Webmaster Discussions

There are numerous tools available on the Internet to assist online businesses. A valuable tool that you should use is the Alexa Toolbar. Even better, this tool is free.

Alexa Toolbar

Founded in April 1996, Alexa.com was designed to provide an interactive web navigation system. The most impressive part of the platform, now owned by Amazon.com, is the free Alexa Toolbar.

First released in 1997, the Alexa Toolbar is known as the “B.S.” detector for Internet sites. With over 10 million users, the toolbar tracks how people use the Internet and turns this information into ranking statistics for each site on the Internet. For instance, Yahoo is ranked as the number one most visited site on the Internet.

So how do you use this tool? First, you download the Alexa Toolbar as follows:

1. Go to Alexa.com.

2. Click “Download Alexa Toolbar” at the top of the page.

3. Click “Install” on the next page.

Reload the page you are viewing and the toolbar will appear across the top of your browser. The tool provides you with valuable information regarding any site you are looking at, including your own. It tells you the traffic ranking of the site compared to all sites on the Internet. The tool also provides you specific traffic information for the site and lays out sites that are similar to the one on your screen. Instead of making baseless assumptions regarding how “good” a site is or whether it is successful, you can use the Alexa statistics to get a better idea. If any company approaches you claiming they have a lot of traffic, you can just pull up their site and review the Alexa statistics. This allows you to verify who is receiving a significant amount of traffic and who is feeding you a line of “B.S.”

Let’s look at Google.com using the Alexa toolbar. Load Google on to your browser and click the #3 number in the toolbar. The Alexa Toolbar information for google shows:

1. The site is the 3rd most popular site on the Internet. Yahoo is No. 1.

2. The site takes .8 seconds to load, which is very fast.

Next, click the “see traffic details” link on the page to dive into the site statistics:

The site shows consistent traffic through the year, maintaining a number 3 position. 214,00 out of every million surfers visit the site, which is an excellent “reach” rating. Each visitor views approximately 5.4 pages on the site, which means that users are working there way into the internal pages of the site. This is always good news for a site.

As you can see, using the Alexa Toolbar system can provide you with specific information regarding web sites. The next time you are contacted by someone claiming they have millions of hits or are considering advertising on a site, you can use the Alexa toolbar to get an objective view of the site.

There are a few secrets that I’d like to share with you. You may have been privy to a few of them before. Actually you may have heard of all 4, but I can promise that you will finish each article with a fresh perspective. I will show you how 4 simple secrets can create a powerhouse web business. This is the third part of the 4 article series.

Before I divulge the vault of successful web business secrets I must warn you of one thing. All the information in the world will not take the place of determination and persistence. A web business is just like an offline business. It takes hard work and resolve to succeed. However working smart is heads and tails better than plain old working. These 4 secrets will turn any smart working, dedicated average Joe or Jane into a successful web business owner.

Web Success Secret #3) Pre-selling is far more effective than selling.

The first two parts of this series were geared towards both the search engines and your visitors. This article focuses directly on your visitor- more specifically your relationship with your visitor. You must gently and effectively pre-sell your visitor on your goods or services.

Anyone can sell a product or service online. All it takes is a link to a payment processor such as Paypal. The difference between successful online business owners and those wishing to make a buck is in their ‘voice’. A website has a voice. The look and feel of your website gives your visitor an impression. When your visitor reads your words they should know the persona of your business and think of you as an expert.

These words, or content, should provide tons of information in small, bite-sized chunks of text. No one likes to read 8 pages of content on a website. On the flip side, no one likes to buy a product without knowing more about it. You need to find the perfect balance between no information and providing too much.

Generally speaking, 400-800 words can do the trick. It can provide content, position you as the expert and gently pre-sell your visitor on a product or service.

In addition to how much content you provide you should focus on providing specific answers to your customer’s problems or concerns. Most visitors are on your website because they want answers. They are not surfing your site to buy something. They want answers. So give them answers!

It’s how you provide your answers that matters. There is a difference between selling and pre-selling, and how you provide the answers or information your visitor wants is that difference.

Selling is cold, distant and forceful. Pre-selling is the opposite. Pre-selling can be thought of as a recommendation or side note to all the great content you provide. You want your website voice to develop trust and rapport with your visitor. During that time you are positioned as an expert. Any soft recommendation that you make will be considered by your visitor.

Forceful selling causes people to put up their defenses. It causes them to take a step back and wonder what your motives are. Pre-selling does not affect people this way. Pre-selling should lead those that are interested to your product without hesitation and those that are not interested should be led to more general content on your website- that will again attempt to gently pre-sell them.

Pre-selling and content (part 1 of this series) are closely related. You must provide information to your site visitors. You must be viewed as the expert and as a helpful friend making a recommendation. People will not feel sold by that. People will respect that you are providing answers to their problems and making a recommendation for a product that can provide even more helpful info. It’s seen as a favor instead of a hard sell.

As I mentioned earlier, it is best to work smarter and not harder. If you would like additional guidance on how to effectively pre-sell on the Internet, contact me for a free ebook.

Having a successful web business starts with effective content. Stay tuned for part 4! If you missed Part 1 or 2 and would like a complimentary copy please contact me and I will forward it to you immediately.

So it seems it is possible and over at http://www.omg-1.com the experiment is proving itself.

The question was ‘Can we take a banned site – No pages indexed in google, yahoo or live and can we give it life and PR rank?’

Well it took 2 days for a banned domain to enter the MSN Live and the Google Indexes. Now thats fast.

But how was it done

Actually the website is set up as a tutorial on how to succeed with SEO seach engine optimization. It is a step by step guild to soring in the SERPs ranking.

Just take a look at all the free tools offered all over the internet that practically force the search engines to index you. Take a hint and follow the links on this site, they take you to amazing free optimization tools.

So here are the basic steps that got this domain re-indexed after being banned.

20 September 2007 -

1. Added content- index.php | experiment.html | report.html | paid-directories.html

2. Put together an article about the ‘Website Directory Submission Experiment’

3. Submit the article to digg.com, please if you are a member please then digg this story!

3. Wait as long as I can to submit our article below to 640 Article Directories with Article Submitter.

I want this website submission experiment webpage to be indexed by google first! This will secure that http://www.omg-1.com is the original source article and then we will not go into the googles suplimentals index. We do not want google to assume an articles site which we submitted to is the article source. Make sure you get your articles into the big article directories!

4. Continue to submit to the web directory database, placing the site into eg. http://ww.webdirectory.za/business/internet/promotions/

5. SEO TECHNIQUES

- Placed TARGET=”BLANK” on all outgoing links I have so many outlinks to very reputable sources. It is smart to keep people on your site, so let them view your suggested outgoing urls, but always leave your site page open. I even placed TARGET=”BLANK” on affiliate links such as

Website Submitter | Article Submitter

Then I went ahead and placed up meta tags with an off beat title to the site

<.title>That is only 10c for a permanent link pointing to your website!<.title>

its actually a one line sales pitch. In the description i just cut a block of text out of my main body

<.meta name=”Description” content=”We will hand submit YOUR site to 2000 FREE DIRECTORIES for $200 US That is only 10c for a permant link pointing to your website! Compare that with adwords | SEO search engine optimization is link building.” /.>

and pasted it straight in as the meta description. I also use this description across all directory site submissions and acticle site submissions.

Also FORCE GOOGLE to visit your site in everyway possible

1. Reinclusion request.
2. ADD URL.
3. Place Adsense.
4. Place a google search form on your site.
5. Set-up adwords campaign and force google to scan your sites keywords! How?

Use the capaign keywords tool and select the option ‘Site Related Keywords’

Here is what Google scanned, so we can see an insight into what Google thinks about this site, and it’s a perfect result!

5. Setup an Adwords Campaign using the suggested keywords, create some Adwords Adds. I have posted my Adds below!

6. I added the very important OnlyWire button

7. Place http://www.omg-1.com to these directories ASAP!

8. Free email subscription service set up on the site for you to sign up to receive our SEO strategy techniques and discounts.

9. Placed a free translation script on the site to cater for foreign language visitors. 10 x the pages to index for the engines.

PS. please note that we are already indexed in Google and MSN Live after one day, 20 September 2007.

Will it last?

Probably not as we will be indexed but now categorized and themed and adjusted within the SERPs.
So we will come and go – but indexed for two major engines within two days is very good!

VRE — better known as “Virtual Real Estate” is literally everywhere online.

That’s right. Everytime you do a search on whatever it is your searching for via the Internet you get a list of results. Within that list of results lye’s thousands, if not, millions of pages of Virtual Real Estate that is making someone out there on the WWW some handsome profits.

The question is… “what have you done in order to stake your Internet “VRE” claim so you too can enjoy some of that profit as well?”

If you haven’t started anything yet, that’s okay because I did a little research for you and came up with these “6 POWERFUL VRE(Virtual Real Estate) Business Models You Can Start Building In 2006 Using Google Adsense” so you too can benefit like the many others out there online.

The first VRE business model I’d like to talk about are — Article Directories.

VRE Model #1. Articles Directories.

Article Directories are in my mind are probably one of the best VRE business models on the web simply because they offer your audience and publishers Multiple Channels of information on any topic.

And the facts are, people come online for information.

So, what do Article Directories contain?

That’s right… Information! … and lots of it.

The other great benefit to Article Directories is that you don’t have to write a single word if you don’t want to because the whole purpose of starting your Article Directory in the first place is to get other people(we also call them authors) to submit their content for your readers and/or publishers to read and use.

Now, the Rule Of Thumb is simple when it comes to growing your Article Directory and that is… the more authors you recruit, the more your Article Directory will grow, filling it full of targeted information for your readers to digest and for publishers to use on their websites.

It gets better, so keep reading.

Did you know that the more pages you have within your Article Directory means… the more search engine food you’ll have for the search engines to come and index into their database which will then be displayed within the search engines search results.

Remember in the beginning of this article when I was talking about the search engine results being full of Virtual Real Estate. This is where your Article Directories webpages(or your Virtual Real Estate) will be listed for web surfers find.

This also means that you’ll receive a lot of FREE targeted search engine traffic to your Article Directory as it grows giving your authors FREE targeted traffic to their sites and keeping them happy, and at the same time, will be building your VRE nest egg on the WWW.

Are you starting to see the benefits to starting your own Article Directory on the Internet?

I hope so.

But don’t go anywhere just yet, I’m not finished.

There’s two more things I want to talk to you about before this part of the article series ends.

The first is RSS — better known as “Real Simple Syndication” and what RSS does is it allows you to syndicate your Article Directories content or just content in general through an RSS feed so that any reader and/or publisher who subscribes to a particular RSS feed within your Article Directory will receive ANY new updated content that is published… INSTANTLY!

The other benefit to a RSS feed is… lets say you have 1000 publishers subscribed to one of your RSS feeds and one of your authors submits a new article at your Article Directory, all those publishers who subscribed to that RSS feed will receive it once that RSS feed updates and when someone clicks on the link within that RSS feed to read the new article, guess where the visitor is sent to?

You guessed it, your Article Directory, with your Google Adsense ads(I’ll talk about that in a second) and whatever other related affiliate links you have on that webpage.

Now… for the BEST part, how-to make a $Profit$ with your Article directory.

I’m telling you, this is the easiest money you’ll ever make for simply supplying your viewers and the Internet(A.K.A. The Information Super Highway) with what it needs the most, Information!

How do you do it?

Heard of Google Adsense(as I mentioned just a minute ago), because if you haven’t, now you have.

What is Google Adsense?

Google Adsense is Googles affiliate program for publishers and how it works is it displays ads targeted towards the content on that particular webpage being viewed.

How do you get paid? Simple. Your reader just has to click on one of the ads within the Google Adsense ad box on that webpage and depending on what the topic is and keyword could pay some handsome commissions(usually between 35% to 50%).

And, guess what? You didn’t even have to do any selling OR follow-up.

Not bad and believe me those clicks add up Fast and by having the search engines returning frequently for regular indexing and having RSS feeds(remember, when someone clicks on the RSS feed link on someone elses website they get redirected back to yours with your Google Adsense ads on it and other affiliate links) for other publishers to use on their websites you’ll soon see your Google Adsense profits get Bigger and BIGGER!

Well, that’s it for now. So be sure to be on the look out for my next installment of the “6 POWERFUL VRE(Virtual Real Estate) Business Models You Can Start Building In 2006 Using Google Adsense”.

The art of the copywriting is one of the most intricate arts in the world. As in every profession there are some indispensable rules that every copywriter should stick to in order to impress his reader and produce appealing content What are these well-known yet so often forgotten rules that every copywriter should follow?! One should be as much precise and straightforward as possible in the writing of your text. Your text should have coherent and logical style. There should be some definite order in which all your message is written. Moreover, you should always visualise your audience in front of you and stress the most important points of your message.
In writing of the advertisement try to answer several important questions before you start devise and design the structure of your web site.

Make it easy to read. You message must have just one important point. It is not advisable to include several points in your message. Despite the fact that this is an advertisement and some exaggerations are possible and some specialists even encourage them, your message must not contain outward lies. If the reader suspects that you are lying he will not be inclined to take your words and might even doubt the credibility of the whole company you are working for. The message must be written in simple, easy to read and understandable style. Do not patronise and try to have honest and equal dialogue with your customer. Do not be very technical in the writing of your message. However, it might be advisable to include some technical terms in your advertisement, otherwise write it in more general terms, as your message might be read by the person who is not familiar with technical details.

Check your text on grammar and spelling mistakes before you are placing your message on the web site or submit it to the advertisement. Do not use too many words; try to be as succinct as possible. Your message should be memorable. Talk directly to the reader of your advertisement. Try to use such words as “you”, “your” as much as possible, as the advertisement that communicates directly with your customer is more appealing.