Anyone that has a website has heard of directories, dmoz is a word that almost every website owner knows. Most even dream of being listed in it. Almost the same number of people know how frustrating the wait can be. But dmoz is not the only directory or even only type of directory you should pursue. Almost all of the search engines have a local directory that is separate from their local search. In addition to the search engines there are fast approaching a multitude of local business directories.

These directories are a kind of cross between the printed yellow pages and a search engine. They are designed to be search able by humans as well as search engines. Some will only allow the standard yellow pages information and others will allow you to build a mini site within their directory but all provide a valuable service to your site.

When the searcher goes to their search engine of choice these directories are another avenue to capture that person and bring them to your business whether online or offline. Unfortunately they are all a manual submission and can take time but most allow you a free ad even if its the minimal information, so definitely worth the time it takes to submit your site.

Think about it, for about $60 per year you can have a permanent brochure that is accessible 24/7 by anyone in the world. It will cost you at least twice that to have a professional write and print your print brochure that most people you give it to will throw away. If they don’t throw it away, they will forget about it and never truly lay their eyes or attention on it. However, your online brochure - your website - will stay live for as long as you pay your hosting bill.

For most people, one new customer from their website each year will result in a net profit. They will make their money back and more.

An effectively written website will result in your sales going up and up and up and your profits coinciding. There is no substitute for a well-written website. None. Period. Write it to sell. You are much better off hiring a professional to write your sales copy because a professional copywriter will get you results. There are various copywriters on the web that will charge you a reasonable amount for some worthwhile copy. This money invested will be worth it in the end.

You must invest in your copywriting in order for your website to really do well. It can have the best design, best graphics but when there is insufficient text and/or text that doesn’t make sense or is not well-written, your entire website as a whole fails. QUALITY IS KEY!

You can get a real simple template from Template Monster or one of the other template marketplaces online. I highly recommend Template Monster. You will have to pay for a template but their templates are better for SEO. If you get a free template from Joe’s website you are likely to get a template that is not designed well and won’t get crawled by the search engines. You need a template that will get crawled. You should not spend more than $500 on any given template (I would even go as far to maybe say half of that). You want to invest without overspending. For under $70 even, you can get a template similar to this:

After you find a suitable template you can build all of your web pages around that. The great thing about templates is they can be easily modified. Go ahead and tweak your template to suit your business needs and you’re good to go.

For the first time since the internet was created, Microsoft has competition when it comes to their browser and this competition will continue to grow as time progresses.

Firefox is praised for its download speed and a user interface that is far superior to that of IE. Its pop up blocker is also highly recommended as its fans say it’s the best out there. It offers tabbed browsing (which Microsoft soon added to their newest version of IE), which means that users can jump back and forth between different sites with only one window open and much more.

The biggestchallenge facing anyone who wants to build a case against IE is that most sites are built to be viewed on IE simply because most PC’s have it built in. That means some sites may look distorted or may not be accessible at all via a browser other than IE. Does this mean that Microsoft will forever be the monopolizer in the game of best browsers? Quite possibly but here are some compared stats on the two:

Time will only tell who will rule in browser kingdom!

• TinyMCE - is a WYSIWYG editor that has an enormous range of functionality. It is the most powerful editor I have used, it is free and if it doesn’t do something that you would like it to do then you can likely find a third party plug-in that will. TinyMCE does not play too nicely with Drupal, but it can be made to work. Make sure that you follow the documentation and it is worth checking out the video link that they provide. This module really gives you a lot of control over how text looks and enhances your website management capabilities if your HTML knowledge is a little flat.
• SEO Checklist - as the name implies, SEO Checklist gives you a checklist that will help you optimize your website. A must for the website management of an e-commerce site.
• SPAM - this add-on will help you to filter out unwanted SPAM from your comments pages. Useful if you are running a blog on your site.
• Image - a powerful image management pack that makes it much easier to host images on your site.
• Views - Organize your content into different sets. It is a great way to give your traffic access to older material on your site and a very handy website management tool.

These are just a few of the many modules that can be found on the Drupal.org website. We all have different needs and at a later stage, we will be reviewing some other modules that can really make Drupal the most powerful website management tool that you have ever used.

What I like about Drupal as opposed to many other website management tools I have worked with is the ease at which you can customize the appearance of the website. I am not talking about making themes here; I am talking about personalizing themes. It is very easy to take a site logo and apply it to all of your themes without going in and messing with site code. It is all done with check boxes; the most that you will have to write is the path to your site logo (you can browse for it if you want). In this way, you can very easily use a single logo and a single file for a variety of themes until you find the theme that is the best fit for your site.

Another way that you can personalize your Drupal themes is to turn various components of your theme on and off. If you hate to have text in your title bar, you can disable the site title by un-checking the box. If you don’t want your site mission or statement you do the same. Anyone that has worked with other website management tools on the market would likely have experienced no small amount of difficulty in this department.

Once you have your site personalized, you can then get to work on setting up all of the modules that you wish to include. Tomorrow we are going to take a look at some of the modules that make Drupal one of the most versatile public license website management tools you can find.

What many people like about the Yahoo! website advertising platform is the ease of payment. You don’t need to take bank transfers or checks, you can be paid by PayPal, which is the currency of so much e-commerce these days. There are some distinct advantages for many webmasters to get paid in PayPal. A lot of the jobs that are outsourced are paid for with the e-currency. It can dramatically speed up cash flow. For small advertisers the PayPal option is nice because the minimum cash out amount is only $50. If you are looking for a robust website advertising publishing platform, Yahoo! has it all and more. Let’s hope they don’t change, it is a great website advertising product for publishers of all sizes.

Despite there being no guarantees of benefits from website branding, most people will contend that a well branded website looks professional. With the right type of website branding, a site can attract more traffic and perhaps get a few more leads. Whereas many of the changes that people make to their websites are to accommodate search engines, website branding is purely for people. You might call it a type of human optimization.

If you are not sure where to begin with your website branding, you might want to start with a good logo, or better yet a header image. This is something that many webmasters attempt to do by themselves. Instead of doing it yourself, you might want to try outsourcing it. Professionals often achieve much better results than those that merely dabble. A professionally designed logo can set you back anywhere in the region of $100-$500, and a header would be in the upper area of that price range up to a little more depending on the options that you choose.

Beyond site logos and headers, you might wish to start locking in domain names that are related to your brand. This is often a long term process as some domain names can be quite expensive. Start acquiring them as you get the opportunities. There are monitoring services that can help you to do this.

The biggest and most drastic change that you can make in order to accommodate your website branding is to do a ground up site redesign. In this way you can incorporate your website branding into every aspect of your site. The cost of this website branding improvement will ultimately depend on how far you want to go with it, the size of your site and how easy it is for you or your designer to incorporate changes into your website. Altering a CMS is very easy, but a large website can be difficult.

For many businesses, website branding is a process that is very much a part of their growth. Website branding imparts a professional image on a company, which can make the difference between surviving and thriving. If you have not addressed the issue of website branding, maybe it is time.

According to Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim:

There’s really no other way to dress this up. Google’s decision to test video ads as part of its normal search results is based on nothing other than greed. Period.

That said, can anyone say they wouldn’t do the same? After all, Google is dominant, has no real competitors, and is under pressure from Wall Street to explore new ways to maintain its revenue growth.

There are two ways to look at this latest website advertising move from Google, one is that they are just plain greedy and want more, more and even more of the website advertising pie. To their competitors, this would certainly seem to be the case. If they can find a way to wrestle away website advertising customers from their competitors, of course they are going to do it.

I tend to view this as less indicative of Google’s greed than it is representative of the innovativeness of the company. What Google has done from the very beginning is to create trends rather than follow them. Video in website advertising could be more about covering their bases in case it becomes the next big thing than being greedy. Google got to where they are today by recognizing trends before they develop and you can bet that they are going to strive to continue to do so well into the future, lest they fall by the wayside like the number two search engine has of late. With video becoming an ever more present part of the Internet experience, it is only natural that it finds its way into website advertising.

Brian Ussery, an Atlanta SEOer and blogger, reported last week that Google searchers have broken the three-word search term barrier as of the fourth quarter of 2007. The average query is now four words.
That means a lot to SEOers targeting that long tail of search. It also means (maybe) that, collectively, searchers are becoming a bit more sophisticated in their searching, or at least more specific.

It is definitely time to get creative with the keyword rich content that we use for search engine optimization. There was a time when one or two word terms would have achieved the desired effect; not anymore. We need to start gearing our keyword rich content towards longer search queries. It will take time, it will cost money but in the end, search engine optimization tends to pay for itself.

While paid search is still the top tactic for internet marketers, more competition and higher costs has dampened enthusiasm. However, SEO (search engine optimization) is more popular with marketers because of its lower cost and high returns.
“SEO continues to increase in popularity. Its low costs and high returns make it a leader among more than half (57%) of the marketers surveyed. Those numbers were 45% in 2006 and 33% in 2005.”

Why is Website Search Engine Optimization so Effective?

• Website Search Engine Optimization is relatively cheap and it is possible to supplement material that you produce yourself with outsourced material to great effect.
• Website search engine optimization has an ongoing effect. The changes that you make to your site for website search engine optimization will last as long as your website. Any articles on your website will see benefits conferred for as long as they are there.
• You can do it yourself. While a professional will probably be able to do a better job, there are still some aspects of website search engine optimization that even a novice can manage.

It is hard to know the exact effect that website search engine optimization efforts are going to have on any given site, but if you combine techniques like SEO with social bookmarking, you can see some amazing results relatively quickly.

For the entire year 2007, online ad revenue grew 27 percent year over year to $25.5 billion.

IDC said that Google’s net U.S. market share dropped for the first time in two years because of a slow down in growth in domestic fourth quarter sales. Google’s net U.S. advertising market share decreased 0.5 percentage points to 23.7 percent last quarter compared to 3Q07.

Google still has a commanding lead in Internet advertising, but things at Microsoft are looking up. Microsoft is a relatively new contender in Internet advertising, however, they have managed to wrestle valuable points away from Google of late and should they manage to take control of Yahoo, they will be a force to be reckoned with.

For website marketers, continued growth in Internet advertising tells us two things, there is still some confidence in the market despite an apparently looming recession and that retailers are seeing benefits from their Internet advertising. If people are buying less, that factor is being muted by the fact that more people are researching their purchases over the Internet. While this is not necessarily good news for the economy, it is good news for those of us in our web-based micro-economy. As long as Internet advertising maintains a healthy level, it will be business as usual for website marketers.

Mobilizing your Website Marketing Data
Most people use a spreadsheet application for their record keeping and we are all for that, but did you know that it is possible to backup your spreadsheets with Google Documents? Try it some time, it works quite easily. It is a great way to keep a second copy of all of your website marketing data. I don’t feel Google Documents is at a point where I would bother using them exclusively yet, but they are worth making use of as a backup service.

If you use Firefox, you can make use of the Gspace add-on which allows you to use a Gmail inbox as a hard disk drive. You can use these as a backup hard disk for your website marketing files.

Mail forwarding is a great way to run your communications from the road, should you ever need to. Gmail has a lot of forwarding options that make it a really useful tool. If you are running multiple small websites, it pays to make use of the commercial Gmail services (some of them are still free). These will allow you to have an email address that is registered to your domain name. These Gmail accounts have the same forwarding options as other Gmail accounts. You can set each of them up with a mail client and have them forward to another address. Create a catchall account that all of your website marketing sites can forward to and you will be able to see all of your messages in one location. Gmail is useful in this regard because they offer both POP access and mail forwarding, whereas other free email accounts do not.

Mobilizing your website marketing business is not a whole lot of work, but it will require a lot of different passwords and these can be difficult to keep track of. If you want to keep all of your passwords in one safe, secure location, Roboform Pass2Go allows you to run the popular Siber Systems password manager from a USB key.

A mobile website marketing environment is not for everyone, but having the ability to go mobile should it be required is a great advantage. Whether you wish to relocate, or simply run the office from Starbucks for a couple of hours per day, it is nice to know that you can set up your system for some mobile website marketing action.

There is a range of analysis software that can be implemented and in order to really have a deep look at your site, you are going to need some. Free analytics services probably won’t give you the depth of information you require, but if you do not have much of a budget, they can help. If you do have the money, go for a professional service, you will get a great deal more information.

All websites perform differently, so it is quite difficult to give percentages in relation to website lead generation. The trick to your traffic analysis is not to compare your website to other websites but to compare pages of your website to other pages of your website. You need to identify the paths that people are taking through your site and the pages that they are stopping on when they buy. Your most popular sales pages might not necessarily be resulting in all of that great website lead generation, the path through your site is more likely responsible. You need to identify the paths that people take through your site that lead to sales and find out what pages, if any, are having that increased benefit to your website lead generation.

The next step that you need to take is to identify the paths that are not successful in generating leads. Look very carefully at the pages that are not converting to sales. What is it that makes them a dead end, why are they failing at website lead generation. If you can identify any apparent weaknesses, deal with them.

There are always plenty of new opportunities when it comes to website lead generation. You can identify these opportunities based upon the strengths and weaknesses of your own website and those of others. Check out your successful competitors and emulate what you can. If they have been in business a while, chances are that they are getting the website lead generation side of their website management down.

There are a few things that you need to remember when it comes to building a successful website advertising campaign.

• Set a budget and don’t exceed it. Your website advertising budget should not be a burden to your business. You are spending money to get more business.
• Do your research. You don’t want to pay too much more than the market price for your website advertising and you certainly do not want to pay less.
• Plan a longterm website advertising strategy. Don’t go into a website advertising campaign with a, “how much can I afford this month?” mentality. Have a longterm game plan. You can always alter it should the need arise. You should not be spending as much as you have left each month, as you can always continue the campaign later.
• Support your website advertising campaign with a robust website. There is no point in beginning a website advertising campaign with an incomplete website. Get your website taken care of first.
• Use website advertising in conjunction with organic marketing techniques. There is no point on relying on one or the other.

]]> http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-advertising/website-advertising-do-you-need-it-and-does-it-work/02/10/2008/feed/ http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-search-engine-optimization/website-search-engine-optimization-basics-choosing-keywords/02/09/2008/ http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-search-engine-optimization/website-search-engine-optimization-basics-choosing-keywords/02/09/2008/#comments Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:18:55 +0000 Brick Marketing http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-search-engine-optimization/website-search-engine-optimization-basics-choosing-keywords/02/09/2008/ Keywords are at the heart of keyword rich content and play a big part in website search engine optimization. Choosing the right keywords for your keyword rich content can mean the difference between success and failure in your organic marketing. How does one go about choosing keywords for his or her site and then make use of them in producing keyword rich content? This is the question that we are going to look at today.

Choosing Keywords for Website Search Engine Optimization
Any site can use more keyword rich content. Content writing is not something that is every going to be complete. You are always going to want to cover more keywords and were your keywords ever to be completely covered, you would want to create fresh content for your original keywords anyway. Website Search Engine Optimization is a never ending process thanks largely to the fact that fresher content usually translates into higher search relevance.

• The first step to choosing keywords for website search engine optimization is always to brainstorm. Start thinking of the terms that you would be likely to use to find a website like yours. Type them into your favorite search engine and see if some of your competitors come up. Make a big list of search terms and write them all down.
• Hit up competitors sites and browse their content for keywords that they are using for website search engine optimization. Include any that you do not have on your list.
• Use a keyword research tool like Word Tracker to pick up still more ideas.
• Go through your list and sort it into core and non-core keywords. What I would consider core keywords are the simplest and most obvious searches. These are often the shorter key phrases and one word search terms.
• Now pick a few keywords related to your brand. Such keywords would more likely be business name related rather than topic related.

You should now have a fairly long list of keywords and it is time to start writing. The next stage is to actually write the content that you are going to use for the website search engine optimization of your site. Our next Website Search Engine Optimization Basics article is going to be about that very topic.


]]> http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-search-engine-optimization/website-search-engine-optimization-basics-choosing-keywords/02/09/2008/feed/ http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-search-engine-optimization/website-search-engine-optimization-boost-your-search-relevance-to-increase-your-earnings/02/08/2008/ http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-search-engine-optimization/website-search-engine-optimization-boost-your-search-relevance-to-increase-your-earnings/02/08/2008/#comments Fri, 08 Feb 2008 08:45:04 +0000 Brick Marketing http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-search-engine-optimization/website-search-engine-optimization-boost-your-search-relevance-to-increase-your-earnings/02/08/2008/ We are going to go right back to basics on website search engine optimization here. If you are a seasoned website search engine optimization veteran, you might wish to weigh in with a few of your own ideas.

What is website search engine optimization? The term, “website search engine optimization,” or SEO as it is also known gives you a pretty good clue about what is involved. Website search engine optimization is all about optimizing a website so that it performs better in searches. In order to understand the concept of website search engine optimization, you first need to understand how a website search works.

When you perform a search, you go into Google, type in a keyword or key phrase hit enter and wait for the results. How does a search engine come by those results? Simply put, they index the keywords of many different websites and apply an algorithm. This algorithm determines the relevance of a website to a particular search. The higher the relevance, the higher the website will appear on a list of search terms. With website search engine optimization, you tweak your site to perform better in searches. One way of doing that is with keyword rich content.

Keyword rich content is simply content that is written with a certain keyword or key phrase used throughout. There is quite a large number of companies that make it their business to provide professionally written keyword rich content for the purposes of website search engine optimization. You can either outsource this part of the process, or you can write your own.

Our next Back to Basics article will help you make sense of the keyword selection process, come back tomorrow for more tips on website search engine optimization.


]]> http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-search-engine-optimization/website-search-engine-optimization-boost-your-search-relevance-to-increase-your-earnings/02/08/2008/feed/ http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-search-engine-marketing/boost-your-search-engine-ranking-with-great-articles/02/07/2008/ http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-search-engine-marketing/boost-your-search-engine-ranking-with-great-articles/02/07/2008/#comments Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:31:18 +0000 Brick Marketing http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-search-engine-marketing/boost-your-search-engine-ranking-with-great-articles/02/07/2008/ Writing articles to submit to various sites around the web is a great way to build links to a website and thus improve your search engine ranking. According to an article on SiteProNews:

Not only do you help build backlinks, but you contribute to your community, and make a name for yourself. Don’t write spammy articles, or try to advertise too hard. Make something useful that others will want as content on their own site.

If you are trying to build up a bit of recognition for your site, articles are a fantastic way to do it. In order to get those articles out and start boosting your search engine ranking, there are a few things that you need to do.

• Become a part of the community. The blog world is something of a community and while it is competitive, there still exists an atmosphere of camaraderie. Comment on other people’s blogs, link them to your own blog and send emails. Build your own social links and before too long you will be building those search engine ranking boosting web links that you crave so much.
• Start your own blog and publish regularly. How long does it take to write one or two short blog posts each day? If you get into the habit of it, you can pump them out in ten or fifteen minutes apiece. It helps you build a name and acts as a kind of portfolio for your work.
• Include interesting content. People will be more inclined to publish your work if your own site has interesting content. Building a name and a reputation will help you gain the recognition that you need to get those articles out there.
• Never oversell your product or service. Spammy articles are a real turn off to most people. It is not a good way to get your work published.

Building quality links will help you boost your search engine ranking, but you should be aware that it is a process that can take a great deal of time. You can get there eventually. With a lot of hard work and some careful strategizing, you can have a better search engine ranking.


]]> http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-search-engine-marketing/boost-your-search-engine-ranking-with-great-articles/02/07/2008/feed/ http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-marketing-content/website-marketing-content-and-wordpress-a-winning-combination/02/06/2008/ http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-marketing-content/website-marketing-content-and-wordpress-a-winning-combination/02/06/2008/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2008 05:35:09 +0000 Brick Marketing http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-marketing-content/website-marketing-content-and-wordpress-a-winning-combination/02/06/2008/ Website marketing content providers have long been singing the praises of Wordpress. Wordpress is geared towards our bread and butter, which is helping sites to rank. For a good rundown of exactly what Wordpress does, read the following passage from an article in SiteProNews:

The WordPress blog platform already has strong internal links and produces organic anchor text throughout the pages using breadcrumbs for titles in links in the navigation, deep links (from themed pages to ideal posts) and external links (links from other pages) as a result of your RSS feed.

When combined, these components increase the on and off-page optimization factors that push the sites global keyword density higher (the higher allinanchor relevance a site has the higher the ranking). Even if the blog is a subdirectory, your entire site gets stronger as a result.

Website Marketing Content Writing in Wordpress
How do you write website marketing content for the Wordpress platform? You write it the same way as you write for anything else. The key to writing for Wordpress is drawing a regular audience. You want people to subscribe to your feed and that means that you will need to make your work entertaining. It is a little different to the regular keyword rich website marketing content that most people push out.

As with any website marketing content writing, you want it to be keyword rich, but at the same time you do not want it to seem spammy. You want people to enjoy the content and that can mean making a few sacrifices in relation to keyword density. You can make up for that by producing a lot of material. You do not need to write a tome for every post, two hundred words ought to be enough. If you feel you can go longer, do so, but don’t push it out further than you are comfortable with writing. If you want to push a keyword further, write another post.

Wordpress allows you to make use of a few different features with your website content writing, use them. Use rich text editing functions, if your version of Wordpress does not have them, look them up. There are plenty of Wordpress tags that you can use to give your website marketing content a little more punch. Remember that you are writing website marketing content, not just search engine optimized content.


]]> http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-marketing-content/website-marketing-content-and-wordpress-a-winning-combination/02/06/2008/feed/ http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-branding/yahoo-under-microsoft-what-about-the-brand/02/05/2008/ http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-branding/yahoo-under-microsoft-what-about-the-brand/02/05/2008/#comments Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:06:25 +0000 Brick Marketing http://websitemarketingjournal.com/website-marketing/website-branding/yahoo-under-microsoft-what-about-the-brand/02/05/2008/ There are many people that are wondering what will happen to the Yahoo! brand under Microsoft’s ownership. According to Microsoft, it is not going to go anywhere. “We love the Yahoo! Brand,” says Microsoft, so it looks like it is here to stay. I tend to agree with the analysis of the situation that we see on Web Pro News.

It makes perfect sense. MSN is pretty much a failed shot at creating a Yahoo-type division, with the only successful parts of MSN either being rolled into Windows Live (Hotmail, Messenger) or existing as popular but rudderless content websites. Microsoft has never been good at content, so rolling the content side of MSN into Yahoo will give those sites a future and a more coherent strategy going forward.

Microsoft has enormous brand recognition, they have done very well for themselves in this regard, but it is true that they have failed to create a strong Internet presence. Don’t get me wrong, MSN Live has been growing in leaps and bounds, but it lacks something that the Yahoo! brand captured quite well.

Bringing Yahoo! under the Microsoft helm may in fact strengthen its brand. One thing that has been a constant topic of conversation is Yahoo!’s lackluster marketing techniques. The Yahoo! brand has always been strong, they just never made the most of it. With the deep pockets of Microsoft running the show, things might change and it will be interesting to see how the Redmond behemoth steers the brand into the future.


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