Tips for Online Business

Online directories are locations where people go to find websites, the same way they do with search engines. However, there are considerable differences between the two. In order to be successful at increasing website traffic, it is crucial for people to understand these differences.

Whereas search engines usually accept almost any site that is submitted to them without looking at its quality, directories typically only accept sites that offer quality content. Since humans review all websites submitted to directories, low quality sites rarely get accepted.

Therefore, it makes sense to make sure that your website is ready before submitting it to any directories. Remember that directories list sites, not pages. In most circumstances, you should only submit the front page of your website to directories.

WHICH DIRECTORIES SHOULD YOU SUBMIT TO?

You should always begin your website promotion agenda by listing your website in the most popular online directories. These directories can significantly affect your search engine ranking so it is a wise move to list your website here before you submit to the search engines.

Directories can also send significant traffic to your website. Make sure you are listed in all of the major directories before you try any other promotional methods. In this way, you will have laid the groundwork for a successful marketing campaign.

Submitting your website to the directories is an easy process, requiring very little effort. However, making certain that the site will be accepted is the difficult part.

Since directories are far more selective than search engines and require much more preparation, you must become familiar with their policies before you submit your website. If you do not follow their instructions carefully, your website will be rejected.

If you are unsure about the appropriateness or quality of your website, research web page design articles to see what works and what does not. The primary goal of a webmaster should always be to have unique, high-quality content and lots of it.

OPEN DIRECTORY PROJECT: The best directory to start with is the Open Directory Project. Make sure you read their instructions carefully before you submit your website. The editors usually review sites quickly and will not reject them unless there is a good reason for doing so.

The Open Directory Project is free of charge, making it a perfect place to start. Once you are successful at listing your website on the Open Directory Project, you should move on to the number two directory.

YAHOO: Try to get your website listed in the Yahoo directory. Commercial websites are charged a fee but it is worth the price. Non-commercial websites are free. Again, make sure you read their instructions and guidelines carefully before you attempt to list your site.

LOOKSMART: The third biggest directory is Looksmart. A good listing in it can send a lot of visitors your way, but it is expensive. Looksmart does not draw as many visitors as Yahoo or the Open Directory Project. However, MSN, Altavista and Dogpile all use Looksmart's data in their search results, making it attractive to a lot of people.

SUBMISSION PROCESS:

Now you know where you should submit but how do you get started? It is quite simple. The first thing to do is to carefully read the rules and instructions on how to submit. They are usually displayed when you are beginning the submission process. Read them over a couple of times and follow them to the letter.

Most directories consist of various categories and subcategories. Each category consists of sites related to the category’s name (e.g. the Business category will only have sites relevant to business). You need to find the category (or more often, subcategory) that most closely fits the subject matter of your site.

You can accomplish this by browsing around the directory or by doing a search on the keyword or keywords that are most relevant to your website. There may be several categories that fit your website and you will have to choose the one that most closely describes it. Make sure you submit your website to the most accurate category for your site since submissions done to the wrong categories are usually thrown out.

All directories will ask for the title and description of the website you are submitting. Give careful thought to your choice. A good title can significantly boost the amount of traffic you receive. A bad title can work against you and decrease the amount of traffic you obtain from the directory.

Your title should be brief and include your most important keyword and start with a letter that is close to the beginning of the alphabet. Many directories list websites in alphabetical order and getting listed near the top can boost your traffic.

Since the title has to be the official title of the site and it must be used on your pages, you might be required to change the name of your site. The title must sound like it just happens to start with a letter near the beginning of the alphabet or it will get edited. Do not use hyperbole (best, unbelievable, etc.) or all capital letters.

As with your title, do not stuff your description with cheap filler words (greatest, cheapest, fantastic, etc.) Never use ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Write a short (20-25 words) description that exactly describes your site and includes one or two of your best keywords. Your description should flow smoothly. If the editor thinks your description is just a list of keywords, he/she will reject it. Try to make it sound like an objective review.

After you have entered all the information, check and re-check for any possible typos or spelling errors. Be very careful typing in your URL as a typo in it would result in your site never getting reviewed. When you are ready, hit the submit button.

You will be notified by email if your website if accepted but not, as a rule, if it is rejected. Therefore, it is difficult to know whether your site has been reviewed and rejected or if it has not yet been reviewed. Give them enough time to process your submission and wait a few weeks before you resubmit your site.

Web traffic is a major part of a website. Websites are not able to function without it, as it is the amount of data and information received and sent by a website visitor. A website should have increased web traffic in order to survive. To increase the web traffic, a website should have many visitors.

How are you going to increase the web traffic of your web site? If you are a web developer or ecommerce owner, increasing the amount of visitors in your website is of extreme importance. For you to gain many visitors, you need to use the following methods to learn more about increasing the traffic of your website.

• You only need to maintain a particular content of your website. Your website should contain all the information your visitors need. The information you should feed your reader must contain many links to your website. You also have to put quality content to give your visitors reason to come back.

• Have a regular distribution of newsletters. Newsletter serves as a reminder to your visitors that your website still exists. You should send newsletters especially to those who have subscribed but has failed to visit your site for a long time. Write and send newsletters on a regular basis. It can be monthly or weekly as long as the newsletter you will be sending to your subscribers is of quality and has convincing content.

• Make a forum or community posts. This will give you information to all the asked questions of your visitors. Not only that, it also answers all the questions of your visitors including yours. It also gives you information that you can add to your website. Get your self involved in the forum, and add your advertisements as well as your URL.

• You can run contests or promos that will encourage your visitors to log on to your website repeatedly. Promos and contests will catch the interest of your visitors. Make them go after your good prize; it will make them excited to win. You should make your visitors aware of your rules, like the most times that a visitor uses your website, the more chances of winning. This catchy promotion will absolutely increase the web traffic of your website.

• Invite good writers to your website. From writing your own web contents, you are sure to save money from it. However, there are things you need to master before you can write a quality article. By inviting writers with good reputation, your site will be a good hit to the visitors especially to the ones who appreciate good insightful literature. They are going to write quality articles that will make your visitors comeback to your website.

• You can also invite special personalities in your website. They can join the forum together with all your visitors. You can hold a special event where your visitors will be given a chance to chat with a prestigious personality. They are given special privilege to ask questions and chat with the special personality invited.

• Advertise your website through banners, text links, magazines, newspapers, media and offline advertisements. This is an invitation that should catch the attention. Make sure to make convincing advertisements. Aside from the mentioned above you can also try giving away free e-books or articles as well as classified ads.

• You can also give the top visitors free items or freebies. These items are given to the frequent visitors of your website. Pens, shirts, stress balls and many others that can be given with your website’s name and URL. This will be a good advertisement.

To build a good website, you must build a good reputation. It is the most effective way to make your website famous. This is attained through writing emails and making good contents of your website. You can also write articles on other websites as long as you put a small resource box after your article. This will serve as the link to your website. With more articles you made, the more chance of getting more traffic in your website.

You are able to get the major numbers of traffic in your website by using the following methods. If you want to earn money, you have to work for it, and you need to do lots of effort to attain effective and positive popularity of your website.

You can get a lot of website traffic without having to spend a lot of money. If you want to develop a busy and profitable website for your online business, there are a lot of techniques for getting website traffic without it being expensive. Some of these cheap website traffic techniques include article directories, SEO, blog posting and even forum posting.

Among these methods, one of the most practical and most effective is submitting articles to article directories. These articles should contain a link or two back to your own site, which can help you increase your site traffic from readers who may be interested in seeing more of what you’re offering. There are already several excellent article directories available for your submissions. As long as your articles remain in the directories you submitted them to, this method will be one of the best and cheapest ways to pull in traffic.

Using SEO, or search engine optimization, is another inexpensive yet very effective way for getting traffic to your website. By using proper search engine optimization, your articles and your website’s overall content will become more search engine friendly, as well as your website. Include your keyword in the domain name of the website that hosts your articles. Also include keywords in the first paragraphs of your pages, as well as the title of the page itself. These SEO techniques will help your site get better exposure with search engines, and your articles will rank higher on search results.

Blogging is now becoming more popular than ever before, and you should take full advantage of it. More and more online businessmen are using blogs to promote their products and services, and it just makes perfect sense to follow suit. There are several good blogging sites on the Internet that allow people to sign up and create a blogging account with them for free, such as Blogger or Wordpress. Create your blog and link your home page to it. Updating your blog regularly will allow it to become more relevant to search engines, and as a result, it will help to drive more traffic to your site. It would help a lot if your articles and posts contain the appropriate keywords.

Another inexpensive website traffic technique that you can use is to join and participate in forums. Finding a forum that is related to your website’s content is even better. You can then easily post discussions, answers, and even start threads that can be useful to other forum members. You can pull in traffic by making entertaining or informative posts, since you’ll develop a reputation for being an authority on certain subjects. And don’t forget to have a link to your site in your signature file or your member profile.

See? You can get a lot of website traffic without spending a lot of money, just by following these techniques. Remember, effective usage of relevant keywords in your posts and articles, proper SEO methods, article submissions, blogging, and forum posting can all become invaluable but inexpensive tools for driving traffic to your website.

One of the most important things that any website owner needs is a continuous stream of traffic to their site. As more and more websites compete for the same targeted traffic, webmasters have to constantly deal with the predicament of getting the traffic that they need to keep their online business going. This problem has also been the subject of countless solutions and ideas from varied sources. As can be expected, some of these solutions have been useful, some have proven to be a waste of time, and a few others have been rubbish, to say the least.

One of the good ideas, though, that has resulted in getting loads of traffic into websites is the concept of viral marketing. The idea of viral marketing makes use of a person’s natural instinct to tell others about something that he or she has found to be useful, entertaining, or remarkable. As a matter of fact, companies both online and in the real world have relied on “word of mouth” to promote their services or products.

There are several ways to attract people and encourage them to spread the word about a certain product or service. It can be a funny anecdote, an addictive game, or a flashy production number. Viral marketing is a truly inventive and inexpensive method of advertising and promotion, which any businessman would do well to use. Even if you do have to spend some money, the benefits of a successful viral marketing campaign would greatly overshadow the costs.

Tell-A-Friend Scripts

If you’re going to use viral marketing, using a Tell-a-Friend script would probably be the easiest way to start. This is a simple programming script that webmasters can include in their website’s programming. Tell-a-friend scripts are usually installed in web pages where any form of media, such as a video, a flash game, etc. is also installed. This makes it easy enough for users to inform their friends or family members about the interesting media they saw on that particular site. Sometimes they can even send the media itself, depending on the programming of the script.

The script allows a person to enter his contact details such as name, his email address, and the email address of the person he’s sending the media to. He can then send the media file to anyone he wants to, like an attachment to an email. Because the recipient recognizes the name of the sender as a friend or family member, the thought of spam mail would never enter his mind. The chances of the media being blocked by the recipient would be gone, since tell-a-friend scripts always send out the media based on the information that the sender inputs. Granted, this is quite a devious method, but the results can be surprisingly effective as well.

When the email is received, the attached media will either be viewed, heard, or read. The email would also include a blurb or two about the company or website sponsoring the media. This is how you can initially promote your products, services, or even just your website for starters. Of course, another tell-a-friend script will be included as well. As the entire process begins anew, more and more people will know about your website or company that sponsors the media files. There is the additional benefit of people clicking on the links in the emails they receive, which means additional traffic for your site. Additional traffic could also mean additional prospects.

Using Tell-A-Friend Scripts

It doesn’t need any complex programming skills to use tell-a-friend scripts on your website. Actually, you can install it on your web page simply by copying and pasting the script’s code. It’s also very easy to find one on the Internet. Just type in “tell a friend script” in any search engine and press enter. You will see a number of sites where you can go and download the scripts you want. It’s all a matter of looking for it, then copy-pasting it onto your site.

Tell-a-friend scripts can become one of your most potent weapons in your viral marketing campaign. This harmless script, although quite simple, can do wonders for driving much-needed traffic to your site. You do have to use some patience, though, especially if the media files you use to spread the word doesn’t attract as many people as initially expected. Sometimes it takes time for people to notice the value of your media. Never fear, since your ads will be seen by lots of people who can potentially become your customers - by: Richard Legg

Nowadays, it seems that everyone and his cousin have taken to blogging. This form of online self-expression has slowly but steadily taken over the World Wide Web to become somewhat of a phenomenon in recent years. Some people use blogs as their personal journals, some may see them as an outlet for their creative work, and others may just want their own personal place in cyberspace to share thoughts and ideas.

Now, a quick question for the Internet businessman. If you have a blog, can you use it to boost your site's exposure and drive more traffic to it? A blog is great for sharing ideas and posting about things you like or don't like, but can a blog help your online business succeed?

The answer is a definite YES. Your blog can do wonders for your website, but it all depends on the way you utilize its potential power. I'm going to teach you a tried and proven method that has been effective for other website owners, and this method is applicable for any type of blog. You will just need a lot of creativity and some time to make it work.

First thing you have to keep in mind is that most blogs on the Web have a community feel to them. You may think that your blog is your own, since you're the one who installed and developed it. And you may be right. But your blog is also connected to other blogs on the same site. You may also be connected to other blogs that are using the same blogging software as you. This situation guarantees that sooner or later, a person will land on your blog and be able to see all that you have to say. This can also mean that your blog is now getting free advertising within the blogging community. I don't think you need me to tell you how beneficial this can be for your site's traffic.

However, you do have to keep in mind what you're posting as your blog's content. If all you're doing is making posts that promote your products or your business, then you're dead. Believe me, that is not the recommended way to use your blog. Have you seen the Internet lately? It's already overflowing with loads of advertisements for products and services. Be different. Your visitors need a good reason to keep coming back to your blog. Use it to give expert and knowledgeable information about your line of work to your readers. If you're selling a product on your site, talk about it on your blog, and don't just post a measly advertising blurb.

Let's say you're selling power tools on your website. You can write reviews and other useful posts about the kinds of tools you have on your site. What you're doing is providing some insight for your potential customers about the tools you're selling. These blog posts will then be able to generate confidence in your readers and encourage them to actually buy the products.

Another advantage of having a blog is that it makes it easier for interested buyers to get access to the seller (that's you). Usually, readers of a particular blog post are allowed to leave comments on what they've just read. For example, you've just finished a review for the new Ajax power drill. Whenever a reader comes across it and has a question regarding that product, he or she can easily leave a comment. You can then see the questions and post your answers. See? You can now connect with your readers and potential customers personally. This make you much more approachable, as compared to the faceless entity behind the impersonal commercial website.

In addition, your readers will also have the option of subscribing to your blog feeds via RSS or to your newsletters, so they can be immediately notified about any new posts you make. If you have established a reputable standing in your niche, a long list of eager readers will soon be waiting for your next post, and lots more will be coming to your website - By.Richard Legg