to everyone. There are two mistakes with this technique. 1.) Google assigns weight to each word in anchor text so if there are a lot of filler words (common in long sentences), they will “dilute” your target words.

According to two recent surveys, conducted by Forrester Research and Gartner Group, ecommerce sites are losing $1.1 to $1.3 billion in revenue each year due to customers click- away caused by slow loading sites. If a page takes too long to load, your potential customer will not wait. Ultimately costing you business.

Make sure you include proper META tags in the HTML of each page of your web site. META tags are HTML code that enable the search engines to determine what keywords are relevant to a specific site. About 80 percent of all web site traffic originates from the eight major search engines. It would be a good idea to make sure you’ve done your homework and fully understand how to optimize your web pages prior to designing your site. This will save you a lot of headaches in the long run. For further information on META tags read the tutorial entitled, “Building Your Site.”

Be cautious when selecting your background and text colors. Busy backgrounds make text difficult to read and draw the attention away from the text. Always be consistent with your background theme on each page of your site. Your site should be nicely organized and uniform throughout. Keep in mind, colors affect your mood and will have an affect on your visitors as well. Bright colors such as yellow and orange, cause you to become more cheerful or happy, while colors such as blue and purple have a calming effect. Dark colors such as brown and black have a depressing effect. A good rule of thumb would be to use colors based upon the type of effect you’re trying to achieve.

Your main page should specifically let your visitors know exactly what you’re offering. How many times have you visited a site and never figured out exactly what they were selling? If your potential customer can’t find your product or service, they definitely won’t waste a lot of time looking for it. They’ll go on to the next site and probably never return. They’re visiting your site for a specific purpose. They want something your site offers. Whether it is information, a product or service.

Design your site to be easily navigated. Place your navigation links together at the top, bottom, left or right side of the page. Use tables to neatly align your links. If you are planning on using graphic buttons to navigate your site, keep in mind that with each graphic you add to your page, it will take that much longer for your page to load. If you only have a handful of navigational links, using graphic buttons will be fine. If you have over six links, it would be wise to simply use text links to keep your load time down.

If you must use frames, use them sparingly. Frames, if not properly used, can make your site look unprofessional. Avoid making your visitors have to scroll from side to side to view your content. This can be very irritating and cause your visitors to leave. If you must use frames, offer your visitors a choice. Frames verses No Frames. Try to keep the number of clicks required to get from your main page to any other page on your site down to four. Keep in mind, your visitors may enter your site from pages other than your main. Always have good navigational links on every page and place your company logo on each page.

Design a quality e-book to give to your visitors. It’s not as difficult as it sounds. If you can create a web page, you can create an e-book. The focus of your e-book should compliment your web site. Simply write about your passion. If your passion is sales, then you could share some of your knowledge and experience by designing your e-book to provide a complete sales training guide. If your passion is home based business, you could write an e-book about how to start your own home based business. If you’re writing about your true passion then you shouldn’t have any trouble coming up with something to write about. For further information on e-books, read the article entitled, “How to Create an E-book and Drive Massive Traffic to Your Site by Giving It Away.”

Having been involved in the internet industry for a large part of my working life, I have spent a lot of time researching and browsing the internet and reading websites, mainly for client design research, but also for occasional personal use. The one thing that I find most disappointing, is the apparent lack of thought going into website creation and it’s purpose, which in turn creates a missed opportunity for many e-businesses to become successful.

Almost always, linking candidates will use the company name as anchor text. This does not provide any type of description of the target company’s products or services. Sure, it may be great for branding purposes, but it isn’t usually needed. In most cases, companies already rank very high (if not first) for searches that incorporate their brand.

Here is an example using fictional company “Acme Plumbing Supplies”:

Most people will link simply using the terms “Acme”. This is alright, but it does not describe the company’s products or services, nor provide any context. By adding the word “plumbing” or term “plumbing supplies” (i.e. “Acme Plumbing” or “Acme Plumbing Supplies”), you may be able to drive additional traffic that may not have otherwise attained the corporate site.

Many believe that absolute links have less potential for getting messed up when search engines index your page. It shouldn’t really make a difference, but many conclude that this is reason enough.

Furthermore, content scrapers and RSS services may ‘repurpose’ your content legitimately (or not). In either case, shouldn’t a proper back-link be attributed to your site? This situation favours absolute links. Although this is a minor argument, it’s still worth considering.

Once again, it should be emphasized that SEO is a series of guidelines rather than an exact science. Having said that, the following recommendation can be used to satisfy both sides of the equation. In general, keywords and phrases (i.e. SEO) should remain the focus of any early-stage company, while the incorporation of company branding should appear later in the evolution. This is simply a general statement and should not be taken word for word.

The reasoning is pretty straightforward. At first, no-one knows the name of your company, but perhaps they are searching for your products or services. In other words, you want to target keywords and phrases that focus around your offering rather than your company. As you build loyalty and credibility, branding becomes more important. It’s at this point that you may want to incorporate corporate messaging to strengthen the relationship with customers and instill trust in your brand.

One final thought about branding: if a searcher types in the name of your company, they are likely to find your website anyways. This is due mostly to anchor text and back-links. Therefore, optimizing for the company name is rather insignificant in most cases.

Suppose you operate a travel site and you want to optimize a given page for the term “Las Vegas hotel”. Suppose that you also want to include an enticing marketing message such as “Book now and save 20%!”. The aforementioned tagline lacks descriptive text, but possesses persuasive characteristics. That being said, you may want to place the tagline in an image and the key phrase (i.e. Las Vegas hotel) in a header tag. This places emphasis on the desired term, yet still provides a marketing opportunity without compromising keyword consistency.

In other words, images are a great place to insert marketing messages that lack the necessary keywords and phrases. Leveraging this technique will ensure that descriptive text is indexed, while less marketing jargon is overlooked. The combination of keyword-rich content and enticing messaging will satisfy both sides of the strategic equation.

The concept of reciprocal linking defies Google’s original intention with the algorithm. Quality content should attract links. The exchange of links is nothing more than a mutual agreement to unjustifiably promote others’ content with the end goal of promoting your own. Google doesn’t particularly like this (see Link Schemes).

Some even claim that Google is now able to identify three-way linking schemes (i.e. website A links to website B, who links to website C, who links back to A). Whether this is true or not is hard to say. One thing is for certain though: inbound linking strategies should NOT be centered around reciprocal linking. This manufactured form of link creation is not well-received and is ultimately a waste of time. Instead, focus on creating unique, high-quality content in a given niche. The links will ensue.

Tip No.1 – “The Customer is Always Right”

If your business sells wholesale paper products, your customers’ concerns will probably be about the types and sizes of paper products you have available, the costs of each product and whether you have delivery, etc. Some customers are impatient and would like to get their concerns answered immediately. If you put your company profile on the homepage, intolerant customers will likely lose their interest if you present irrelevant stuff right on the first page.

There is a big difference with the thing that you assume the customer likes and the thing the customer actually needs. The first page must bear what your website has to offer; it is what the customer went there for in the first place.

Tip No.2 – Lure them in, then hook them

Sorry to say, there are probably many other websites that offer similar products or services with the ones that you offer. With this tight competition, what can a website owner like you do?

Highlight your edge over the others. Your customer visited your website because they know what they needs. But since many others might be offering the same thing, you should emphasize what benefits they would get from buying your product or availing of your services. If you entice them enough, they’d surely pick you above the rest. Most buyers don’t just look at the actual significance of their purchase, but buy for many other reasons that will tweak their feelings. You need to make them feel that they’d be happier if they buy from you, and not from any other else.

In writing web content, you need to think like a customer. Stand in their shoes for a while so you can understand what might get their attention. If shouting your advantages over competitors is the way to do it, then so be it. But of course, keep it real. You shouldn’t be deceiving your customers!

Tip No.3 – Be Accessible

You’ve done your part. Your website content is perfectly written and it is very effective in providing quality web traffic. Tons of web users are visiting your web site. Your sales should be off the hook but the problem is, there is none.

Probably the problem is your contact availability. Maybe your customers can’t get in touch with you. No matter how much they love your website and its content, there is no way they can avail of your products if you do not tell them how. Your winner content will just be put into waste. Too bad!

Now that you’ve finally concocted the perfect formula to lure the customers in, it is only rightful to not to forget the last but also equally important ingredient for a successful online business; making sure the transactions are made. Give them enough means to contact you to ask questions and place their orders. You could put your email, phone number or even have a ready email form right on the website. The faster they can put into action their interest on your products, the better.

The first few results hat comes up in search engines are the ones that most web searchers click on. Those lower ranked ones that are behind these first ones are rarely visited since most web users don’t bother clicking on pages that have been buried down on the search engine results. Some website owners get the aid of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies to make sure their websites stay on a high ranking if not forever, but for a relatively long span of time. Some hire a web marketing company to this job for them. But if you are doing the SEO work on your own, here are a few helpful techniques that will bring you great search engine rankings.

Area for Improvement No.1: Web content

High search engine rankings have a lot to do with great web content. You should make sure that your great quality web content is also rich in the target keywords that the web users will most probably be using. You may also want to try searching for other similar web sites and observe how they implemented their web content. You may find great ideas that may also work with your own website. You should also remember that keywords are very important ingredients in boosting up any websites search engine rankings, put as much of these in your website.

Area for Improvement No.2: URL

Including the keywords in your web site URL will also help increase your search engine rankings. This technique may never work all the time, but still, a keyword rich URL helps.

Area for Improvement No.3: Search Terms

You should include search texts in words in your web content. You may include graphics or pictures, but be sure that you also add them with alt tags. Search engines can only read texts. So if your search terms were substituted with graphics, these will all be useless for them.

Area for Improvement No.4: Title of the Web Page

You should put a very relevant page title for your website. Appropriate title is very important in increasing your search engine ranking. The titles should be applicable to the content of the certain page that it names. It is also a very good place to put your keywords in, so be sure to include them to make your title as specific as can be.

Make use of these four techniques so you can be guaranteed to have great volume of quality web traffic. It never hurts to try.

Each web page should be unique. Just like every person has their own name, a web page should have its own title that is relevant to its theme. The theme, or keywords in other terms, is the most important topic of the webpage. You should pick a very specific theme for your website so that it would be easier to find amongst the sea of other similar websites in the internet. To test the “visibility” of a certain theme in the web, try entering it on a search engine.

Step 1 – Pick a Great Title

A great web page title means a lot. A great title is something that has been well thought of and is very relevant. It should be a great representation of the theme of the web page. It should be specific and should be able to describe directly the main theme of the page.

Step 2 – Use Proper Tags

Just like the title, the tag is a great tool in search engine optimization. Put only the main theme of the website in the tag on top of the page. Search engines also make use of tags to locate and rank web pages accordingly.

Step 3 – Write Good Web Content

A great content is a coherent body of written word, relevant to the main theme. The keywords should also be intelligently incorporated into the whole of the document. Put as much keywords as the content may permit.

Step 4 – Utilize Incoming Links

One of the first things that will help you is a Google toolbar. Visit Google.com and install one. Having one will let you know the page rank or PR. Having PR will be helpful in establishing links to raise your search engine rankings. Very low rankings can be attributed to unsuccessful building up of incoming links.

To help build your links, submit your website to a directory such as the ODP (dmoz.org) and business.com. A higher PR number from the directory is always better.

Another way to raise the ranking is to buy text links. Text links are sold at different rates. Text links help improve incoming links and increase web traffic. In purchasing a text link, you should only choose text links that are relevant to your main theme. Irrelevant text links will only bring disadvantages to your website in the long run.

Research existing links; try to get listed unto the links of higher ranking sites that fall under the same theme of your website. If you’ve already known the top ranking sites, you can find out the links for these certain sites by typing in Google using the keywords “link:site.com” (site.com being the name of the certain site you want to research)

Step 5 – Make sure incoming links contain your target keywords in the anchor text

Work to make your links to include the keywords as anchor text. This may not always be the case but if you can, try to work them out. Try to make as many links on target as can possibly be made. Some links may even be on to other certain pages of the site and not just the home page.

Conclusion

There are lots of search engine positioning techniques available in the internet. Search engines constantly change the way they rank websites so it will be best to work on the five steps that have been enumerated above. These tools are proven to have been reliable means of boosting search engine ratings.

Especially in establishing links, getting listed in search engines and directories are going to take a lot of time. You’d need to be patient before you can fully see the results of your search engine optimization efforts.

Here are three simple ways on how you can improve your website:

1. Bookmarks are not only for bookworms

As most bookworms would know, a bookmark is like a life saver. An urgent matter might come up and take your attention away from your book, if you have a bookmark handy, you can instantly mark the page that you are on and get back to it when you again have the time. A good thing you can also have it on your website. A bookmarking tool is a link or a logo that will be very handy to you and your online guests. You can put it on your home page, or you may put one on every specific page of your site so your visitors can easily click on it when they want to keep your website in their bookmarks or favorites.  Your web site users need not go back to searching your website from all over the net the next time he wishes to view it.

1. Guide your “treasure hunters” by making a site map

For some websites, the visitors won’t even go beyond the home page if they do not find the website worthwhile and interesting. But if you are fortunate, your web user might like to browse through your site in search for something they need that you might offer. Especially if you have a large website, you do not want your visitor to get lost in it; this is where a site map will come in.

A site map is an important web site tool that bears an outline of all the information that your web site contains. The site map should be accessible from all pages of your web site and should bear links that lead directly to the corresponding location or information that your web site contains. Most web users are not so patient, and this tool will help you not lose their interest, keep them from getting frustrated and save their time.

1. Have an email form ready

If your web users and visitors became interested in your website they’d probably want to contact you and ask a few questions regarding what they just saw from your page. You want your customers to communicate with you easily so you do not want them to have to write emails whenever they need more information from you, the website owner. It is not enough that you put your email address on the website. Putting an email form is more practical.

An email form is a very easy way that your customers can get in touch with you. An email form will contain certain info-required fields like name and email address, and a few more fields where you can ask other information—a very easy way to know more about your visitors. When a visitor fills-up and submits one email form, an email will automatically be generated to your own email account and depending on your availability; you’d be able to respond to any of their concerns and inquiries. Putting up an email form also helps to build up your email list that will help you in disseminating new updates and new products and services to your valued customers. It’s like hitting multiple birds with one stone.

Online Success Obstacle No.1 – The “I am God Syndrome”

God is the only one who is omnipotent (can do everything), omniscient (knows everything) and omnipresent (is everywhere at all times). Knowing this, still many business owners fall into the misconception of believing that they can play “God”. Many business people try to run their business all by themselves; answer the phone, make a sale, run a sales meeting, welcome customers and audit company’s accounts all at the same time. But since you are not God, you most likely will fail in doing everything all at once. Your concentration will be divided and so you can’t give your best if you’re doing everything simultaneously on your own. You would not want to risk your website’s success like that.

The best thing to do is to just stick to doing one or some of the things that you know and can focus on, and leave the rest to the experts. Hire people that are more knowledgeable in areas that you lack expertise like probably web design, website marketing, graphic design and business consultancy. This way you’d be like the captain of a smoothly sailing ship.

Online Success Obstacle No.2 – ‘Build It And They Will Come’

In the early 1990’s, where going online was still all new and just by owning a cool web address or domain name still meant you’d easily be getting all the money and earnings that you wish, they said “Build it and they will come”. For then, it might have worked, but for now, this little word of promotion is not the case anymore.

Many were persuaded by these “Build it and they will come” idea that all these eager entrepreneurs started making their own websites without even understanding from where and how will the profits start pouring in. Because of that, there might as well be more online businesses than there are customers ready to patronize. In putting up a website for your business, you’d be paying for the graphic design, content, domain names, hosting, web design and testing. You need to know how you can gain all of the money that you’ve just invested.

After your web site goes live, you don’t just sit around and wait for your customers to just magically find your online business; you need to market it. Just like how you do it when your business started, you should go through all the publicity measures— advertising, fliers, yellow pages, referrals, networking, cold calls, direct marketing, mail shots, radio slots, events, conventions, product launches, press coverage, etc., if possible. If you don’t promote your web site, they’ll probably be saying the new age’s new statement that goes “Build it and they will say ‘I can’t find it!’”

Online Success Obstacle No.2 – You Have the Wrong Web Promotion Company

You invested money in making your website. You hired experts to create your website content and now you are investing on advertizing it. You need to find the best online marketers to make sure that you’ve put your money in the best place. Listening to word of mouth recommendations might be a nice place to start, but here are guidelines to ask yourself in hiring the best web site marketing company to help you.

• They offer guaranteed results
• They proudly display testimonials of highly-pleased clients on their website.
• Their own web profile is very easy to find in the internet
• They present comprehensive researches that describe how they help other businesses’ success
• They have a venerable performance record in the web marketing field and offer services to several clientele

You may have made the wrong decision at first, but there is always a chance to make things right. Now that you have this information in your hands, if you follow these tips, you will be right on track on your way to online business success.

Many website marketing experts have always sworn by the effectiveness of free classifieds and free traffic exchange programs in increasing web traffic despite a low budget.

Free classified sites are great in attracting quality target markets online. Visitors of these sites enter a certain keyword that defines their search and they’d be instantly redirected to the ad that corresponds with their keywords. So if you put up a keyword rich ad, you’d surely be getting the best online traffic that you deserve. Most of these free classified sites let you upload photos and make URL listings for free. Often, they will let your ad stay for a month and would just have you renew it several times. To also make sure that your ad is on top of the search categories, most classified sites let you to upload new ads every week. All you need to do is make sure that your ad is rich with the right keywords so that you’d benefit f these sites’ search engines. There are many free classified sites out there. Imagine if you’ve placed an ad to ten or more of these classified sites, you’d surely get the online attention that your website needs.

Web marketers also recommend using traffic exchange sites to increase your online publicity. Especially if your product has something to do with online marketing or online advertising. traffic exchange sites are the best option for your business. There are many sites like these in the internet, but if your page really has great substance, quality web traffic will come. Some traffic exchange sites may even help in promoting your website and give offers like free sign-up and surf credit generation through clicking on or visiting other web sites.  Sign-up on more than one of these web sites and spend an hour or so surfing through them. Since these sites are virtually free, enjoy the perks of inviting new visitors in your online business, without having to empty your cash register. If you do not have time to dedicate to surfing traffic exchange sites, some traffic exchange sites even offer promos that let you buy thousands of surf credits at a very low cost.

These two web traffic increasing techniques will not charge you any fee. All that you need to invest in these two strategies are lots of your hard work and time. Any business will never succeed if you do not invest some of your time and attention to it, may it be in online or outside of the cyberspace.

The “Buffet rule” is the reform followed by Obama.  Although even many rich agree that they ought to pay more in taxes.  The middle and lower classes also agree that the rich ought to pay more in order to shoulder a share of the burden of fixing the government finances, along with a widespread belief that they can be asked to do so without much harm.

History suggests that low taxes on the rich encourage investment and growth.  It also suggests that often, when tax rates increase the rich are likely to simply move, taking their money with them.  In the US as of 2007, earnings of the top 1% equalled 74% of all taxes paid.

Reagan, facing the stagnation of the 70s, touted tax cuts as a way to rescue the economy.  In Britain, Thatcher slashed the tax rates on the top marginal income from 83% to 40% from 1979 to 1988.  Canada, Germany, Norway, Russia and many other countries followed suit.  Corporate and capital incomes were later also liberated.

The current debate depends on whether these changes were for the good.  The more a government spends, the more it must tax.  Workers respond to the taxes and take steps to avoid taxation.  This can cause distortions in the functioning of the economy, reducing growth and the economy’s ability to provide a high standard of living to all.

When the rich change their behavior it can distort activity in economies.  The rich may alter their sources of income, change their business strategies or just pack up and ship out.

Imposing higher rates on the rich is not the free lunch that we are promised.  Low level increases in taxation lift revenues, but with a cost from short term growth and efficiency.  If the goal of governments is to close budget gaps, the evidence shows that reforms that close loopholes and broaden the tax base are a more efficient way to bring in more money than just raising taxes on the wealthy.

Source

The author of the Economist article, however, was somewhat surprised by the concern on the part of Ezra over this news.  Housing markets, though currently are in a dire state, are likely to get worse.  Turns out that 11 million homes have negative equity.  In other words, if the owner purchased the home for $500,000, the morgage on the home is for $500,000 but now the home may only be worth $300,000.

In the third quarter of last year, investment in residential homes was at a $329.8 billion annual rate.  This is the lowest it has been, in nominal terms since the first quarter of 1996.  In order for this to be an actual threat to recovery then, residential investment would have to fall significantly lower than this level, which is seemingly impossible to imagine.  With the exception of a catastrophic event, which would pose a significant threat to the American economy, its unlikely that the problems in the housing market could get much worse.

It is possible to imagine these falling housing prices and the compression going on in the economy affecting household consumption, which in turn could have negative effects on the current state.  But many households already began reducing consumption to pay off existing home equity loans and its unlikely that there would be something to cause this to accelerate.

American banks are in much better shape than in 2008 and quite a significant bit of the bad loans in the U.S. have been acknowledged
and are being delt with.  Crisis from somewhere else would be more likely than from the housing woes.  Unfortunately for those caught in the eye of the storm, the housing markets with the worst amounts of negative equity are concentrated in just a few states: Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Michigan and California.  Deterioration of neighborhoods and other related foreclosure activity will likely fall on deaf ears, since the problem is no longer a national problem.

Source:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/03/housing_markets

Wyoming

Taxes: No personal or corporate income tax

Best Places to Live and Launch: Cheyenne

Want to know where to find the no. 1 business favoured place in the nation? Well, you can find it in Wyoming! The Tax Foundation, which is a nonpartisan tax analysis organization, had actually concluded that fact. The residents in Wyoming are less than 1 million. It has the smallest population in the country even though there is less than 3 million people from foreign countries come by to visit the place. Specifically, these tourist visit the Yellowstone National Park.

Besides low property taxes, Wyoming also has low cost of living.  Wyoming is a state rich in natural resources like oil, natural gas, coal and mineral trona. These natural resources is what makes the economy of Wyoming stable. Hence, in the year 2000 to 2006, employment in the coal mining industry gained a 36% increased. 38% of the nation’s coal and all trona is made by the state. Besides having the famous Yellowstone park, other leisure and recreational activity places can be found here in Wyoming, like the Grand Teton National Park and so much more.

Cheyenne, which is Wyoming’s biggest city, is doing their best to strengthen their economy. Cheyenne mainly depends on the growing service industry to provide jobs in retail, hospitality, finance and health care. Last July, the world’s most extravagant rodeo was held in Cheyenne, which is known as the Cheyenne Frontier Days.

Nevada

Taxes: No personal or corporate income tax

Best Places to Live and Launch: Reno and Henderson

Nevada’s Desirable tax structure helps to get employees from the states around him. Hence, its population gained a 25% increase from the year 2000 to 2006. Besides not having an income tax, Nevada does not have an inventory tax and has minimum state payroll tax. More than that, this state has low cost of living.

Many citizens gather from and beyond Las Vegas, the state’s biggest city, and Reno, the second biggest city, are both recognized for their gaming and hospitality enterprises. On the otherhand, construction companies were hit hard due to the housing market’s downfall, the increasing population has resulted into a need of various services including new restaurants and bars.

Henderson, a place exterior to Las Vegas, brag about driving health care, education, and finance sectors; it is a good place for business with other big southwest cities. Foreigners gathers in Reno not only for gambling but for outdoor activities as well. As a matter of fact, Lake Tahoe has water sports activity during summer and skiing in winter. In Arcadian areas, mining is the main industry, businesses are gaining from expensive gold and copper.

Florida

Taxes: No personal income tax, but corporate income tax

Best Places to Live and Launch: Gainesville, Doral, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, and Sarasota

This unclouded state’s economy gains its strength from a comprehensive combination of corporations like jobs in aerospace, agriculture, medical technology, software creation, and tourism and leisure.

NASA launch headquarters, also known as Kennedy Space Center, is located in Orlando, Florida. We can find the University of Florida in Gainesville; to be able to manage the growth of business with great technological innovations, the state center for excellence program matches the university research facility with foreign companies. The famous Doral Golf Resort & Spa safeguards the Miami suburb of Doral. There is a PGA championship held there each year.  One of the biggest tourist spot in town is Fort Lauderdale which is also a home for 1.6 million people aging 65 and above. This place has a good weather making it a nice place to stay. Orlando, Florida has a stable flow of foreigner for about 90,000 each year and also has a built in workers with different languages. Employees in this place, together with Florida’s seaside location, give the state a bountiful amount of world trades from North America and Latin America, The Caribbean and other neighbouring countries.

Texas

Taxes: No personal income tax, low business gross receipts tax (sole proprietors and general partnerships are exempt)

Best Places to Live and Launch: Georgetown, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Stafford

The state’s economy depends on a commodious selection of areas, which includes manufacturing, agriculture, and aerospace even though oil petroleum is the main industry of Texas. Manufacturers that makes clothing, chemical products, food, automobiles, computers, etc. like Exxon, Citgo, Dell, Raytheon and Mary Kay are based in Texas.

Currently, the office of the governor has determined six enterprises where Texas plans to advertise forthcoming development: innovative electronics and factories, aerospace and defence, biotechnology and life sciences, Information Technology and computers, oil refineries and chemical products, and energy source. These sectors are gathered by the government through associating enterprises with alliances and private grants, supplying state budgets for studies, and boost job training activities.

Georgetown profits from its distance to Austin, and its proud from its high class of livelihood, with minimum crime rate, parks to stroll with, lakes and golf courses. Factory jobs, huge city surroundings, financial institutions and biotech corporations are provided by Fort Worth and San Antonio. Other than that, Houston suburb Stafford provides various innovative opportunities; thus, this town does not have any tax.

Washington

Taxes: No personal income tax, but a gross-receipts tax on all business income

Best Places to Live and Launch: Bellevue, Bellingham, Olympia, and Spokane

Amazon and Boeing in Washington is an innovative state, thus, it is where Microsoft is based. The main corporations are software creation and improvement, bioscience, aerospace technology and electronics.  This state has a strong agricultural environment: Washington is US best supplier of fruits like apples, pears, cherries, etc. Citizens of this state savor the advantages of compensating no income tax. Thus, businesses does not get off so effortlessly for in return, this state has high tax on goods like petroleum, cigars, and alcoholic beverages. In fact, gas and diesel are taxed 34 cents each gallon.

Usually, citizens of Bellevue gain as much as double the US Median revenue; the town is fast growing and highlights many software improvement corporations including a strong service sector. Picturesque Bellingham provides fun activities such as hiking and boating, and additional employment opportunities in aircraft factories, oil refinery, health care, and telecommunications. Olympia, its principal state, highlights a marine fort and a commercial airport; this town also includes a healthy professional-services sector and growing life sciences industry. The next largest city which is Spokane, Washington, highlights a comprehensive combination of innovative areas such as biotechnology, agriculture, forestry, and manufacturing. The Spokane River divides the city; citizens and foreigners savor recreational activities like kayaking, rock climbing, and hiking by the region’s nearest mountains.

New Hampshire

Taxes: No personal income tax on wages and salaries, but tax on dividends and interest, plus gross receipts tax for businesses

Best Places to Live and Launch: Manchester

In terms of business advancement, New Hampshire takes its place as one of the quickest advancing state. A wide array of diplomatic professionals benefits from New Hampshire’s innovative corporations. New Hampshire has 26 colleges. Included in these institution is the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth College. Regardless of the advancing numbers of workers, unemployment is lesser than the national rate.

Manchester, New Hampshire’s biggest city is managing its path towards developing telecom and computer program enterprises. Some quickly advancing divisions have health care, retail and hospitality. Even though property taxes is as costly as 3.3% in other cities (Manchester’s is 1.7%), the state’s sales tax is never present. The necessities in this place are cheap – the median value of every family in New Hampshire is approximately $253,200 in comparison with $370,400 just near Massachusetts.

Tennessee

Taxes: No personal income tax on wages and salaries, but taxes on dividends and interest, plus corporate excise tax on net earnings

Best Places to Live and Launch: Nashville

Tennessee has a strong manufacturing section, creating automobiles, chemicals, machinery, and rubber and plastics. To manage development, the state provides different sales tax discharge and tax credits to fresh business establishments, and additional training activities for the growth of a talented employees. Tennessee has the minimal utility costs as well in the nation; however, they have the most expensive sales taxes.

Besides holding the title as the nation’s country music metropolis, Nashville is a base to most leader enterprises like Nissan North America and Bridgestone that has bases and factories in the city. We can also see the famous NFL’s Tennessee Titans in Nashville, same as the Grand Ole Opry. Meanwhile, Nashville and Tennessee’s other huge city, Memphis, provides city accommodation like airports, nightlife, thus the necessities in this place lesser than its surrounding cities.

Today, YouTube announced that its rolling out a new feature that automatically converts all 1080p-quality video uploads into 3D.  The functionality is only available for short-form videos. (Sorry, no full length indie films… yet). You’ll basically be able to toggle the 3D version of the video in the same way that you’d change the video’s quality settings. Of course, you’ll still need a pair of 3D glasses, which everyone should already have after Hollywood’s 3D obsession over the past few years.

The video site first rolled out beta testing for its 3D functionality back in September 2011. Since then, YouTube’s team said it has constantly been at work on enhancing the 2D to 3D  conversion process using several techniques.

In a blog post, YouTube explains those techniques as:

• Using combination of video characteristics — such as color , spatial layout and motion –  to estimate a depth map for each frame of a monoscopic video sequence
• Using machine learning from the growing number of true 3D videos on YouTube to learn video depth characteristics and apply them to in-depth estimation
• Using  generated depth map and the original monoscopic frame to create a stereo 3D left-right pair that a stereo display system needs to display a video as 3D

The real question, however, is why YouTube is bothering with 3D conversion in the first place. Despite its undoubtedly nifty efforts to convert these short videos into 3D, the majority of them are probably going to be on par with the horrible post-conversion 3D of Clash of the Titans (or, as Venture Beat’s Devindra Hardawar pointed out,  Airbender ) — not Avatar.

But hey, in a world that permits James Cameron’s  Titanic to head back into theaters with the 3D treatment, it’s not surprising YouTube is following suit.

Researchers from UC Berkeley were able to reconstruct YouTube videos from viewers’ brain activity — a feat that might one day offer a glimpse into our dreams, memories and even fantasies.

“This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery,” said Jack Gallant, professor of psychology and coauthor of a study published today in Current Biology. “We are opening a window into the movies in our minds.”

Gallant’s coauthors acted as study subjects, watching YouTube videos inside a magnetic resonance imaging machine for several hours at a time. The team then used the brain imaging data to develop a computer model that matched features of the videos — like colors, shapes and movements — with patterns of brain activity.

“Once we had this model built, we could read brain activity for that subject and run it backwards through the model to try to uncover what the viewer saw,” said Gallant.

Subtle changes in blood flow to visual areas of the brain, measured by functional MRI, predicted what was on the screen at the time — whether it was Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau or an airplane. The reconstructed videos are blurry because they layer all the YouTube clips that matched the subject’s brain activity pattern. The result is a haunting, almost dream-like version of the video as seen by the mind’s eye.

The researchers say the technology could one day be used to broadcast imagery — the scenes that play out inside our minds independent from vision.
PHOTO: UC Berkeley researchers use brain imaging, computer modeling to recreate clips.
Courtesy of Shinji Nishimoto
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“If you can decode movies people saw, you might be able to decode things in the brain that are movie-like but have no real-world analog, like dreams,” Gallant said.

The brain activity measured in this study is just a fraction of the activity that lets us see moving images. Other, more complex areas help us interpret the content of those images — distinguish faces from lifeless objects, for example.

“The brain isn’t just one big blob of tissue. It actually consists of dozens, even hundreds of modules, each of which does a different thing,” said Gallant. “We hope to look at more visual modules, and try to build models for every single part of visual system.”

More models, Gallant said, mean better resolution. It also means a ton more data to analyze.

“We need really big computers,” Gallant said.

Shinji Nishimoto, a neuroscientist in Gallant’s lab and the study’s lead author, said the results shed light on how the brain understands and processes visual experiences.

“We need to know how the brain works in naturalistic conditions,” Nishimoto said in a statement. “For that, we need to first understand how the brain works while we are watching movies.”

Whether the technology could also be used to watch people’s dreams or memories — even intentions — depends on how close those abstract visual experiences are to the real thing.

“We simply don’t know at this point. But it’s our next line of research,” said Gallant.

If the technology could be used to broadcast imagery, it could one day allow people who are paralyzed to control their environment by imagining sequences of movements. Already, brain waves recorded through electrodes on the scalp can flip a switch, allowing people with Lou Gehrig’s disease and other paralyzing conditions to choose letters on a computer monitor and communicate.

Gallant and his team are often asked whether the technology could be used in detective work or court cases — an idea that brings to mind the futuristic crime-foiling action in “Minority Report.”

But the potential to watch a person’s memories may not be so far off. Whether such memories could be used in a court of law, however, would be limited not only by the technology but also the nature of memories. After all, Gallant’s website reads, an accurate read-out of a faulty memory only provides misleading information.

Video Here

Its so easy to get your files backed up, and so inexpensive that I recommend if you haven’t done it you do it right now. All that is required is to purchase an external drive, plug it in and drag your important stuff over. If you need help, we can schedule an appointment to get everything setup for you so that you never have to worry about losing those important documents, all of your photos, music files, outlook files, or whatever you have that you are counting on your computer to save for you. Guess what? Its not that safe! Back it up now!

I recently had another appointment with a client that took an hour. I showed her everything that was needed to backup her files and we even setup a normal backup in order to keep her up to date regularly. Serioiusly, now is the time to do this.

Get yourself a 1 or 2TB hard drive for about $100 bucks online. Order it now, do not wait. Your data is not secure and everything can be gone in the blink of an eye. Here are some I would recommend. Again, if you are unsure of which to buy, contact me anytime and I can make a recommendation.

When people think of SEO submission the first thing that usually comes to mind is the use of keywords. Keywords play an important role in your ability to show up in a search engine results page. The first step to website SEO is therefore to research the exacat keywords and key phrases that match your business, product, industry and customers. There are many tools that will allow you to do this, and by utilizing them, you will end up with a clear picture of which words are most popular and which are the hardest to compete for when using advertising. This knowledge will determine which keywords and phrases you need to include on your site.

Keywords need to be used properly and sparingly. The days of dumb search engines are over, and they are difficult to fool today. If a keyword is used too few or too many times in a page it can produce negative results. Using a keyword too sporadically won’t significantly align yourself with that topic or phrase. Using a keyword too heavily will label your site as a SPAM site and will result in you getting penalized by both the search engines and visitors. You need to find a happy medium of keyword inclusion. A keyword density of 2-4% is usually appropriate and will help produce results.

Website Search Engine Optimization includes a lot more than keywords however. One of the most important factors that determines your rank in the search engines is the amount and quality of incoming links to your site. An incoming link is any time that another website has a clickable link leading to one of your web pages. Each link that leads to your site is like a friend vouching for you to the search engines. The higher the reputation the friend has, the more valuable that referral will be.

Finding a steady stream of high quality incoming links can be tough work, but it will ultimately pay you back. People often use article marketing to accomplish this. They create and distribute short articles to various online directories. The bottom of the articles will include a short author’s bio, which includes a link back to your site. This can provide incoming links to help your search engine ranking, it will provide direct traffic from people who click those links and it will help to establish your website’s credibility and authority within your niche as well.

The world of website SEO is constantly changing and growing and is always becoming more competitive. The tips here are only a start that you can hopefully use to help get you and your online business off the ground running. Website Search Engine Optimization is a constant battle, and you will need to continue improving and tweaking your strategy to see the best results. If you start your work by following some of these ideas and principles, your website’s search ranking and hopefully your business should be able to grow quickly.

Mindfu provides Search Engine Optimation services as well as sitemap creating and registration. If you are interested in this service, contact us at info@mindfu.com and we can have you set up and running in no time.