Ray's Blog at webhosting-123.com

Traffic Exchanges can work for you, if you know how to use them

Ray — Wed, 09 May 2007 20:38:00 GMT

Quite a few people I know in the Internet Marketing sector utilize the services of Traffic Exchanges. Many of these people will tell you that Traffic Exchanges work for them, while others say they don't. The fact that literally tens of thousands of people use them should be an indication of their value. The secret, of course, is understanding why they work for some people and why they don't for others is critical. Like any advertising strategy, TEs require an understanding of how they are used. If you want to be successful with your use of Traffic Exchanges, you have to consider the demographics of those who use them.

Traffic Exchanges rotate the pages of their members for other members of the TE to view. This is generally referred to as "surfing". A particular page will display in the surf rotator for 15-30 seconds, depending on the particular exchange. By surfing (i.e., viewing) the pages of other members, you earn credits for your own site(s) in the rotation.  Those who don't want to spend time surfing you can purchase credits, but in most cases members surf the TE in order to obtain credits to put their sites in rotation.

Keeping in mind that your own pages will be displayed to members for a limited 15-30 second interval, the key is to get your message out there quickly and often. Consider as you drive along a highway with billboards on the side of the road. Most times you will either ignore these billboards, or only get a brief glimpse of them. Successful billboard campaigns don't have reams of information on them. Rather, they give us a "quick hit" message. Since people are driving by these billboards rapidly, it just isn't practical to load them up with information that people won't have time to read. The whole idea is to provide a glimpse of the product or service; just enough to register in the person's consciousness as they drive along. Do you know anyone who actually stops along the side of the road to read a billboard? TE's work the same way.

Successful billboard campaigns also use repetition. If someone sees the same billboard several times as they drive, they will eventually become curious about the product or service. It becomes a subliminal thing. One lone billboard on one highway is unlikely to produce results. Putting your site in rotation 5-10 times isn't going to work either. Repetition, repetition, repetition!! That is a classic theory of any advertising campaign.

The most effective approach to success with Traffic Exchanges is the use of Splash Pages. Like a billboard, a splash page gets your message out quickly.  An effective splash page should fit completely into the surf window of the TE. The reality is, most people are just not going to scroll down a lengthy page. They are trying to accumulate credits for their own sites and in most cases they aren't going to take time away to read lengthy text

Your splash page should be attractive, and designed to grab someone's attention. But it shouldn't be so loaded with graphics or Flash that it takes too long to load into the surf frame. Remember, you are on a 15-30 second timer. If your page takes too long to load, the surfer will likely hit "Next" before your page is even seen.

Your splash page should give the surfer the option of clicking your link and opening it in a new window. That way, if they are interested they can come back later to check it out without interrupting their surf session.

Likewise, if your objective is to develop a mailing list for a product or service, make it short and to the point. Give a brief description of the product along with a quick email signup form. As before, this should all display within the surf frame to the extent possible.

I have seen numerous pages in a surf rotation that display the actual product site. In most cases, these are filled with text and links for FAQs, member information, and so on. That just won't work with TEs in the vast majority of cases. Most people aren't going to take the time to read through all of that while surfing. Think about it from your own perspective. If you are surfing a TE do you really take the time to read the lengthy pages that come up? Most surfers don't either.

One of the approaches that seems to be in vogue in the Internet Marketing sector is the narrow sales page that seems to go on forever describing the product, freebies, testimonials, and so on. I never bother to read these. Unless you are a well-known "guru", it's unlikey anyone will read such pages in a TE. It may work for the gurus because of their name recognition, but it doesn't work in most other cases. The truth is, many people will buy from one of the so-called gurus without even reading the entire text. I may not like that, but it's the way it is.

Most Traffic Exchanges allow one "popup" or "pop-under" page attached to your main rotation page. I'm not a big fan of these. My feeling is, if you can't get the message across with your main page, the popups aren't going to help, and in many cases, they are just annoying and counterproductive. As for the TE sites that allow multiple popups, I won't use them. Period. If you really want to add a popup to your site, go ahead, but consider their effectiveness versus the aggravation factor for surfers. Again, consider your own tendencies. Do you really like all those popups when you are surfing?

Many pages in rotation also include audio and/or video. In my view, these are just another nuisance. I consider myself a fairly typical TE surfer. I willing to bet I'm not the only one that turns off the sound on my PC before I start a surf session.  Audio/video can also cause the page to load slower, which in turn means the surfer will often hit "Next" before the page has fully loaded. Use audio/video if you must, but I am likely to ignore the site and just wait for the opportunity to go to the next page.

In summary, if you want to successfully use the services of TEs, use splash pages. Make your message quick and catchy. Give the surfer the opportunity to open the page in a new window so it can be more thoroughly checked out after the surf session is finished. Don't make your pages so long no one will bother to read them, or they don't fully load in the time allotted. Your potential customers in a TE are driving by a highway billboard. Get their attention quickly, and don't annoy them.

http://www.redhotclicks.com

Submitting Your Site to Search Engines

Ray — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 12:53:38 GMT

BR>

Once you have done everything you can for Search Engine Optimization, it’s time to actually start submitting your site for inclusion. You have three options: manually submit your site to each of the search engines, mass submission, or pay one of the numerous companies who will do it for you.

Manual submission doesn’t cost you a dime. Manual submission is a bit tedious, but it doesn’t actually take that long. You can submit to the top 15-20 search engines in about 30 minutes.

Since time is money, I prefer mass submission. All it takes is a few simple clicks and you’re done. There are a number of web sites where you can mass submit to 20-30 of the search engines for free.

The other way to do mass submissions is to use a product such as Traffic Blazer. That is what I use and I absolutely love it. With a few simple clicks, Traffic Blazer will submit your site to approximately 50 search engines. It will also submit them to the Internet Directories and regional Directories, as well as the blog directories when that is appropriate. Traffic Blazer provides submission reports that tell you where the submission was accepted and where it wasn’t. With a few simple clicks, you can resubmit your site every few months.

Traffic Blazer will also give you page ranking reports, link popularity (backlinks) and more. It will provide you a pre-submission site analysis to let you know if there are any potential problems with your site. Traffic Blazer costs $20/year and is well worth it in my opinion.

Your third option is to pay one of the many online companies that will do site submission for you. The free submission sites typically offer a fee-based upgrade path as well. Before you go this route, let’s consider what you are actually paying for.

The free submission sites, along with Traffic Blazer, will submit your site to all the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, AltaVista, Lycos, et cetera). When you encounter a pay for submission service, they will offer to submit your site to 100,000 to 300,000 search engines. Sounds impressive right?

Let me ask you a question. How many search engines can you actually name? 10? 20? Did you know there were 300,000 search engines, or more? Should we care?

It’s your decision to make, but personally, if my site doesn’t get listed in JoesWannaBeSearchEngine.com in Botswana, I’m not going to lose any sleep.

"Hits" Don't Always Translate to Sales.. Get MEANINGFUL Traffic to Your Site!

Ray — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 12:54:38 GMT

For those of you who frequent the Internet Marketing forums as I do, one of the most common questions you see is “how do I get traffic to my site”. Since marketing is all about exposure, that becomes the key question for just about anyone with a product to sell. But not all traffic is created equally. Traffic volume and traffic quality are not the same. Receiving a zillion "hits" to your site doesn't necessarily translate to sales. To the contrary, worrying too much about hits can lead you down a false path to success.

In the sections that follow, I will discuss various facilities that can be employed for traffic generation. I’ll also discuss the pros and cons of each.

PAY-PER-CLICK AND IT'S VARIANTS
Many people are under the impression that Pay-per-Click (PPC) originated with Google AdWords. In fact, PPC has been around since 1997-1998. The PPC concept, however, essentially floundered until the introduction of Google AdWords. While a number of companies offered PPC programs, none of them had the sheer muscle (i.e., traffic) that Google brought to the table to make it work effectively. Similar models are now used by Yahoo and a number of other search engines, as well as independent PPC providers such as Kanoodle and Bidvertiser.

PPC allows you to place ads in the “sponsored links” section of the search engine results. The order of placement is determined by how much you “bid” on each keyword you select. The higher your bid, the higher your placement in the sponsored links area. But as some of my British friends would say, bidding for "clicks" can be a sticky wicket.

As an example, let’s say you bid $0.25 per click for the keyword “candles”. If three other businesses bid higher than that, your ad listing would be placed 4th in the order. You only pay the $0.25 if someone actually clicks on your link to go to your web site.

But PPC is not a panacea or magic bullet. In fact, if not approached carefully, it can be a nightmare. You will have to determine if PPC works for your product. In highly competitive businesses such as web hosting, where there are literally tens of thousands of providers, you would have to make extremely high per-click keyword bids (often $5.00 or more) just to be listed in the 1st or 2nd page of the results. For niche type businesses the bid rate is typically less. It just depends on the type of business and the level of competition. But for a high-competition business (e.g., web hosting), a $0.25 bid is next to useless as the chances of you receiving any clicks for that bid are remote at best.

Another consideration is your profit margin for the product you sell vs. the cost per click. Let’s assume your margin is $7 per item sold. If your bid is $0.25 and you get a sale, on average, every 10th click, then you are paying $2.50 for each $7.00 profit you make (net profit $4.50). On the other hand, if you have to bid $1.00 per keyword click you would actually lose $3.00 per sale (assuming again you receive a sale every 10th click).

Google and Yahoo use a similar formula. Other search engines use a different approach. EasySeek, for instance, currently charges $12 per keyword for a three-month period. Rather than bidding on each keyword click, EasySeek rotates all the ads on their sponsored listings in a random fashion. While this is potentially a less expensive approach than Google or Yahoo, you also have to keep in mind that EasySeek does not receive the same level of usage.

Since PPC is keyword based, your ads are targeted. That is, your ad will only show up if someone enters your keyword(s) as part of their search criteria. Targeted traffic is good.

The only way to know if PPC will work for you is to try it. But monitor it carefully and make sure you analyze the results. Check your clickthroughs against your conversions (sales) on a regular basis!

EMAIL ADVERTISING (Safelists)
Joining a “safelist” (aka maillist) allows you to send your ads to a large number of people via email. Some safelist providers allow you to send email just for registering, while others require a fee. In most cases, free lists require you to read the emails from other people in order to obtain “credits” for sending out your own messages. Typically, your coverage is greater with the fee-based list.

There are two important considerations when using safelists. First, some allow your ads to be targeted to specific product categories and some do not. Targeted ads are always much more effective.

Second, make sure that the safelist utilizes a double opt-in process for its email recipients. Double opt-in ensures that the people on the list have in fact agreed to receive email via the list. Without this protection, you run the risk of someone filing a spam (unsolicited email) complaint.

If you do subscribe to a safelist, you then become part of that list. That means you should expect a large amount of email from the list. In most cases it’s a good idea to set up a separate email box to receive this email rather than have it going to your primary email account.

It’s also important to make sure any list you join actually goes to “live” people. You have mostly likely seen ads for list providers who promise that your email will go to millions of addresses. That doesn’t do you much good if 90% or more of these are “dead” addresses (no longer used or verified). In such a case, those supposed million emails being sent out are just going into a big black hole.

As with PPC advertising, you will have to determine if a safelist will work for the product or service you are selling.

TRAFFIC EXCHANGES
Traffic exchanges put your web site in “rotation” with those of the other members of the TE. When people “surf” the TE your site will randomly be displayed. Traffic Exchanges will certainly generate a lot of “hits” to your site, but these are not targeted hits by any means.

Traffic exchanges tend to be populated primarily by Internet marketers marketing to other Internet marketers. That may actually be to your advantage. As a TE user myself, I have learned to simply ignore the never-ending display of IM hype sites as they go through their rotation. Basically, the only reason most people surf is to get credits for their own site. Most people don’t use a TE to find a product they are interested in.

Assuming your product is not Internet Marketing related, the very appearance of a web site that promotes something other than the latest IM craze might just cause the surfer to take a closer look. If nothing else, it’s a way for them to break the sheer boredom of surfing.

Just as is the case with many other potential advertising venues, the best way to determine if TEs can work for you is to try one. If nothing else, using a TE will significantly increase your site visit statistics. But that may not translate to sales. If you decide to use TEs, you should also use some soft of tracking software to determine if you are actually getting sales (conversions) from those TEs.

FORUMS
There are forums for virtually every topic and product category in the world. All you have to do is a search for your product and the word “forum” or “discussion group”.

Forums provide you with several benefits. First, most of them are free to join so the price is right. Second, if you join a forum related to your business sector any ads you place are targeted. Keep in mind however, that not all forums allow ads so make sure you read the rules. There are ways around that of course. Simply putting your web site URL in your tagline let’s people know you have products to offer. It sounds a little sneaky, but everyone does it.

The other major benefit of joining one or more forums is that it helps you become known. When people have questions, take the opportunity to offer advice; let them know you believe in customer support and that you are willing to take the time to help.

I utilized forums heavily many years ago when I ran my own computer products company. As people in the forums came to know me they would become interested in the products I sold. When people had questions or a problem with a particular computer-related issue, I would help them. Many of those I helped eventually became customers.

Forums won’t result in the thousands of page hits you get by using traffic exchanges, but when someone clicks your link in a forum to visit your site there is a high probability they are interested in your product or service.

USENET NEWSGROUPS
The UseNet Newsgroups are conceptually similar to forums. They offer people a vehicle to discuss their particular interests with others. Find the newsgroups relevant to your product or service and start posting.

ARTICLE SUBMISSION
Article submission is becoming very popular on the Web. Well-written articles can be highly effective in driving traffic to your site. The more traffic you receive, the greater your opportunity for sales conversions. Better yet, it’s free.

As is the case with posting in Forums, publishing articles with links back to your site provides a form of targeted traffic. Since people are making the conscious decision to visit your site (based on your article), there is a good chance they are interested in finding out more about your product or service. Article submission is an option to consider.

BLOGS
Having your own blog on the web serves a similar function as publishing articles. You can use the blog to provide useful information to potential customers, but it shouldn’t be a sales site – you have your primary site for that.

Try to make your blog postings both informative and entertaining. Give people a reason to come back. Use the “ping” services to get your blog listed in the directories.

BACKLINKS
Having other sites link to your site can be a highly effective means of free advertising. The best-case scenario is when the sites that link to yours have some relation to your product or service. As I’ve pointed out previously, targeted traffic is what you would like to have.

There has been much discussion lately as to the utility of backlinks helping your Search Engine placement. In most cases they probably won’t. But if targeted traffic is what you want, doing a little work to obtain backlinks may be worthwhile.

I used backlinks extensively when I designed a web site for a friend who owns a small marina in Virginia. It can be tedious work, but it is well worth it, especially if your business is primarily local as was the case with my friend.

We made mutual agreements with many of the other businesses and organizations in the area. These included real estate companies, restaurants, fishing clubs, Chamber of Commerce, Economic Development Authority, and so on.

Over a 3-month period, we were able to accumulate more than 100 backlinks from local businesses. Our “targeting” strategy was based on the lake itself. The concept was simple: anyone searching the web for information about the lake (e.g., fishing reports, boating, house rentals) would, in many cases, also want to know about the marina. It didn’t matter what web site they started on as a result of their search: real estate, restaurant, State Park, or others. Because of all the backlinks, people would eventually wind up on the marina web site. We simply provided a trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow.

The concept worked extremely well. Visitors to the marina increased, as did motel bookings by approximately 33%. Many of the marina guests told my friend that they learned about the marina and motel as a result of following links from other local web sites. The marina site currently has a Google PR5 rating and receives thousands of visits monthly. It now boasts a link popularity of more than 300 (300+ backlinks). That’s pretty amazing for a small local marina on a medium-sized lake in Virginia.

There are a number of services (link exchanges) on the web that will make finding backlinks to your site much easier than the process we went through. If you use one of these services, make sure you accept only sites relevant to yours. If you are selling candles it really doesn’t help you to have links coming from a trucking company site.

Just as with Forums and Articles, you won’t get the thousands of hits you get with the TEs. But the visits you do receive will come from people who are interested in your site and product.

WEB-BASED CLASSIFIED ADS
There are numerous sites on the web that provide businesses with a place to advertise their products and services. Some of these are free while others require a minimal charge.

Classified Ad sites typically divide the items for sale into categories (such as the ads in a newspaper). As a result, your ads will be targeted to the people that have an interest in the products or services you offer.

Don’t overlook using these sites. Remember, most people who are visiting a classified ad site are usually looking to make a purchase! -- PRINT ADS If your budget allows, print ads in newspapers and other publications are an option for your advertising campaign. They would, or course, be most effective if the coverage area for your business was more local than national or international.

If your budget allows for the placement of ads in national publications that would certainly provide significant exposure for your business. Don’t ignore “offline” advertising opportunities.

As it happens, we offer a "classified ad" sites solely for Internet Marketers. You can post an unlimited number of ads for your IM products on this site for FREE. It's a great resource, and the price is right!
http://www.imadspace.com

RADIO ADS
Just as with local newspapers, placing ads on the radio would be most appropriate if your business coverage is primarily local. Before placing radio ads however, you need to understand the demographics of radio listeners.

More than 60% of people who listen to the radio do so while they are in their car: driving to or from work, going to the store, et cetera. Considering that most people who are in their car do not have a pencil and piece of paper handy, providing a web site URL during a radio broadcast is essentially pointless.

Unless you have a “bricks and mortar” store location within the broadcast area, radio ads are probably not a cost-effective option in most cases.

TV ADS
Most of us would love to have a budget that allowed for television advertising. But very few of us have those kinds of funds available.

Of course, you may be able to place an ad or two on a local access cable channel. But nobody I know watches those anyway.

SUMMARY
Many people I know get caught up in trying to find ways to get the “most” traffic to their site. That viewpoint can lead to futile results if that traffic, no matter how high, fails to result in actual conversions to sales. More traffic does not necessarily translate into quality traffic.

With several of my online business, I have had more conversions by posting in a forum or publishing articles than I have from literally tens of thousands of hits from other “non-targeted” means.

Ask yourself: are you looking for traffic or SALES? We can't guarantee you a bizallion hits, but if you use our Internet Marketing Ad site (http://www.imadspace.com), we can at least guarantee you that the people who visit your site by clicking on your ad will be those who have an interest in your product.

Don't Chase Potential Customers from Your Site with Bad Color Schemes

Ray — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 12:55:09 GMT

Over the years, I have visited literally thousands of web sites. Every once in a while I will encounter one where my reaction to the color schemes they use is, “what they hell were you thinking”.

To all those people who seem to think designing a web site using the most bizarre combination of Crayola crayon colors is “cool”, let me offer a few observations: yellow on green doesn’t work; green on light blue doesn’t work; yellow on orange doesn’t work; and orange on light blue doesn’t work.

If the purpose of your site is to make people’s eyes cross, the combinations above will accomplish that goal. If, one the other hand, you actually want people to read the information you placed on your site, you need to select high-contrast color combinations: black or dark blue on white; white on black or dark blue; black or dark blue on light gray; black or dark blue on light green; or white on dark red.

Generally, the best practice for choice of background color is to select one that offers the most pleasing appearance: white, light blue, light gray and so on. If I happen to stumble upon a web site that screams at me with a bright yellow or puke green background I just have to assume the person that designed the site doesn’t want me to stay very long.

When you design your background/foreground color combinations, or navigation buttons, use a combinations that are easy to read. Every color has a “complimentary” color; that is, one that offers both a pleasing color combination and high contrast.

There are tools available to you on the web that will assist you with these selections. Use your favorite search engine to find a site that offers "color wheel" combinations or "complimentary colors".

Let’s assume we wanted to design some high-contrast, visually pleasing navigation buttons. Once you decide what color you want to use for the button you can then use one of these tools to find it’s complimentary color. For instance, let’s say I wanted to use a particular shade of red for my button color. The hex code for the red I want to use is #AF0A1A. Entering that value into one of the tools gives the following complimentary color: #50F5E5. The resulting button would look like this:

Using color combinations that provide your customers a pleasing visual experience will encourage them to look around and come back. Using overly bright colors, or those that make the the text difficult to read is a surefire way to drive those customers away.

Finding the RIGHT Domain Name for Your Business

Ray — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 12:55:36 GMT

A domain represents the unique name assigned to an organization or individual on the Internet. For instance, we are all familiar with names such as google.com, microsoft.com, and so on. A particular name (domain) may only be owned by one person or company. To use an analogy, a domain represents your "street address" where you live on the Internet. It uniquely identifies where you can be found. Having a straight-forward, easy to remember domain is crucial to your business success.

The domain name is comprised of several parts. The last part of the domain (e.g., .com) is referred to as the top-level domain (TLD). In theory, the TLD represents a type of entity. For instance, .com stands for "commercial". It was originally meant to be for commercial enterprises (business), but that has become something of a misnomer as even people with personal websites use the .com TLD.

Other popular TLDs include: > .net - originally meant to signify Network organizations such as Internet Service Providers (ISP) > .edu - Education establishments (colleges/universities) > .mil - Military > .org - Non-profit organizations > .gov - Government organizations > .biz - a business > .name - individual/person > .info - information service

There are others as well such as: .aero, .pro, .coop, and so on. In addition, there are TLDs assigned to countries (e.g., .ca for Canada).

Before you can launch your site on the Web, you will need a domain name. There are literally hundreds of millions of domains already taken so you may have to be creative in finding the name you want. It can be frustrating at times, so brew yourself a pot of coffee or grab your favorite beverage before you sit down to find that special domain that will become your address on the Web.

Several months ago, I was attempting to acquire a domain for a customer. I tried just about every combination of his actual business name to find one that was available. As is becoming much too common, I ran into a brick wall. Out of sheer frustration, I just randomly pounded my fingers on my keyboard and came up with sdfsdfsdf.com. I submitted that to the domain search. You probably know the punch line. To my total amazement that name was already taken. At that point, I decided I needed to take a walk around my garden.

But there is no way around it. If you plan to put your own site on the web, you will need to identify an available domain. Once you do so, you should purchase that name immediately as it may not be available the next day. If the name you want is already taken, you will have to find a different one. For instance, if you wanted the domain CandlesForSale.com, that is already taken. However, the name CandlesForSale.biz is available (as of the date this article was written). You could select the .biz name, or try to find an alternate such as Candles4sale.com, candles4u.com, candlesonline.com, and so on. All of those of course, are taken. By trying the different combinations you would find that candles-forsale.com is (currently) available. It is much easier to find available domains ending in .biz,. info, and so on. The major problem with using any of these is that people are just inherently conditioned to type in the .com extension after the business name. If you did register the candlesforsale.biz name mentioned above, it is quite likely that people surfing the Web would type in candlesforsale.com instead. That of course, would lead to a competitor, which is not what you want to do.

Selecting just the right (available) domain name for your business can be a frustrating process, but it is important to get it right. Many people I have spoken to don’t seem to realize that your domain name is part of your branding; it represents who you are on the web. In many cases, the domain name is the first piece of information a potential customer may have about your business. Your domain name is every bit as important as the logo you put on your business card. If all else fails, check some of the domain auction sites to see if there is a good match available. You will have to pay more than normal, but in the long run, it may just be worth it.

Be creative, stay patient, and don’t break your keyboard as you go through this process.

TEST Your Web Site Design!

Ray — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 13:33:00 GMT

This tip may seem self-evident, but all too many people ignore it's importance.

Before you launch your site, or before you implement major revisions to it, test it thoroughly. Make sure every link works and that every page comes up. Check it and recheck it. Having a potential customer encounter busted links or other glitches on your site does not project the image of professionalism you want.

Furthermore, test your site with different browsers. HTML does not render the same way in every browser. Not everyone on the web uses the most current version of Internet Explorer, so make sure your site works properly with earlier versions. For that matter, not everyone uses Internet Explorer so validate your web pages with other popular browsers such as Mozilla Firefox. A site that looks great on IE may be a total diasaster on Firefox or AOL.

If you are running ASP or PHP scripts, the testing phase is even more important. You don't want your visitors to be in the middle of a signup, purchase or other activity only to get a script error in the middle of the process. People usually don't return to sites with errors such as these.

TEST, TEST, TEST!

Following these simple suggestions will help you have a better web site. Hopefully, having a better web site will lead to more sales!

Search Engine Submission

Ray — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 17:04:38 GMT

Manual submission doesn’t cost you a dime. I have included links to the submission page for many of the major search engines in the Resource section. Manual submission is a bit tedious, but it doesn’t actually take that long. You can submit to the top 15-20 search engines in about 30 minutes.

Let me ask you a question. How many search engines can you actually name? 10? 20? Did you know there were 300,000 search engines, or more? Should we care?

It’s your decision to make, but personally, if my site doesn’t get listed in JoesWannaBeSearchEngine.com in Botswana, I’m not going to lose any sleep.

One for the Circular File

Ray — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 12:56:00 GMT

I own a couple dozen domains. Most of these are registered with my own hosting service (webhosting-123.com), which is a reseller for GoDaddy/Wild West Domains. The most I have ever paid for a new domain or domain renewal is $8.

Several of my domains are up for renewal over the next few months. So, when I checked the mail yesterday there was this letter from a certain company that is in the domain registration business. I won't mention the name in order to protect the guilty. Apparently they go through the "pending renewal" lists and send these letters out; you may have received one yourself.

What a deal they wanted to offer me. For the low price of $30, they would renew my soon-to-expire domain. For only $50 they would renew it for 2 years!!! WOW!! I was so impressed (sarcasm intended). I didn't exactly fall off the turnip truck yesterday, so I did the math. I can renew for two years with them (and transfer my domain to them in the process) for $50, or I can renew for 2 years with myself/GoDaddy for less than $14 (since I have a reseller discount). What to do, what to do.

Pretty slick marketing gimmick. But don't fall for it. You should never pay more than $7-$8 for a domain or renewal. Needless to say, with a slick chuckle, I deposited the letter in the circular file.

-Ray

Can you "beat" the Search Engines?

Ray — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 20:01:25 GMT

One of the most widely discussed, and hotly debated, topics currently underway is the question of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The forums, blogs and so forth are packed with information of all sorts. Some good, some bad, and some just outrageous. An entire cottage industry has developed around this issue, with a number of people making a very good living as a result.

There is no question that optimizing your site to the extent possible is an important function. The operative phrase here, however, is "to the extent possible". You can burn a whole lot of time on energy trying to follow every last "tip" you get for SEO (nevermind the fact that some of these tips turn out to be contradictory). I have recently seen several ads that state, more or less, for a fee "we will get you a top 10 rating".

Now, let's just examine that for a minute. What happens if 15 companies, all selling the same type of product, pay their bucks to get that "top 10" ranking? If they sell the same product, then they are pretty much going to be using the same keywords. So, if you are going to optimize 15 sites selling the same product, and guarantee each of them a top 10 ranking, how exactly does that work? It must be the new math.

Let's look at the web hosting market as an example. There are tens of thousands of hosting companies. Here at webhosting-123.com, we are a small company. So how is it we can overtake GoDaddy, Yahoo/SBC, Earthlink and all the "big boys" in the rankings? Doesn't really compute does it? Of course, we could be told by these modern day alchemists to insert the keyword phrase "one-eyed llamas" into our text and metatags. That way, when someone searches on "one-eyed llamas", we will most certainly come up high in the rankings. I wonder how many people search for that. But hey, if they do, maybe I'll get a sale. You think? On the other hand, I suppose it's possible we could get a high ranking using standard web hosting keywords on some obscure search engine out there (there are a zillion of them). But then, there is a reason so many of the search engines are obscure. It's called lack of traffic.

I'm sure those who offer you a top 10 ranking are most likely refering to a Pay-Per-Click arrangement such as Google's AdSense. Guess what? That's not SEO. That is paying for ads. It's not the same thing as getting a high ranking in the standard search engine results pages. I can pay for AdSense myself without going through a third-party. And that AdSense "high ranking" is only good as long as you keep shelling out the money for the placement.

To get to my point (and I do have one), yes, it is important to take some steps to help your rankings. It is equally important to avoid doing things that will wind up getting your site "penalized" in the ranking system.

Content
First and foremost, it's all about content. We are talking about text content here; relevant content. Search engines love content rich sites. Flash intro screens may be all the rage, but they tend to make search engines barf. They can't pick up any discernible content from that. Same thing applies to sites that have more graphics than content. Pleasing to look at, but the search engine spiders don't actually have eyes. As it relates to SEO, you can actually wind up shooting yourself in the foot by making your site too flashy.

So when you design your site, make sure it includes lots of text-based information. You also want to make sure that the keywords you believe people will search for are used within that text (one-eye llamas not included). If at all possible, you also want to have more than just a few pages. The best recommendations I have seen say a minimum of 20 pages is where you want to be. Spiders just love to crawl around interconnected pages. They get absolutely delirious doing that.

A number of years ago, many webmasters used a little trick of embedding and repeating "hidden" keywords on their pages. This is done by having text the same color as the background. For instance, if someone ran a dog grooming site, they would place "dogs" and "grooming" on the page in all the available areas not used by visible text. The spiders are pretty smart, and they catch on to things like that. Don't use this technique. The spiders see it for what it is and will actually penalize a site for "keyword spamming" as a result.

Spiders also love "fresh" or new information. Sites that don't change much tend to bore them. But they just love it when they come back to a site and see all this new information. So try to add new content as often as possible. Two great techniques for this are discussion forums and blogs. If you can get other people to participate in your forums and blogs, they in effect, provide content for you. Fresh content. The spider will be happy.

Meta Tags
Most spiders don't really pay that much attention to meta tags, but there are some things you can do to make sure you don't get the spiders upset about that spamming thing. Your Title tag should be short and concise; no more than 60 characters or so. Same thing for the description tag: short, concise, and containing some of your keywords. Maximum length shouldn't be more than around 160 characters.

We all put our keywords in the keyword meta tag, even though we know that most modern spiders don't care. But there are things you can do that will hurt more than help. Spiders really don't like seeing the same keyword over and over; about three times for any particular word is enough. Using the dog grooming analogy again, having your keyword list contain dog, dogs, dog grooming, grooming dogs, dog salon, and so forth is NOT a good idea. This is more keyword spamming. If you can't think of a more varied list of words or phrases, then just keep it to a few relevant words. You also want to keep the total character count for keywords to no more than 120 or so.

Links
Spiders, being the nosy little critters that they are, like to peek into the bedroom to see who is visiting your site. The more "referral" links you have (links to your site from other sites) is one of the factors they consider when determining page ranking. Of course, link quality matters. Having people come to your site from cnn.com or ebay.com carries alot more weight than having them come from one-eyed-llamas.com.

Try to get as many other sites to link to you as possible (many sites offer a reciprocal link feature). You have to work at this. It may cost you a little money, but putting ads on sites such as classifiedads.com or others like that certainly won't hurt. For a small fee, classifiedads.com will "blast" your add to thousands of other ad sites. This serves two purposes. First, if your site is for business, it may get you sales or leads. Second, your site link will be distributed to other potential "referrer sites". Even if you have to pay to get your ads or banners on larger sites, it may be worth it.

Site Map
A site map is nothing more than a page that provides a "road map" to all the other pages on your site. The spiders seem to like this (there is some debate) because if provides an easy means for them to access all the other pages you have. This can be particularly effective if you have a content-rich site.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list by any means, but if you use these techniques they should certainly help your page ranking. They might not get you into the top 10, but they should get you out of the basement. On the other hand, you could pay your money to those who promise to get you that top 10 ranking. Let me know how that turns out.

-Ray
email: ray@webhosting-123.com
site: http://www.webhosting-123.com

Some People MUST be Crazy!!!

Ray — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 23:02:51 GMT

It absolutely baffles me what some companies are still charging for domain registration and web hosting. It's even more amazing to me when I consider that alot of people pay these prices.

Let's look at some examples. At Webhosting-123.com (and honestly, quite a few other places) you can get a domain for $7.95/yr. No setup fee or any of that, just $7.95/yr. Our least expensive hosting service is $3.95/mo, with NO SETUP FEE. For that, you get 5GB of space, 250GB of bandwidth, 500 email accounts, PLUS 10 MySQL or MS ACCESS database connections. While we'd like you to host with us, you can certainly find similar prices elsewhere.

Now, let's look at some of the "big boys":

Earthlink will sell you a domain for $4.95/mo. Not a YEAR, $4.95 a MONTH. Did I also mention ther is a $25 setup fee?? Their least expensive hosting plan is $9.98/mo. With that you get 2GB of space, 20GB of bandwidth and 30 email boxes. You do the comparison. And what the heck is this $9.98? .98?? Instead of .99? Are we supposed to be impressed? Yeah, there's a real savings.

Network Solutions will give you a domain for $8.95. Now that doesn't sound too bad does it? Wait, did I mention you get that price only if you host with them? If you don't, that same domain will cost you $34.99. Are you KIDDING ME????

Over at SBC/Yahoo, you can get a domain for $9.95. Hey, that's almost reasonable. Windows hosting starts at $14.95/mo. For that sum, you get 500MB of space. 500MB?? Whoopee. You also get 30GB of bandwidth and 100 email accounts.

For those who want to spend double, and even triple, for domains and web hosting, go right ahead. It is your money afterall.

-Ray
email: ray@webhosting-123.com
site: http://www.webhosting-123.com

How Much Disk Space is TOO much???

Ray — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 12:56:16 GMT

Over the past 5-6 years I have assisted a number of people in setting up their personal or small business websites. When it comes time to decide on the web hosting plan they require, one of the first questions that comes up is "how much storage space do I need?". My stock answer to that question has become "enough to hold your content". That is not intended to be a flippant response.

To a large extent, the question of storage space for most personal or small business sites has become somewhat irrelevant. Storage space has become irrelevant??? Ray, are you KIDDING??? Actually, I'm not. The fact of the matter is that the plans offered by most web hosting companies provide more than enough storage space, even with the less expensive options. Let's look at webhosting-123.com as an example. Our least expensive "economy" hosting plan ($3.95/mo) provides 5 GB of storage. That's 5 GIGABYTES. That is a heck of alot of space. We are proud to be able to offer that for such a low cost, but the truth is, that amount of space for an economy level plan is not that out of the ordinary. Of course, you can certainly find a few companies that offer considerably less for a higher price, but why on earth would you host with them in the first place?

So just how much storage is 5 GB? Let's think about that for a minute. Let's say that you are creating a web site that uses both graphics and photos as part of the layout along with your text content. Let's further say that the average size of the pages on your web site is 250K. Now, that is WAY to large for a single page much less an average page size. You would quickly lose your dial-up visitors, and even some using broadband. I'll cover "best practices" for page optimization in another article, but for now, let's use the excessively large 250K/page average.

Do you know how many 250K pages you could have with 5GB of storage space? The answer is 20,000. 20,000 PAGES!! How many sites do you know that have 20,000 pages?? Not many. Even a site with 1,000 pages is relatively large. Our focus for this article is for people who want a personal or small business web site. We aren't talking about The New York Times or ESPN. They would hardly be using a low-to-mid level hosting plan would they?

A number of years ago I built a web site for a friend who owns a marina. We included pages for all the services he offers such as boat storage, tackle and equipment, boat repair, rentals, motel, and so on. We included a fairly large number of photos to give people a good idea of what was available. There is also a "hall of fame" section with photos of some of the larger fish his guests have caught over the years. His site, with text HTML, graphics and photos totals around 10Mb.

Perhaps you want to have a few applications on your site that utilize backend databases such as MS-Access or MySQL. How is that going to affect your space requirements?? Not that much actually. Consider this: a 20Mb Access or MySQL database is on the large side for most typical applications. If you had 50 such databases on your site (and how often do you find that?), those 50 databases at 20Mb each would total just 1 GB of storage space. You could have 1,000 pages and 50 databases and still NOT use even half of the 5GB of available storage. Again, we are talking about the typical personal or small business site here.

One of my personal sites has a photo album and about a half dozen applications using MS Access databases for things such as an ASP-based forum, guest book and the like. The total size used by my HTML files, graphics, photos and database applications is around 20Mb. Are you startting to see a pattern here? I will concede that in a few very specialized situations, a web site might require a large amount of storage. But in 99% of the cases, especially for a personal or small business site, that is not the case.

When considering the hosting plan you require for your site, my recommendation is to focus on other considerations such as bandwidth requirements, number of email accounts required, number of database connections required (rather than their size) and so on. As long as a particular plan offers 2 GB or more of storage, that becomes a nonfactor for the vast majority of site requirments.

We have provided a section on webhosting-123.com detailing some of the considerations to keep in mind when trying to decide on your hosting plan. You may click here to read that section.

-Ray
email: ray@webhosting-123.com
site: http://www.webhosting-123.com