Content is King, Traffic is Supreme

Content is King, Traffic is Supreme - By: Christopher Carter, 2008-05-14
"What should I put on my website?" That is the question I receive mostly from newcomers. The answer is very simple, content. You have to give your visitors and prospects a reason to go to your website, and keep going to your website.

The Content Thou Art King

The website's information; text, images, videos, audio, and other data are the content elements you provide. The flavor of the content should be unique, and entice the visitors to get involved in your website. The style of your writing, content will portray a personality in itself and provide flavor to your website.

For me, I personally write to people the way I talk, simple. I try to use visual references when possible to convey the complex message I want the reader to understand. I can take it up a notch and write in perfect English, and use big words that will bore or even scare my reader/visitor, but that would not be good for business/traffic.

When creating the content, you have to keep in mind the education of your target audience, what their likes and dislikes are AND what would they like to see on your website.

For example, when I look up a word, I use Google to search for the word and then got to a dictionary website to understand the meaning. Now most likely that dictionary website will not have video streaming on using the word, but will have simply what I am looking for, the definition and an example of usage.

That's what I expect, and that's why I usually return to that particular site so I no longer have to use Google because I have found what I am looking for when I need “word help.” I simply bookmark it. The Webmaster of that dictionary site understands what I need, and is able to deliver it. Before you even begin to write content you have to get into the mindset of the targeted user of your site. You have to think like they think; what do they expect, and what can you deliver.

Then create content around that targeted visitor. Create videos, images, audio, text information, news archives, and press release with that perfect visitor in mind.

Caution: a lot of people go off on a tangent since they hear things like "Google sends the most traffic, so I have to create a site Google Likes."

However, the #1 guideline Google gives is:

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

Link: http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings.html

Google focuses on the user rather more than any other variable to guide them when creating great products and/or services. That's exactly what you need for your website. Concentrate on the user’s experience. Giving a user great experience relies on one thing … CONTENT.

If you have unique, and INTERESTING content on your website, that cannot be found elsewhere (unique content) on the Internet, you are winning the competitive battle. Others will attempt to copy you, but as long as you keep innovating, and taking the "Unique-ness", and "Interest-ness" to the next level, the competition will always fall short.

The Traffic Thou Rains Supreme

Traffic is the lifeblood of any site. The easiest way to get traffic is having great content!

Having the #1 spot on Google doesn't do you any good if your website is lacking in interest, and flavor. In fact if you attain a #1 top spot for a high-ranking keyword, it can only be through having great content and valuable information on your site. So great content, the greatest content and the #1 ranking is kind of a self-fulfilling philosophy.

Most traditional traffic comes from Search Engines, and unfortunately a lot of well-meaning gurus tell people to increase their traffic on search engines as if it is the be all and end all of traffic online. It's not.

• Traffic can come from anywhere and everywhere. Traffic can come from web 2.0 sites like Digg.com, Del.icio.us, or StumbleUpon.com. These sources can be intense on some days and mediocre on others. But when it hits, it hits hard. Despite the daily gyrations, generally you will usually see a steady stream of traffic monthly from this type of traffic.

• Traffic can comes from Blog comments that you posted on other people's blogs. Backlinks, or even the nofollow links, still allow people that read the comment the opportunity to go to your site. They are more likely to follow your link if you say something interesting.

• Traffic can come from participating in forums, or online chats that allow you to put your website as a link in your signature and/or profile.

• Traffic can come from Yahoo Answers, a place where people can go to ask questions of experts in the industry. Register as an expert and give your 2 cents. I believe Google has Answers too.

• Traffic can come from YouTube (tons of it), Metacafe, and other online video sites. If you have a tutorial video for example of your services, post it up on the video site, and put a link in the description of it to attract more visitors. Also add a watermark and place the URL in the beginning and ending of your video. The amount of traffic you see will vary but if your subject is viral, you can see visitors topping 100,000 a day, if DONE RIGHT.

• Traffic can come from RSS feeds of your content to RSS aggregators, like Google's BlogSearch. RSS feeds are another great subject that can be like steroids to a website's traffic.

• Traffic is endless and it is infinite. In my opinion, it is a good strategy to keep your traffic from one source always under 40%. For example Google, the Big G, is sending you more than 40% of your traffic; you have to decrease it by increasing the other sources of traffic you get. Now I don't mean reject Google traffic, but always trying to supplement it. But if you know you know how all of this works together, you will say, wait, if I increase my backlinks, YouTube videos, etc, that will give me a higher PageRank and increase the Google traffic even more. Yep, it’s a hell of a snowball affect; just make sure you continue increasing other sources of links, and you will not be at the mercy of 1 source of traffic.

Ying Yang

Content and Traffic are like Ying and Yang; one cannot exist without the other. If you solely concentrate on traffic, you will find out that you can gain 1,000 visitors an hour, but most will leave within 1 minute, since your content is lackluster. But on the other hand, if you have great content, traffic will flow like a river.

My suggestion is to use 80% of your energy on creating great content and 20% on driving traffic. The reason; traffic is the easiest thing in the world to get … a couple thousand directories links, article submissions, video submissions, web 2.0 bookmarks, and bam easy 2,000 visitors a day. But without the great content, you will be wasting your time as visitors leave in droves. Obviously this depends on your industry as a whole, and the length of time it takes for you to generate all the great content you have.

So, Content is King, Traffic is Supreme! Creating unique content and expand your exposure on the Internet, and you will do great!

Optimum7.com is an Internet Marketing Company with primary focus on Small and Mid-Sized Enterprises (SME’s). Optimum7.com offers a rich consultative approach that our clients find refreshing. We actually listen to our clients to learn exactly what their problems and objectives are. Content is King, Traffic is Supreme.

Success Stories in Business

- By: Vivek B, 2008-04-11

Can you imagine a business reaping success from the day it started? Most of us aim for this ideal scenario but it takes long term commitment to the business to get appreciation from the people which make it a success. Nobody can predict that a small idea can take over the entire stake in an Industry where existing businesses are failing. There are many examples of ventures that gave this world a lateral way of thinking but one such business idea inspires us to write of its success.

In 1980, in the city of Mumbai (India’s business capital), an idea changed the way of thinking of moderately educated people in doing business, the trend called – “Dabbawallas’. The idea of delivering a Tiffin Box within the highly populated Mumbai Suburb at peak hours with accuracy is acclaimed by many successful organizations. The Dabbawala (one who carries a Tiffin box), is on average an Indian man educated till only 8th grade in school. His task involves delivering fresh food to offices during Lunch and Dinner hours. His error rate is 1 in 16 million transactions, giving Six Sigma performance without technological backup. Surprisingly the turnover of the organization is approximately INR 50 Crore Per Annum. The organization is noted by “Guinness Book of World Records”, “Ripley’s Believe it or not” for the World record in best time management. (source: www.mydabbawala.com)

On the other end of India’s social scale, there are people with technical knowledge, management skills and university degrees who have created several successful companies from the ground up. Naukri.com, Subhiksha Retail, Globals Inc. and CalvinKare are to name a few.

Naukri.com the premier job portal in India was founded by a graduate without any business background, Sanjeev Bikhchandani. In the late 90’s, Sanjeev grabbed the opportunity of making available job appointments online for job seekers and employers, at a time when the only medium for such appointments were Newspaper or Print media. The long struggle and exhaustive utilization of resources paid up, resulting in the company now being listed in the Stock Exchange.

CavinKare (‘CK’) is renown in India for its variety of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG). The chairman and MD, C. K. Ranganathan showed the world that it is possible to beat the multinationals in the exhaustive market of FMCG. The concept of sachet packaging introduced in a product range like talcum powder and shampoo attracted its own audience and market. The “Chick Shampoo” brand became a grand success in both rural and urban India. In Tamil “Cavin” signifies beauty and grace, as do the rest of India’s ‘CK’ Brands. The business started in a small village of Tamilnadu, with initial investment of Rs.15000 that is worth Rs.500 Crore (Rs.5 billion) today.

Subhiksha, India’s largest retail chain was created by a graduate from IIT Madras (now Chennai) who acted against his family’s advice by deciding to stay in his home country to start a business, rather than immigrate to the US. R. Subramaniam, MD of Subhiksha Retail started his retail business in the 90’s with the motto “why pay more when you can get it for less at Subhiksha?” Keeping the business local by employing management regionally and running the business according to local trends, specific to the region has proved to be a successful model for Subhiksha, which now has 500 plus stores across India.

So, at what age should you start your own business? This question is answered differently by all entrepreneurs but when a 13 year old boy launched his first website and started his own company aged 14, most opinions have no meaning.

Suhas Gopinath, fascinated by the Internet in the 90’s launched his first website “coolhindustan.com” aged 13. At 14 years of age, Network Solution, a company in San Jose, Silicon Valley invited this talent to join their team. Suhas declined the job offer and decided to become his own boss but faced many obstacles due to his age factor. He successfully registered his company Globals Inc in San Jose which specializes in Web Design and Software. Today the ‘Boss’ is 21 and employs a team of around 400 people of the same age group as himself. Globals Inc has 200 customers across the world. Suhas is recognized as the Worlds youngest CEO in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Such stories will continue for Indian entrepreneurs as the Indian economy proves favorable for business start-ups. So if you have an Idea, just explore it, who knows, you could top India’s list of achievers and successful businesses.

pitchINDIA.com is an online business introductory service which connects global angel investors and VCs to entrepreneurs in India. Looking to invest in India? Visit: Pitch India. You can reach the author at vivek@pitchindia.com

How To Market Your Business With The Free Facebook Friend Adder

By: Yomi A

Out of all the possible social networks online, Facebook is the best when it comes to overall marketing and networking. Facebook offers a good mixture of person and professional networking in one website. Facebook is becoming the goto website for communicating with peers and keeping in touch with family and friends.

We are going to show you some ways to use the Free Facebook Friend Adder to promote your business or product to your friends or peers without spending a whole lot of money in the process.

A completed profile will leave a lasting impression to your audience. Part of your image and persona is projected through your profile. Make sure to include things like your photo, website or email address, contact information, your personal hobbies or interest, education and professional background, etc. Having a completed profile on Facebook gives a full impact and is the best way to go.

Establish a community of friends on Facebook by adding friends into your network. Facebook has tools you can use to promote yourself or communicate with your network of friends. One popular tool is Free Facebook Friend Adder. You can add friends to your growing network, communicate by sending messages or leaving messages on a friends wall. The beauty of Facebook is that it is a great platform for building relationships and growing a personal network of friends and peers.

You can make a lot of contacts by either joining a group or creating one. If you join a group, make sure they are groups that you have a particular interest in or is closely associated with your niche market in your business. If you create a new group, be sure to invite your friends to the group and offer information that is beneficial to the group.

Show your peers and friends that you are a leader in your niche by starting a group. Invite your friends and peers, then have discussions on the topics you should know a lot about. Submit articles, tools, and anything that is beneficial to the group that adds value. This also helps to establish your credibility in your field.

Synicate your personal blog on your Facebook profile. Using RSS feeds you can make post to your blogs and it will auto-magically show up on your Facebook profile page. This will increase your exposure, which in turn will increase your viewers. We hope that this will eventually lead to more business.

Facebook is a great place to network and meet a lot of people. Make sure to use the tips we mentioned in this article. In addition using the Free FaceBook Friend Adder software, will automate your process for adding friends and sending messages. It's a win win marketing strategy that translates to increase business and newly acquired customers.

Article Directory: Article Wisdom


Yomi A is a freelance home business writer for Facebook Blaster Pro. Facebook Blaster Pro offers a trial facebook friend adder to web users looking to automate friend requests, send comments,wall poster, and pokes in Facebook.

Boost your growth with accounting outsourcing in India

- By: Michelle Barkley, 2008-04-07

Nowadays, one can hardly find a business organization or any company that is making profits without the assistance of outsourcing services. As a matter of fact, in this highly combative society, it has become completely impossible for an organization to even survive in the market without taking help from outsourcing companies. This scenario has been developed, because the outsourcing services are one great resource of gaining quality work in due duration at reasonable price. And by now, the provision of outsourcing has been widely accepted by the entire industrial and development fraternity. Every company is seeking this assistance to give new dimensions to their work strategy and progress rate, which in turn has augmented the demand of outsourcing services, especially in the field of accounting. Accounting is undoubted a laborious and grueling job, where no compromises can be made with the efficiency and quality of the work. Therefore, this huge demand is greatly satiated by the facilities of accounting outsourcing in India.

Let us now focus on the issue that why only India has gained this supremacy of the most favored outsourcing services provider. As we know that every organizations works on the economic theory of optimum utilization of resources to ensure the highest rate of productivity. However this theory loses its value when the internal resources of a company are inefficient and less qualified. And this sort of incompetence has led the emergence of outsourcing, which is nowadays is mostly served by India. One can state that accounting outsourcing in India has series of reasons for its well establish position . First of all, the huge manpower is its biggest support. Many well qualified accounting experts are getting seriously involved in this profession. Secondly, the charges quoted by the Indian outsourcing firms are superbly affordable and economic. Thirdly, the work performance is marvelous and the professionals are well acquainted with the value of time. Another most lucrative feature available with accounting outsourcing in India, that makes it different from the other countries is its utilization of English language. Therefore, accounting outsourcing in India has claimed an indispensable position in the competition.

By selecting India as your outsourcing channel, you actually open yourself to a plethora of beneficial aspects. India is full of valid attributes and has the capability of convincing the client easily for getting associated with it. Accounting outsourcing in India sincerely suit all the requirements and demands of a business organization developing in any part of the world. Right from the appropriate standard of work performance to the charges quoted by such outsourcing firms, everything appears compatible with the requirements of the client.

However, one can not neglect the existence of fraudulence and forgery in this field. Therefore, before taking any accounting outsourcing service, it is almost ineluctable for a company to make some essential research and inquiries regarding the nature, work efficiency and reliability of the firm. All this information can be easily gained through the personal websites of these services providers and from their previous clients and projects, so that you can make a wise decision for receiving fruitful results. Accounting outsourcing in India has given a new direction to the mechanism of the companies.

Michelle Barkley is a CPA who advises people on tax preparation and tax calculation.She specializes in finance accounting outsourcing,Tax return outsourcing,back office outsourcing and Accounting business outsourcing process.To know more accounting outsourcing service,Bookkeeping outsourcing visit IFR World

Ways of Successful Internet Marketing

- By: Rajeev Guglani, 2008-03-24

In order to succeed online there are different ways of Internet marketing to achieve your Web Promotion Goals and objectives. As online presence is becoming quite necessary in the recent times, it has become very necessary to accomplish these goals. The general tasks for Successful online marketing campaign include following task:-

First of all you need to create a quality website or get it created by experts. An attractive website will attract the visitors to browse through your website thus resulting substantial amount of traffic. The website should have proper navigation structure, sitemap, an attractive design and quality content.

Write quality articles for your website. Circulate this article in article directories and also make it available on your website. The more your content travels online, the better it is for promotion aspects. The article must be related to the theme and keyword of website. Article helps in generating more visitors for your website and increase in back links.

Do submissions in quality directories to get the back links. Place links in other websites, blogs and forums. This practice will again get more visitors for your internet business.

Another step of quick internet marketing is email marketing. With a single go you can reach vast segment of people.

Other source which you can not ignore is Search Engine Marketing. You can effectively place your business on internet and generate more visitors. With it online internet campaign becomes easy. It gets you those visitors who search in the search engines on the basis of the keywords, product, business and services. So define relevant keywords for your website, look at the search term and business aspect for those keywords. Use of right keywords increases the searching probability for your website.

Another way is online Advertising and PPC ads. You can use banner ads, pop ups to display your products and services for online advertising. This attracts people attention very fast and result in more business generating queries and leads. You can place PPC ads in different websites for your products and services. As it is fast in result getting you can use it for quick internet marketing.

In the recent past the amount and the time spent by companies for achieving successful online goals has increased a lot. It is due to the cut throat competition of business websites in the World Wide Web. It is observed nowadays that big businesses and giants must have web interface. So the number of websites on the World Wide Web has increased a lot and with this the activities and tasks for achieving successful Internet Campaign has become quite necessary.

Rajeev Guglani Writes Articles for SEO.He has vast exposure in writing for Search Engine marketing.He is working for NDDW.For Search Engine Marketing,Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing visit www.nddw.com

Google Optimization in the SEO Process

. - By: Rajeev Guglani, 2008-03-24

Google optimization is one of the most critical factors for search engine optmisation campaign. Google is above all the search engines. Google is based on the key factors as the Google page rank, the renowned Google sand box and inbound links.

Google optimization depends on the three key factors, Google page rank, Google sand box and the inbound links. In the process of optimizing a website you should always see the inbound links pointing to your website domain and pages. Google makes all the difference with the quality of one way inbound links. So you should concentrate on getting quality inbound links for your website. This can be done by article writing, buying links and link exchanges. With the quality inbound links your page rank will increase by itself.

The effect of Google sandbox is on the new domain names and holds them in a filter. Generally all domain names are not held in the filter. Normally by using competitive keywords, adding relevant content and linking external sites to yours can get you out of the Google sand box. One needs to keep patience in such a situation and keep on working according to Google guidelines.

There are certain guidelines for Google optimization.

• Always defining a clear navigation structure for the website. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
• Create a sitemap to your users with links that point to all parts of your site. Create a useful, information-rich site with pages that clearly and accurately describe the content about your services.
• Add the words in the content users would type to find the pages.
• Always try to use alt text instead of images to display important keywords, contents or links.
• Make sure that your title and alt tags are relevant, descriptive and accurate.
• Keep the links on your pages to less than 100. Get other relevant sites link to yours. Manually submit your site to directories and search engines.
• Submit your site to Google. http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
• Submit an xml site map file at Google webmaster tools. Google uses sitemap file to learn about the structure and coverage of your site.
• Submit your site to relevant directories such as open directory project and yahoo directory as well as to other industry specific expert sites.
• Upload the robot.txt file on your web browser. This file tells crawlers which directories can or can not be crawled.
• Use robot.txt to prevent crawling of search result pages or other auto generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines.
• Make pages for users, not for search engines.
• Avoid “doorway” pages with little or no original content.

Some of the don’ts for Google optimization are.

• Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
• Don't link to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking and PR may be affected adversely by those links.
• Never participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or Page Rank.
• Don't use hidden text or hidden links on your site.
• Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Never send automated queries to Google.
• Don't create multiple pages, sub domains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. This may get your site black listed in Google.
• Don't create pages that install viruses or Trojans.
• Do not use unethical tricks to improve search engine rankings
• Don not see any broken links and see site html is correct.
• Try not to use “?” character in dynamic pages.
• Do not use JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash as search engine spiders. This may search engine spiders create trouble crawling your web site.

Rajeev Guglani writes articles for SEO. He has vast exposure in writing for Search Engine marketing. He is working for NDDW. For web site promotion, Search Engine Optimization and Google Optimization visit www.nddw.com

Real Estate Website Traffic - SEM -

By: Andy Steuer, 2008-03-24

Search Engine Marketing: Drawing traffic to your real estate website

What is search engine marketing (SEM)? and why it's important for getting ahead of your competition in real estate marketing.

1. Sponsored (paid) listings are a great way to get fast visibility on the major search engines. Also called pay-per-click, (PPC) sponsored listings are those that show up at the top of search engines such as Google in a blue box or in a column along the right side of the page. These results are clearly labeled "Sponsored listings." The more popular the keyword, the more paid listings come up.
2. Lead tracking can help your real estate business become stronger by attracting quality leads. Lead tracking brings both short- and long-term benefits to your company - giving you instant access to information about each sales prospect while also helping to streamline and manage the sales process.
3. Email marketing is the icing on the SEM cake - it impresses your prospects by allowing you to send them valuable information on the market and it helps you to stay fresh in their minds.
4. Third-party SEM providers can take the mystery and work out of effective marketing. If you do not have the time to do a comprehensive SEM campaign, or you simply want to spend less time on the Internet and more time with your customers, you can go through a third-party provider to run your SEM campaign for you.

But before you start your campaign, you have some work to do.

Targeting your customers

Most likely, you know yourself and your business pretty well. But have you ever sat down and wrote out lists of words and phrases that other people might use to describe you? Probably not - but now is the time to do it.

Even if you're using a third-party provider, you need to know who your potential customers are to a T. What are they looking for and why would they want to use you to help them buy or sell their home?

All aspects of real estate search engine marketing - sponsored listings, lead tracking, and email marketing - rely on keywords in one way or another to work.

Keywords are key to SEM

What are keywords, and where should they go in your site? Keywords are simply, well, key words that determine which category your site will be listed under in search engines and directories. In terms of sponsored listings, the keywords you choose to bid on will determine where your ads show up.

You have to figure out what words and phrases home buyers and sellers are potentially going to use to find you, determine which are the most important to your business, then use them accordingly.

Your website will attract more hits if you spend some time doing this seemingly mundane, but extremely important, job. There are just a few simple guidelines for an effective keyword plan, but they do take some time to do well.

Brainstorming your Keywords

Take an hour or so to sit down and write every single imaginable word that someone might use to find your real estate service. For example, if you specialize in high-end new constructions in the Los Angeles area, you may come up with the following:

* Luxury Brentwood homes
* Upscale Los Angeles real estate
* Best neighborhoods Los Angeles

However, not everyone who is looking for "upscale Los Angeles real estate" will come up with that phrase. So you need to think about every conceivable term that they might use to describe the same thing. Such as:

* West Side Homes
* Luxury condos
* Southern California real estate
* Full service brokerage
* Mansions Beverly Hills
* Best schools Los Angeles
* And on and on...

The important thing to remember in brainstorming is that you should try to think of what you would look for, and branch out from there. The more specific your keywords are - the better. It's best to come up with 40-50 keywords and phrases, and then narrow them down to the top 20 absolute most effective. The more specific you are, the better your chances are of having words that differ from your competition. Remember, in Pay-per-click, the more popular a keyword is, the more expensive it is.

If you really are at a loss for relevant keywords, try using Wordtracker - a site that suggests and evaluates the keywords most relevant to your business.

Once you have a solid list of keywords and keyword phrases, you can use that information to build other aspects of your SEM campaign, including lead tracking.

Beyond keywords - creating a better business focus

Aside from drawing traffic to your sponsored listings and real estate lead tracking efforts, brainstorming keywords has an added benefit - giving you more focus in your real estate business.

Times are changing in the real estate business. Models that worked for you in 2003 may not work in 2006. The more you can specialize your services and differentiate yourself from the herd, the better. Creating keyword lists can lead to all kinds of unexpected new ideas for selling your services. You might come up with a new idea for an email marketing campaign, or a better way of attracting hard-to-reach leads and thus bring more real estate traffic to your real estate website.

For example, say you come up with the keyword phrase "retirement homes." You then do a little research and discover that many baby boomers are looking for homes that are smaller, but still have luxurious details. You could then use that information to write an email about how smaller homes are fast becoming the size of choice for many retirees. You never know what keywords will spark a new idea, so be open-minded!

Learn More

Homeseekers is one of the largest variety of homes for sale

About the author:
Andy Steuer is the Founder and CEO of Fidelity Assets, a real estate marketing company helping real estate agents and brokers generate real estate leads.

Finally a global website where you can rate people's profiles and photos

- By: Mistina Thomson, 2008-03-17

When you visit Popularin you will be welcomed by a very non-complicated
interface. Get started right away by clicking the registration link,
where you can quickly fill in you details like name, location and email.
After that simply upload up to five of your best photographs. Once you
have registered on the site you are ready to rate and get rated
yourself!

Due to PopularIn.com's innovative content it is has become very
popular, and it is visited by thousands of people of different nationalities
every single day. What is the key to their success?

It is of course their unique way of mapping wheer in the world people
are popular.

After a while you can check out on the site how popular you are in
different countries. The five top countries in which you are popular are
displayed while one country in which you are not popular at all is also
displayed. In case you become very popular with the support of the
people, your name could be displayed in the ten most popular people in a
particular region. For example, Popularin displays the top ten people in
Asia, Americas, Europe, etc. You can also check out how many members
have cast their votes for you.

You can even edit your profile whenever you want to and you can also
add more of your favorite photographs as photos are the main constituent
on which the members will rate you. In case you want to have a quick
look in countries or regions that you are most popular, the site will
simply create a map of you showing where exactly you find the favor of the
people. All regions in which you are popular are shown in a nice red
color.

So what are you waiting for? Join Popularin today and embark on a
journey to learn how people percive you around the globe. You may be
surprised that your own popularity is so dependent simply on where you live!
Strut your best photo on the net and you never know what might happend.
And finally, on the start page you can see which nationallity is most
popular in the entire world, and which is the least popular! Sign-up
now!

Mistina Thomson is the author of this article on how to find popular nationalities. Please visit popularin for more information.

Writing Effective Web Content

- By: Akhil Shahani, 2008-03-15

So, you’ve got this great business idea which needs an information rich portal to support it. As erstwhile editor of the school mag, you fancy your chances of putting together some creative writing as web content. Right? Wrong, we say! Writing for the Web is quite different from writing for print publication. Why is it so? Mainly because of the way readers access and read information on the net.

People use the Internet mainly to find information, not to read it. People who read printed books expect a linear progression from one chapter to another, and are used to long pages of text. However, when they access the web for information, their expectations are very differ¬ent. Users tend to scan text on screen, pick keywords, sentences, and paragraphs of text. They do not want to see excessively heavy web content.

Visitors to a website read slower off the computer screen compared to when they read from a piece of paper. Large blocks of text, is therefore, unsuited to this media. Also, when large quantities of written matter take time to download, visitors are easily bored, or worse, scared off.

You should keep these differences in mind when creating the content for your business website. The first step in the writ¬ing process is audience profiling - know who you are writing for and what their preferences are. Understand your audience and write for them.

To make your life easier and your website more productive, we have put together the 5 most important guidelines for creating effective web content:

Be concise: Write only half of what you would for a print publication. Keep the pages short to avoid having to scroll down the screen. Long, flowing text is not suitable for on-line delivery. Get the users’ attention with clear, concise writing. Avoid "marketese" - using buzzwords and extravagant adjectives. Keep promotional writing within reasonable limits.

Write for scannability: Make your pages easy to skim through and locate the key points of interest. Use the "inverse pyramid" structure - write the major points at the beginning, and larger chunks of information under subtopics. Write topics so that they can be read in any order. Break up the information into smaller and easily readable pieces. Use headings, lists and colored text to draw the viewers’ attention.

Let the users choose: Most important, leave the choice to the reader. Let them decide how much information they need. Provide hypertext links for longer, more detailed pages. Express just one main idea under each topic. Eliminate unnecessary information and provide links to related topics, which can be accessed at will. Explain where the link will take them and what it contains so that the users can judge for themselves. Let your visitors go where they want to, when they want to.

Make it personal: The web is a very impersonal environment and many people are quite intimidated by it. Write in a friendly tone, but do not talk down to your audience. Try to keep your writing style approachable and credible in order to encourage users to trust you and therefore purchase from you.

Edit and review content: Your web site is only as good as the content that is on it. Review it periodically to make necessary changes and remove old, outdated information. Proofread! Proofread! Proofread! to avoid those irritating typos.

Concise writing, information chunking, and hyper linking to more detailed information will help you deliver good, readable on-line content that will sustain the user’s interest. And that’s the key to effective web content.

Hi, I'm Akhil Shahani, a serial entrepreneur who wants to help you succeed. If you like to work smart, check out Smart Entrepreneur . It's full of articles and resources to help you start and grow your business successfully.

Increase your web traffic!!

- By: Mistina Thomson, 2008-03-15

Getting your website in the faces of those on the internet! PEOPLE
MAKING A LIVING ONLINE!

Super Users! Don’t under estimate this group. They can reach 1000’s
in a minute!

Let’s now discuss some of the ideas for the promotion of your website.

First, Websites out there that pay user to surf, click, read, and
promote. I say AutoSurf Exchanges; of course I own 4 of them? Sure… but
think about the activity that surrounds using these types of advertising
venues. Starting, stopping, checking the surf bar (that credits the
member) EVERY DAY! Checking if the surf timer is still running occurs
frequently. Your website (or capture page) is bound to be seen… a full
PAGE view, not a PopUp, PopUnder, Pop etc., Not links sitting in a
corner, etc.! Next, the uniqueness of the traffic sent has to be counted.
1000’s of unique IP addresses from all around the world, once again
daily! The days of ‘limited bandwidth’ is dead, if your site has
limited bandwidth capabilities… don’t ever dream of ever topping the internet
search engines, or even making it online. Remember, as of March 2008,
there are 8 plus billion websites and growing. It’s a race.

Second, you can offer your visitors a free-bie such as an e-Book or may
be free software that can be downloaded from your website or directly
to him to a vendor of whom you are an affiliate.

The most important part is the content, in other words you can say that
Content is King. So try and have excellent content related to the
theme of your site and update them regularly. Provide unique information
and resources for which your visitor should be ever grateful to you. It
should be easy to read and understand with no grammatical mistakes and
spelling errors. If the visitors are happy they will hang around and
explore your site further.

Provide opportunities to submit articles and also their websites to a
very easy to use link directory thus getting them more involved with
your website.

Your website should carry a Professional appearance. It should be
perfect with respect to design, content and display of advertisements as it
will motivate the visitor to remain longer.

Well Social Media marketing through social book marking and social
networking can also be the two effective ways for website promotion.

You can use articles as free advertising. These are often more
effective than ads as people will be more inclined to read an article rather
than an ad.

And to increase the rank of your page it is important to build up the
number of backward links your website. You can do this by e-mailing
other websites preferably in the same business sector as your own and
asking if they would be willing to swap links with your site.

You can also set up a small Site blog as it is a good way to build a
regular flow of traffic to your website(s).

Here are some of the basic important things to remember when promoting
your website.

1) Make sure you have some unique content in your website as nobody
wants to read the same old stuff.
2) Writing articles is another new trend these days so as to promote
the website and also it helps you gain the backward links.
3) You should always keep an eye and update your website with all the
latest happenings and unique content, to avoid your website from
becoming stale.
4) Directory Submissions - targeted links at high PR directories
5) Blog and Forum Postings - to high PR and frequently crawled sites
6) Social Book-marking
7) Classified Ads
8) Article Marketing - submit to high PR directories, could also serve
as link baits
9) Link Exchange - with relevant sites authority sites

And if you’re determine to do any of this, it’s not that difficult, and
if you learn how to advertise and promote your website it’s to your
best advantage, you will make a massive difference to your traffic flow,
in turn equals more sales.

Steven Dill is the author of this article on Website Promotion. He has spoken about website visitors and different features of website promotion and free advertising. Visit eCashTraffic for more information