Web Promotion Articles

Good RSS Policies For Your Site

Good RSS Policies For Your Site

 by: John Tulus

As RSS feeds become more popular, everybody has the opportunity of providing dynamic, quality content on their sites. Almost any topic can be presented through an RSS feed. However, there are some considerations to keep in mind in order to optimize your feeds.

Due to the fact that the feeds are automated, you do not have control over the content itself, but over how you present it and the topics that you select for your feeds. The main objective is to present updated news, without having to manually update it all the time.

Remember that although this is content from another site presented on your site, it does not mean that it will take away your originality. You are selecting feeds from different sites on a related topic to present it to your visitors in a summarized and perhaps more organized fashion, related to the main topic of your site.

Some ideas that will help you improve the RSS experience on your site:

1. Make sure your feeds comply with your user’s needs - Remember that you are using feeds to keep your site updated with content automatically. Therefore, make sure that you comply with this objective. If, for example, you are showing the table of contents of a weekly published online Journal, whenever the content changes, so will your feed. Make sure this is what your users expect. If they need access to all the issues, then what you need is a search engine or browser, not an RSS feed. Do not add a new RSS feed for each issue, this defeats the purpose of the automation of the feeds, because you’ll have to manually add feeds each time a new issue is displayed on the original site. RSS feeds are intended to keep our visitors aware whenever something changes on the original content, not of the whole content itself, with all the back issues.

2. Find the appropriate balance in amount of content - Your visitors want a quick idea of what news there is related to a topic, maybe not the whole topic itself. If they want to read about the whole content, the feed will provide them with a link to the site that has the whole article published. Be brief in the amount of information you show, but not exceedingly brief so that the visitor understands what the news is about. On the other hand, if you want to use feeds to populate your site with content, then you will probably lengthen the amount of information to be shown. In both cases, make sure the length of the content complies with your objective.

3. Keep the feed’s topics updated - Although the feeds can update automatically with new content from the original site, you must make sure that the topic itself is updated. For example, if there was an important subject on the news that you wanted to keep your visitors informed about whenever visiting your site, make sure to change the topic when that subject becomes old news.

4. Have a clear objective for the feeds - It’s very important to think about the objective of your feeds before including them on your site. As stated, if you just want to alert your visitors about changes on a certain topic, then perhaps providing just, for example, a table of contents may be enough. On the other hand, if you want to inform them about certain news, the amount of information shown will vary. Knowing exactly what you want to use the feeds for will also help you decide about the styles you will use and the frequency with which you want the feed updated.

In all, RSS feeds have arrived as a perfect solution for many webmasters and website owners. It is a growing tendency that we will probably see a lot for some time to come. If you have already jumped on the RSS bandwagon, keep in mind these simple tips and improve your visitors experience at your site.

Add comment August 26th, 2006

Campaign Strategy for Paid Placement

Campaign strategy for Paid placement:

A Paid Marketing campaigns provides immediate search engines rankings for your most important keywords. It doesn’t determine weather it is a dynamic, static or flash based website. A paid PPC Marketing campaign should be well versed and knowledgeable based marketing that fits your requirements. Your PPC campaign should be unique and designed to your company’s marketing objectives.

Add comment August 26th, 2006

A Naive Mistake Cost Me My Google Rankings

Little do you know but you too could be making mistakes with your website that are costing you your search engine rankings.

Goggle and the other search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to keep pace of search engine spammers. Some novice website owners may be like me and be making big mistakes in the eyes of the search engine bots which will lower their search engine ranking or blot their website right out of existence from everyone except those people that have been given their website URL.

Add comment August 26th, 2006

Dealing With Search Engine Stress In A Home-Based Business

As a member of several search engine optimization forums, I have recently noticed (especially since Yahoo recently decided to try their hand at competing with Google) that the stress level of many webmasters has gone way up. This applies not only to webmasters involved in Internet-based home businesses, but to webmasters in general.

Add comment August 26th, 2006

Ethical Search Engine Optimisation Services: Are You Selecting the Right Keywords?

Ethical Search Engine Optimisation Services: Are You Selecting the Right Keywords?

 by: David Touri

Selecting keywords to drive website traffic to your site is a very crucial point in search engine optimisation. Many people believe selecting keywords with the most searches will get them the desired ranks and traffic they wish to have. Unless you already have a well established website within the search engine ranks, selecting keywords with a high number of searches should be avoided. These sorts of keywords will usually mean that there is a large number of competing pages, which in turn means it will be extremely difficult to achieve high ranks.

Due to a large number of competing pages for generic terms, optimisers should focus on selecting keywords that have a reasonable amount of searches and a minimal amount of competing pages. The key is to focus on a small list of keywords, say 20 to 30, and then once a strong presence has been made for those keywords the list can be expanded to include slightly more generic terms.

Having said that, selecting keywords with less search numbers doesn’t necessarily result in less visitors to your website. Search engine users these days tend to refine their searches to more specific keywords since they are given a broad range of websites when they use the generic terms. For example, if you have people wanting to buy a car, most search engine users will enter the phrase “buy car”. Once they are given a wide range of websites to choose from, they will in most cases change their search to include a car model type. For those who have optimised for the more refined phrases, the more likely they are going to get an interested buyer.

For those of you who are looking for a good keyword tool, Wordtracker and Overture is a good place to start. To determine the number of competing pages for a keyword phrase, enter that phrase into a search engine and look at the number of pages indexed. As a rule of thumb, I always tend to select keyword phrases that have less than a million pages indexed in Google or Yahoo.

With all that in mind, provided you target selected keywords that have a reasonable amount of search numbers and a minimal amount of competing pages along with proper optimisation practices, you should be able to achieve a strong presences in search engines over a period of time.

Add comment August 26th, 2006

Offline Promotion For Tourism Business

Offline Promotion For Tourism Business

 by: Davdi Kan

This artilces has 6 part. Click here if you want to read all: http://www.tourism-internetmarketing.com/offline_promotion/tourism_offline_promotion_davidkan1.htm

Part 1

No business can survive the long run without some form of consistent advertising. As advertising result, most business owners will eventually consider using advertising to promote their business.

Online parties are hot right now. The internet is hot, getting hotter, and the same person that may no pick up the phone to call you for your services, can’t wait to check out your website and see what you are offering before they check in.

Although we focus on internet marketing for our tourism business, but remember that no matter how many prospects are online, they still spend the majority of their time offline, so how you can attract that target market where they spend most of their time offline? Therefore, a part of your online marketing strategy isoffline marketing, in order to find that offline traffic and getting them to our website.

In fact, on many occasions, advertising website marketing budget can be spent just as effectively using offline method as it can be using online methods. Offline marketing method provides a cost effective way to gain new customers, and website branding seems to be much more successful using offline method such as TV and Radio.

OK you’ve ready to do some offline promotion for your website. What’s next?

Think about the “why”. Why do you want to promote offline? Do you want to make sale? Or do you want people to visit you site? Personally, I think getting people to your site is going to be the most realistic objective of most offline promoters.

Think creatively. You’ve known why you are doing it. Now how can you get your URL out to the offline masses in a creative way? Before read the next part of this article, try to build your own list!

Think cheaply. Look for low cost or no cost ways to promote your website offline. They are out there.

Online and offline must be integrated for maximum effect.

Online + Offline = Complete Traffic Building Effort!

Now, we will go across all the helpful techniques which is being used successfully by different tourism - related business in their website offline promotion strategy.

How to choose a Domain Name for offline promotion

Your URL is maybe is most important one demands to promote. The basic rule behind any offline promotion campaign for your website is, of course to get your website visited more often and if your sale message is good enough to get more sales from these extra visitors. This can only be done by getting the address of your site “out there” and visible to lots and lots of people. It’s for the reason that your URL is very important, it’s your core ingredient in the offline world, and the amount of exposure it receives will make or break your offline campaign.

Alan is the lead developer for InfoServe Media, LLC (www.infoservemedia.com), a Web development company that specializes in Web site design, hosting, domain name registration, and promotion for small businesses.

“To begin with, there are two main classes of domain names, gTLDs (general Top Level Domains) and ccTLDs (country code Top Level Domains).

The seven original gTLDs are .com, .net, .org, .mil, .edu, .gov, and .int. As of the writing of this article, seven new gTLDs are in the process of being launched by ICANN, the governing body of TLDs. They are .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro.

The gTLDs were developed to represent specific types of entities, such as commercial organizations (.com), educational institutions (.edu), or cooperatives (.coop).

The ccTLDs were developed to represent entities from specific regions, such as the United States (.us), France (.fr), or Japan (.jp).

In most cases, if you find the right registrar, you can register a domain name with any extension, no matter why you need the name or where you are based.

Does this mean you should though? Unless you need to protect your intellectual property rights in a name, probably not. The best choice by far is a good solid “dot com”.

Why? Because people are familiar with it, and it’s what people associate most with Internet addresses. This is very important in offline advertising, because if a potential customer sees your Web address, he or she will likely have to remember that address when it’s time to pull up the old Web browser to visit the site.

So generally speaking, a domain name ending in .com is most desirable for offline advertising.

Several other important issues to consider are the domain name length, use of hyphens in the domain name, and the name’s overall “readability”.

The domain name length can have a direct impact on how effective that name is at driving traffic to a site. As you can probably imagine, the fewer the characters in a domain name, the better.

The use of hyphens in a domain name can have a negative impact on a name’s effectiveness, so they should be avoided if offline advertising is planned. A name’s readability should also be taken into consideration when planning offline promotions.

Do the words run together confusingly?

Are the letters positioned in such a way that the name might be misread? If so, capitalization can be used in print to eliminate some of the confusion.

So what if you’ve already registered a name and you find another name that you think would work better for offline advertising? That’s simple. Register the new name, and get your host to set up an “alias” that will direct any traffic the new address receives to your existing Web site”.

One thing we must consider is: our website should have a banner (a standard 468×60 or larger banner works best) at the top of every page with your website address clearly visible on it.

The reason behind it is that many prospect prefer to print out larger web pages with your tour itinerary, services list, helpful guidelines and soonand read them later and then keep them for reference rather than read them online as they’re surfing.

They will do the same thing with other website of your competitors, so they often have a list op printed pares to do the comparison. Without your URL on your banner people may reread your content but seldom revisit your website due to them simply forgetting the website address and you may have lost a customer.

You can see my www.tourism-internetmarketing.com banner as a good example.

Read the second part.

http://www.tourism-internetmarketing.com/offline_promotion/tourism_offline_promotion_davidkan1.htm

Add comment August 26th, 2006

Your E-Business Strategy: Is It Love … Or Fear?

I read recently that every human thought originates from either love or fear. The more I thought about it, the more true it became. I began to apply it to business - after all, every business success or failure originates ultimately from human thought. This article examines the effects that love or fear can have on your e-business - is it love, or is it fear, that dominates the way you do business online?

Add comment August 26th, 2006

The Deadly Itch!

It is a story about Manku, a blind man who was lost in a maze of wealth. It is a story about each of us. Read and interpret carefully.

Manku was a poor blind man. He worked very hard to feed his family and himself. After day’s toil everyday he could barely manage to survive. He was a talented man but the man he worked for did not pay him well. Manku never complained but always got sad when he received his monthly wages.

Add comment August 26th, 2006

Cracking the Google Code: Under the GoogleScope

Google’s sweeping changes confirm the search giant has launched a full out assault against artificial link inflation & declared war against search engine spam in a continuing effort to provide the best search service in the world? and if you thought you cracked the Google Code and had Google all figured out ? guess again.

Google has raised the bar against search engine spam and artificial link inflation to unrivaled heights with the filing of a United States Patent Application 20050071741 on March 31, 2005.

Add comment August 26th, 2006

The Secret To Getting Indexed In Yahoo

Getting indexed in Yahoo has become very difficult in the last few months. The indexing robot, Yahoo!Slurp, has become erratic. For some sites, the robot will view all pages, but only add a few to the Yahoo database. For other sites, sub-domain listings actually start disappearing! So, what’s the secret to getting indexed?

Pleasing Yahoo!Slurp

The secret to getting indexed in Yahoo involves constant updates to your site. The updates, however, have to be done on both the site and through Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. Here’s how you go about getting indexed.

Add comment August 26th, 2006