First, it is important to know what types of scams are out there. You may find what appears to be a great client who wants you to write 15 articles on fashion jewelry. However, after submitting your articles, your client is nowhere to be found. They took your articles without paying for them. For a writer who takes great pride in their work, this is one of the worst types of scams to fall victim to. There are also scams where companies, claiming to provide you with article writing jobs charge you a fee and then just take your money and run. Some scammers will also create fake article writing jobs in hopes of getting your personal information.

As for acquiring your personal information and using it illegally, a legitimate business owner may need your social security number, as they need to report this information on their taxes. Unfortunately, this is how many scammers get personal information out of hopeful writers. To prevent this from happening from you, know the difference between a well-established website and company versus someone who is only asking you to write four articles. Work with a new client a few times before providing them with any personal information. If you are paid and without problems, the individual or company in question really may need your personal information.

As for someone taking your articles and running, without paying you, there are a number of ways to avoid this scam. Be cautious of new clients. For projects that are large in size, request a small amount of the payment upfront or at the halfway point. If you aren’t paid, don’t write more articles. For smaller projects, where you may feel uncomfortable asking for payment upfront, use you best judgment. If your articles are not paid for, you retain the rights to them, meaning you can resell them.

As for “companies,” who request you pay a fee, you will also want to use your best judgment. There are legitimate companies online that will charge you $5 or $10 a month to participate in their article writing programs. A small fee doesn’t mean that the site is legitimate, but run away from fees that are high, like $20 or more. Also, never pay a company that claims you can make thousands of dollars a day. Article writing can be a well-paying gig, but since it is a legitimate job, so you should have reasonable expectations.

As previously stated, be sure to use your best judgment. Although some online scams can be easy to fall for, most are easy to spot and from a mile away. As long as you know that article writing scams do exist and what to look for, you can better protect yourself. By steering clear of the above mentioned scams, you can enjoy a long and profitable career as an article writer.

Search Engine Optimization is a process of choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site and ensuring that this ranks your site highly in search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your site on tops. It basically involves fine tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags and also involves appropriate link building process. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL and Ask Jeeves. Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks 1 in a particular search engine could rank 200 in another search engine. New sites need not be submitted to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site.

If you are unable to research and choose keywords and work on your own search engine ranking, you may want to hire someone to work with you on these issues.

Search engine marketing and promotion companies, will look at the plan for your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. If you wish, they will also provide ongoing consultation and reporting to monitor your website and make recommendations for editing and improvements to keep your site traffic flow and your search engine ranking high. Normally your search engine optimization experts work with your web designer to build an integrated plan right away so that all aspects of design are considered at the same time.

A customer walks into the store, browses through products and shelves, picks up items, inspects, considers the prices, chooses a product and takes it to the cash register to pay. Now if you want to sell your products online, then your site must be enabled for e-commerce, where you must have the following features

You need to provide plenty of content and product description like sizes, dimensions, colors and comparisons with other similar products. It must allow the customer to choose a product, get a clear pricing and shipping costs on the product, complete the transaction and get an order number, and/or invoice confirmation via email. Allow your customer to choose a shipping method. You must tell the customer if the item is in stock or delivered against order. Ideally, you should have an email contact or live help if the customer has a question. Most importantly you must respond immediately If you want to provide your own live chat and help desk services on your website, specialized softwares are available for purchase. Be sure your customer service links are large and clearly marked, so your client does not have to dig around to find information. Provide an about us section or a section about your policies. If you have privacy statements and customer satisfaction policies, your customer will feel better about shopping in your store. You probably want to have customer quotes and references on the storefront page, as well, to let your prospective client know that others are happy with your service. Provide an FAQ with information about your return-back policies, guarantees, shipping prices and insurance charges if any. If you are so inclined, you can offer a print catalogue if the customer prefers to order one from your storefront and shop in the privacy of their homes. Do not annoy your customers by presenting products that are marked sold or pages that say under construction or coming soon. Do add new content frequently, so your returning customers will not be bored by seeing the same products they saw four months ago. If your site has got a date tag or has current references, be careful to change these references frequently so you dont give the perception that nobody is attending or reading your site.

Choosing an appropriate domain name is very important. First and foremost, when it comes to domain names, try to stay away from the silly, stupid, ridiculous or clever. Keep your domain name simple and make it something your customers can remember if they lose the link to your business website.

Take note that, while your domain name on Geocities or AOL may seem like the least expensive way to go, it may also get you dropped from certain search engines. Some search engines ignore domain addresses that reside on these free servers or on the cheap servers.

Even if your site is recognized and considered by search engines, a professional domain name that uses your primary company name or associated words is likely to get more attention and be considered as a stable business by your prospective customers.

Purchasing domain names are not that expensive which cost about 100 and there are many companies that can register the name for you, provided it is available and has not already been used by another company.

Using one of your keywords in your domain name can increase your score on some search engines. For example, solderingirons.com could be more effective as Electric-soldering-irons.com, if that domain name was available.

You might also choose to establish more than one domain name using keywords and then link your doorway domain sites to your primary site. But you will have to pay for each of the domain name and also the monthly hosting fees. It all depends on the type and size of your business and your competition.

Keep in mind that some search engines disregard doorway sites. So put at least a page of content on the doorway site with some useful information and then link it to your primary site. But dont design it as an empty page. The other reason being, you can have one, three, five, or even more email addresses that all contain your business name, and give your business a professional feel. When customers get emails from dominicstone@solderingirons.com they feel as if they are dealing with a stable, professional business operation.

No need for customers to understand how you manage all your email boxes on your domain. They just need to feel your business is dependable and reputable.

With thousands of web hosting companies in the market it can be difficult if not impossible to know which web site hosting companies truly provide an excellent hosting solution at an excellent price. When you have an established domain name with a good web hosting company, you can get reports on your traffic and which of your pages your customers are visiting most often, as well as many other statistics.

Your web host will charge you a fee for monthly service that ranges from 10 or 20 to the more expensive 50.00 per month. Plan to pay between 300 and 500 per year to your web host.

Always avoid free or very inexpensive web hosting services, because you may experience bouts of server downtimes and you are likely to have significant limitations in storage, number of email addresses, FTP upload etc.

Be sure your web host can accommodate e-commerce and storefronts, wireless capability, bogs, forums, chats, online interactive helps and anything else you want to add onto your site.

Estimate what your growth needs are and ensure that this web host can serve you as you grow. The last thing you want to do is change host mid way unless you absolutely have to do so.

Check your bandwidth capability to be sure that, if your website traffic grows rapidly, your customers will not have to wait to download or view information. Three things to look for in a web hosting company are

1. Excellent Customer Support Your hosting provider should be there for you 24/7 and give you instant access to the technicians you need to solve your problem. Ask them how long it takes for them to typically respond to your problem. A good test is to call them in the mid night to check if you get to a live, level 3 support.

2. A Sound Infrastructure Check whether they offer a multi-homed network powered by multiple bandwidth providers to ensure redundancy. Some offer a 100 guarantee on its network availability or network uptime.

3. Financial Stability If youre running very critical operations, you cant afford to be with a hosting company that may not be in business in a few months.

It is recommended to use keywords in page titles itself. This title tag is different from a Meta tag, but its worth considering it in relation to them. Whatever text one places in the title tag (between the title and /title portions) will appear in the title bar of browsers when they view the web page. Some browsers also append whatever you put in the title tag by adding their own name, as for example Microsofts Internet Explorer or OPERA.

The actual text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page. In addition, all major web crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings.

If you have designed your website as a series of websites or linked pages and not just a single Home Page, you must bear in mind that each page of your website must be search engine optimized. The title of each page i.e. the keywords you use on that page and the phrases you use in the content will draw traffic to your site.

The unique combination of these words and phrases and content will draw customers using different search engine terms and techniques, so be sure you capture all the keywords and phrases you need for each product, service or information page.

The most common mistake made by small business owners when they first design their website is to place their business name or firm name in every title of every page. Actually most of your prospective customers do not bother to know the name of your firm until after they have looked at your site and decided it is worth book marking.

So, while you want your business name in the title of the home page, it is probably a waste of valuable keywords and space to put it in the title line of every page on your site. Why not consider putting keywords in the title so that your page will display closer to the top of the search engine listing.

Dedicating first three positions for keywords in title avoiding the stop words like and, at and the like is crucial in search engine optimization.

You cant just put your website on the net with right keywords and all the right touches and expect your traffic and ranking will remain constant. As the web is an ever changing landscape, you have to keep track of your own web results like what is happening with the competition and also the best and highest ranked sites. There are many useful tools to help you find out what exactly is happening.

1. A tool which you can use to test your own website links or other websites for broken links http//home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

2. With this tool you can check search engines for the number of back links to your URL i.e. other web pages linking to your site http//www.digitalpoint.com/tools/backlinks/

3. It sometimes becomes important to know where the servers of your hosting company are physically located. Because, some search engines like Google have the ability to filter search results based on their physical location called geotargeting. This could be used to determine why your site is showing in only a certain country. This link can also be used to research the country location of a particular competitors website http//www.digitalpoint.com/tools/website-country/

4. In order to track the location of the visitor or a customer to your website http//www.digitalpoint.com/tools/geovisitors/

5. In order to check the Yahoo web ranking of yours or your competitors website use http//www.digitalpoint.com/tools/webrank/

6. Here is a link to check the web ranking of a website using a Mac or Apple computer http//www.digitalpoint.com/tools/pagerank-mac/

7. You need a Google AdSense account for using this. This link provides you with charts and reports which will help you analyze traffic, clicks, and results from your AdSense advertising http//www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-charts/

8. If you have an AdSense account, you can analyze your website address or another website address to see what Google ads will be displayed when the customer selects certain website names or keywords http//www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-sandbox/

9. This link will take you to a cooperative advertising network where you can join to display and share your ads with other website owners http//www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/

10. You can add the Search Functionality on your website which uses Google. This works only if your site is listed in the Google Index. http//www.digitalpoint.com/tools/search/

11. Here are some links to free website counters which you can use on your website to track your traffic and hits http//www.digitalpoint.com/tools/counter/ http//www.amazingcounters.com/refgad033 http//www.cyber-counter.com/signup.php http//www.statcounter.com/free_hit_counter.html http//www.free-counters.net/

1. Update the pages on your website frequently. Stagnant sites are dropped by some search engines. You can even put a date counter on the page to show when it was last updated.

2. Offer additional value on your website. For affiliates and partners you can place links to their sites and products and ask them to do the same for you. You can also advertise their books or videos, if these products relate to your industry and are not in competition with your own product.

3. You can allow customers to opt in to get discounts and special offers. Place a link on your site to invite customers to opt in to get a monthly newsletter or valuable coupons.

4. Add a link to your primary page with a script Book Mark or Add this site to your Favorites.

5. Add a link Recommend this site to a Friend so that the visitor can email your website link, with a prewritten title, Thought you might be interested in this, just by clicking on it.

6. Brand your website so that visitors always know they are on your site. Use consistent colors, logos and slogans and always provide a Contact Us link on each page.

7. Create a Our Policies page that clearly defines your philosophy and principles in dealing with your customers. Also post your privacy policy as well so that clients know they are secure when they visit your site.

8. Create a FAQ page which addresses most of the doubts and clarifications about your product or your company that are likely to be asked. This helps to resolve most of the customers doubts in their first visit to your site.

8. Ensure that each page on your website has appropriate titles and keywords so that your customer can find their way back to your site if they lose the book mark.

9. Never spam a client, who has opted for newsletters, with unsolicited emails. Later if they decide they want to opt out of the mailings, be sure you honor their request and take them off the mailing list. They may still come back if they like your products. But they will certainly not come back if you continue to flood their email box with mails they no longer wish to receive.

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. When a topic is typed for search, nearly instantly, the search engine will sift through the millions of pages it has indexed about and present you with ones that match your topic. The searched matches are also ranked, so that the most relevant ones come first.

Remember that a prospective customer will probably only look at the first 2-3 listings in the search results. So it does matter where your website appears in the search engine ranking.

Further, they all use one of the top 6-7 search engines and these search engines attract more visitors to websites than anything else. So finally it all depends on which search engines the customers use and how they rank your site.

It is the Keywords that play an important role than any expensive online or offline advertising of your website.

It is found by surveys that a when customers want to find a website for information or to buy a product or service, they find their site in one of the following ways The first option is they find their site through a search engine. Secondly they find their site by clicking on a link from another website or page that relates to the topic in which they are interested. Occasionally, they find a site by hearing about it from a friend or reading in an article.

Thus its obvious the the most popular way to find a site, by search engine, represents more than 90 of online users. In other words, only 10 of the people looking for a website will use methods other than search engines.

All search engines employ a ranking algorithm and one of the main rules in a ranking algorithm is to check the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Dont forget that algorithms also give weightage to link population (number of web pages linking to your site). When performed by a qualified, experienced search engine optimization consultant, your site for high search engine rankings really does work, unless you have a lot of money and can afford to pay the expert. With better knowledge of search engines and how they work, you can also do it on your own.