Online BusinesSpeak

So What Is the Price of Twitter Domain?

2010-02-09T17:54:00.006+01:00

As Twitter is getting still more popular, more and more people are getting registered. Since Twitter is no longer only social network but also powerful marketing tool for majority of companies. Twitter domain names are getting still more valuable.

Why?

The reason is the same as with the ordinary domain names. 10 years ago it was not that hard to find free good looking .com domain, today most of the good sounded domains are registered. Also bad ones are registered already, just because it is three letter domain without any obvious meaning but it is short and there might be someone interested to buy it for lot of money. Just try to find free three or four letter .com domain. It is almost impssible. Domain names are simply kept as online assets.

There is only one business.com or love.com domain. Therefore the price of these domains is getting ridiculously high. Just imagine that the price of business.com domain is worthy more than $15,000,000.

Since there is still more internet users, the company presence on the internet and also presence in social networks is still more important. Twitter is very popular social network so companies are branding Twitter as well. That is the reason why the price of Twitter domains is increasing.

Again we can follow the same path here as with the classic domains. There is only one www.twitter.com/business or www.twitter.com/love and since they are unique and strong companies are involved in Twitter, the price of these twitter domains is increasing enormously.

Establishing a merchant account for online business

2010-01-19T15:23:00.005+01:00

Ability to accept payments is the vital process of any business. While in the past the only form of payment was cash, today is the situation much different. However there are still some businesses which are perfectly fine only with cash form of payments, most of the businesses would not survive without credit card payments option. Credit card payments are the second most used form of payments after the cash, and they are primer method of paying in online businesses

If you are thinking about online business seriously one of the first steps you should take is establishing merchant account. Merchant accounts are types of bank accounts which allow businesses to accept credit card payments. Nowadays most common methods of credit card processing are credit card terminals, credit card imprinting machines and online payment processors.

There are many payment solutions providers who offer you the whole range of merchant services which fits your business needs no matter if you run small ecommerce web or large company. Setting up a merchant account is simple when you choose the right merchant account provider.

What is needed to establish merchant account?

To be able to process credit cards you will need certified legitimate business which is not considered as high risky, all necessary documentations on that business, what include also bank account, physical address and personal information. You will also need money for set-up costs. If everything run well you should have your merchant account established in 7-10 business days.

Protect your business

Everyday more and more people buying online using their credit cards from the comfort of their homes. On one hand this is great news for ecommerce websites because of profit increase on the other hand the risk of credit card fraud rise as well.

Watch out for suspicious orders

There are many ways how to identify suspicious orders. Below are few tips:

 Always check the billing address with the information from credit card company
 Be careful with the orders from foreign countries
 Shipping address should be in most cases the same as billing address
 Missing information is a bad sign
 Be careful with unusual large orders

If you notice anything suspicious you should immediately contact credit card holder and ask him to confirm the order. To verify you are talking to the real credit card owner you can ask few verification questions such as complete name, address, phone number of card holder.
If the person is not able to answer these questions, or nobody is answering the phone, you should not process the order, because of high risk of fraud.

Catalog Processing

2009-12-21T15:46:00.003+01:00

Electronic Catalogs are the essential parts of any online store ad they are the building elements of the web enabled market. Every company depends on a well designed catalog that could explain and express their products and services.

E-cataloging brought in the required reach in e-business spreading like wild fire. The Key to successful online business is by having the vast online presence. Catalog process service for online stores and e-commerce websites is the process of converting manufactures paper catalog into web page catalogs.

The catalog process involves a team of well organized content writers, graphic designers, web researchers and data entry personnel to work together to put in the information from the manufacturer price list, manufacturer site and also from various other sources to create a buyer friendly and web friendly catalog page.

A company cannot loose focus on their core business by concentrating on catalog process. Hence the ideal option for any online store is to outsource the catalog process to experienced and professional hands. A Catalog processing company understands the client products and work on the catalog page with the help of a well outlined description by the content writers and image artists who bring out the product images which inspire the buyer to navigate through the online store.

Catalogs need regular updating and monitoring which becomes troublesome for online business owners to manage. Outsourcing companies monitor the changes in the product and track the prices and offers that are available for similar products and suggest the suitable change on the catalog page.

Any catalog processing company offers the following service to the online stores:

Add new products

Update existing products

Track pricing and offers on competitor’s websites

The benefits that online stores enjoy by outsourcing Catalog Process are cost saving by 60%, professionalism, good turnaround time and high quality service. Bring success to your online trading services with outsourced catalog process services.

Author:
Catalog Process

Get up to 500 new twitter followers daily for free

2009-08-23T17:35:00.010+02:00

Twitter is one of the most popular social medium on the Internet. Former idea of this project was shearing of little things that happen in your life with friends through tweets. However as more people have been joining also new possibilities opened. Now is twitter more than social network it is also promotion tool which can bring thousands of impression for online business projects.

But if you want to receive thousands of impression for your business you first need to have thousands of followers. In this article I would like to answer to the following question: How to increase number of followers fast and free without much effort?

Recently I have started to use programs which promise automatic increase of new followers for about 50-500 every day. I was first skeptic, because most of programs which promise something for free and fast usually never work. Despite this attitude in my mind I decide to give it a try. And I must say that I was really surprised when I noticed that new followers start to follow me almost immediately. For me it is usually somewhere between 50-100 new followers per day, but it depend on how many twitter users you star to follow through these programs.

How these programs works?
It is really simple, just log in to the program listed below using your existing twitter nickname and password. Then start to follow 20 users and you are qualified to start receiving your own followers immediately.

You can purchase also VIP membership, the main advantages of this membership are:
• You don’t have to start follow other members, to get followers.
• Every time someone join these programs you will be followed by them automatically.

Here are the free programs I have joined with their current stats:

Followersnow
Number of VIP members: 171
Regular members: 31343
Total members: 31514

Tweeterpro
Number of VIP members: 140
Regular members: 15070
Total members: 15210

Tweeterfollow
Number of VIP members: 142
Regular members: 5849
Total members: 5991

What kind of people comment on blogs?

2009-08-22T21:29:00.025+02:00

Have you ever wandered why some blogs generate huge number of comments on every single article while others get just few? Reasons may vary, but I think it is not related solely to articles quality neither to website PR and traffic. Although I admit that these factors are important, they are not the main reason of receiving comments. For example: Traffic matter, but it is not that huge different in amount of comments if the website gets 1000 or 1500 visitors per day.

So what is the main reason that some blogs are commented much more?
It is the “quality of visitors” what makes the difference. Most of readers are lazy ones, they never comment because they have “their reasons”. If you ever wanted to know which 5 most common reasons of no commenting are, just read further:

• People usually don’t have time to contribute and comment. Especially if readers want to write meaningful comment it can easily take 10-20 minutes.

• Shyness of people. It is like in the school there are always the same people who raise their hands and answer the questions, although there are many others who know the right answer, but simply don’t want to tell it on public.

• You can see many similar topics written on many blogs over and over again. Readers are less interested in commenting over-saturated themes, because it seems like everything was already said.

• Readers have nothing valuable to say, so they stay quiet.

• Fifth reason is not connected to the readers, it is an issue of busy blog authors. Many blog authors miss their moderator role in comments. They usually don’t respond to comments because of no time, visitors are discouraged to comment because they see author don’t care.

Who are “quality visitors”?
In previous part I was talking about most common reasons why so many blogs get small amount of comments. Now let’s move to the 4 most valuable groups of readers who are not influenced by these reasons and usually generate up to 90% of blog comments.

1. Subscribers and regular readers. These are the people who like your website content and follow your updates regularly. These readers generate the major amount of quality comments on the blog.

To capture the attention of these visitors is usually a big challenge, because they are mostly experienced people who are looking for blogs with excellent content.

2. It is always about what you give and what you get. This applies to blog comments as well, therefore the second group of quality visitors are “backlink seekers.” These people post comments because of backlinks they receive from dofollow blogs. Comment links from dofollow blogs count into their Google PR.

So if you have listed your website in many dofollow blog directories, you can easily gain many comments although you have low traffic.

Main advantage of backlink seekers: If this kind of visitors find your website, you may be almost sure that they will leave at least one comment.

Main disadvantage of backlink seekers: The primer object of these people is to get backlinks, therefore the comments quality is usually lower.

3. Friends. We count here relatives, real life friends or online friends. These people will comment because they know you, they usually don’t carte that much what are your articles about. Therefore if you want to raise the number of comments, don’t hesitate to spread your blog link among people you know personally.

4. “Don’t agree” readers. If readers have the same opinion as author they usually don’t feel the urge to tell that to the world. But if readers believe author’s opinion is wrong or missing important part of the topic, they are more willing to share it through comments. Good tip is to write about controversial topics which can help to get attention of “don’t agree” visitors.

These are the most common groups of people who are commenting. If the website visitors consist mainly from these groups of people, the amount of comments is usually high.

If you think there are also other important groups of people who comment which I forgot to mention, or you think my opinion is completely wrong, please let me know through comment form:)

How to identify keyword trends?

2009-08-20T21:19:00.017+02:00

Have you ever wanted to know what the most searched keywords on the Internet are? I am not talking about past records of most searched keywords which are out of date, but about the source of almost real time most searched results supported by graphs of previous performances. This can be valuable source of information when determining potential next niche markets, creating online competitive advantages and boosting websites traffic. On top of that the service is provided for free without any single cent paid.

Let's talk about Google Trends
Google trends is kind of “search engine” developed by Google Labs, but its primer goal is not to search for websites based on chosen keywords, but instead of that it shows how popular particular keywords are. The results are displayed in easy to follow graphs which show not just past keywords performance, but most recent performance as well. You can compare up to 5 keywords at the same time. Google Trends also shows you how often were keywords displayed in Google News.

If you have no idea what keywords could be future hot trends, don’t worry. Just rely on Google HotTrends. This Google Trends sub-domain website provides great information in the field of recent most wanted keywords. You will be able to access a list of 100 most searched key phrases (updated hourly) with lists of related searches as well.

How to use Google Trends?
It is really simple, just like in regular search engines write down your keywords, separate them by commas and click enter keyboard. Subsequently you will be taken to the result page which consists of 2 main parts. First one is graphs part. Graph part consists of Search Volume index. This index shows how many times have been your keywords searched in comparison to all Google searches which were done over time.

Under this graph is located News reference volume graph. This graph shows how often your key phrases have appeared in Google News.

The second part of result page is focused on the number of clicks line up according to geographic regions, cities and languages. So you can easily find out which regions and cities are most interested in hot keywords.

All this information can be used when you deciding which keywords will be most appropriate for your articles, or when determining what could be the next hot products to sell online. If you choose correct keywords you should be able to increase your traffic and sales.

But remember…
… Google Trends itself is not a magic sphere which can predict the future. This product has been developed by Google Labs what means it is still in developing stage, therefore the results can be inaccurate for a number of reasons. So information gathered from this source should not be used as solely source of inputs for your work, it should be more like supplementary source.
But despite this drawback, there is no doubt Google Trends is an interesting project which importance will probably rise with the rise of its accuracy.

AdIcons: Free advertising opportunity for you

2009-08-18T21:24:00.014+02:00

I decided to start free advertising project on my main blog page. It is called Free Icon Advertising. Let me explain this project a bit. I will be giving away free advertising spots in the size 16x16 px / per advertising spot to anybody who apply for it. AdIcon advertising is alternative advertising technique to all classic banners and 125x125 ads banners to which are people more and more resistant. AdIcon technique is special and can bring visitors attention because it is unusual so it can be more interesting for visitors. This advertising technique was developed by Alex Tew’s Million Dollar Homepage who was selling pixels on his website.

How to apply for 10 AdIcon spots?
I will welcome anybody who runs website or blog. I have no special requirements on websites contents, but adult content is forbidden. If you want to be added to my AdIcons, please send me your picture in 16x16 px size, advertising link and the title of your advertisement. I will check your link and if it has no adult content I will add it within few hours. You can learn more and apply for this project here.

How to add links into footer?

2009-08-17T21:55:00.010+02:00

Professionally looking header and footer sections of a blog are very important not just because overall good impression but also because of easy navigation of your visitors. I have seen many articles which were talking about how to customize header section and how to add horizontal navigation bar under header. But what if readers scroll down to the bottom of your page? Wouldn’t it be better to put navigation links into footer section so it will be easier to navigate through your blog also from the bottom?

I have seen this feature in many professional Wordpress blogs and I wanted it for my blogspot blog as well. Unfortunately I was unable to find any guide how to do it. But I don’t give up easily. Despite I know very less about html and css coding after few hours I find surprisingly simple way how to put navigation links into the center of the footer blogspot section.

*Please keep in mind I am not professional coder, so maybe my language will not be that clear.

Here is the guide how to add links into the footer section

This method require modification of the html source of your blogspot template, therefore before we start make sure you save your current blog template.

1. Saving current template - Log in to your blogspot blog. Click Layout and then Edit HTML. From here you can download your current blog template.

2. Cleaning your footer section – If you use customized template it will probably have also customized footer section. If we want to create simple and professional looking footer we have to get rid of all that unnecessary sections which can be implemented into the footer (for example I originally had 3 columns in my footer bordered by white lines).

So while we are in Edit Html, find the footer section of html code (click ctlr+f and write “footer” – without quotation marks, it will be in CSS section of your html source). Now you have to experiment a bit with this section, to get rid of all unnecessary parts. Your goal is to reach clean footer without anything (just clean image of your footer). So delete one part, click preview to see what happened, it can be time consuming from beginning but after some time you will be able to identify and delete all unnecessary parts. Don’t forget to save your template when you will be satisfied with the results.

Just for inspiration, this is how my footer section looked after I cleaned it up.

3. Add links into footer section – Now when we have nice and clean footer, it is time to add navigation links. Click Layout, now we are going to add text gadget into the bottom of your layout. Click on Add a Gadget and add Text gadget.

4. If you want to add following links HOME – ABOUT ME – CONTACT – RSS into your footer add the code below to the Text gadget (click on Edit Html option in Text gadget) Here is the code you have to add:

Now you have to change my links for yours, so find out in the code above links which point to my blog (http://www.onlinebusinesspeak.com) an replace them for your links which point to your home, about me, content and rss pages.
You can also add more links or change the name of current links.

That is it, please if you have any unclearness, don’t hesitate to ask them here or contact me through the email. I will be happy to help!

How to get more comments on your blog?

2009-08-16T22:08:00.012+02:00

Receiving comments on article might be the best reward which you can receive from your readers. It is a great satisfaction feeling to see that after all the effort which you put into writing, readers like what you are saying and leave comments. This way you can keep in touch with your readers and what is more important you can receive valuable feedback. Feedback is a great tool which can juice you up to improve yourself. Also it is a great source of new knowledge and ideas which can be used in further articles.

But probably the most important benefit of getting quality comments is rising of blog credibility. Credibility of blog is something like an internet reputation of blogger. It is the reason why would people listen to you and trust your opinions.

If you are just starting with blog you probably find it really difficult to persuade readers to write comments. And what is even worse, also readers who would like to comment could be discouraged just because they see nobody else commenting. So, how to break this “circle of silence”? In this article I would like to write about seven simple ways how to encourage your readers to comment more.

1. Let readers benefit from your DoFollow blog
All blogspot blogs are originally set as “nofollow”. That means Google spiders will not count links in comment section into PageRanks. This way Google wanted to discourage spammers to post spam comments. But many people think that this step discouraged also honest bloggers from posting more comments. DoFollow blogs allow Google spiders to count links in blog comment section into the Google PageRanks.
So remove nofollow tags and let people know that your blog is dofollow. Readers will be more willing to comment, because of backlinks they will receive through comments.

2. Ask readers questions
Asking questions is a good method how to involve your readers more into your articles. For example you can ask about their opinions on your topic.

3. Simplify the process of commenting
Some blogs don’t allow comments from non-registered readers. Although it can be useful in terms of getting more subscribers, at the same time it can discourage non-registered readers to comment. So try to make the commenting process as simple as possible.

4. "Subscribe to comments" option
This great plug-in is accessible only for Wordpress bloggers. It allows readers to subscribe to the comments through e-mails. So if new comment will be made subscribers will be notified about that, what can encourage them to return and comment more.

5. Recent comment widget
Another good tip might be recent comment widget. You can create one easily here. This widget display last comments on your front page.

6. Respond to comments
Respond to received comments. You will show that you care about what people are saying. Also some interesting debates can arise.

7. Fast approval of new comments
If you decide approving every comment before it is published to prevent spams, make sure you moderate them as fast as possible. People who comment might be discourage to comment again, if they will have to wait a long time.

How important is Google PageRank for traffic: Or how to take a piece of traffic pie?

2009-08-15T15:37:00.025+02:00

Traffic is the moving spirit of every successful website, it is the tool which actually makes website to "come alive". But how to take a piece of traffic pie when there are so many hungry bellies? People often believe that Google PageRank is one of the most powerful traffic drivers. I agree PR is a notable factor for higher traffic, but I consider it more like a prerequisite which should be fulfilled to increase a chance to get higher traffic. There are other more important traffic drivers.

Let me start with one short example:
I often compare the importance of PR for the traffic to the importance of university for getting a dream job. Many people graduate a university to get a dream job with high salary. But the academic title itself will not guarantee you your dream job. It is just one of many prerequisites which have to be fulfilled to get an opportunity to apply for the dream job. But there are many other applicants with academic titles who apply for the same job. If you want to get that job, you have to be better than the rest of applicants. With the PR it is the same there is a huge number of websites with the high PR in almost every niche, to get the traffic you have to be better then the rest of websites.

Does “better” stands for better PR?

No, I would say there are other factors which are much more important for website traffic. Actually I have seen many websites with PR 1-2 which have steamrolled (in terms of traffic) websites with PR 3 or 4. So what really makes that difference?

I think the key factors of high traffic (which are according to me more important than PR) are:

• wide well written content

• frequent updates

• well selected keywords

• appropriate usage of keywords in articles*

* Note: I focused on blogs I am not sure if these factors are that significant for common websites as well.

Why are these 4 factors more important than Google PR?

Wide well written content
People search for useful content and not for high PR. It looks like Google knows that, therefore there is no wonder to see many low PR blogs on the first search engine pages (SERPs). Blogs with wide contents will be probably indexed for many different keywords that mean more traffic also from different niches.

Frequent updates
Google prefers blogs with lot of new unique articles in front of rarely updated blogs (although they might have higher PR). As the result often updated blogs appear in SERPs much higher no matter what PR they have.

Well selected keywords
A blog might has high PR but if it is focused on wrong keywords (which are not often searched in search engines) there will be probably just small website traffic. On the other hand the possibility of getting traffic is much higher if you focus on keywords which are often searched, no matter the blog PR.

Appropriate usage of keywords in articles
It is important to use keywords in the beginning of articles. But don’t scarify reading impression by over usage of keywords. Also it is good to use keywords in the last paragraph of articles (I heard Google spiders sometimes crawl website from the bottom). If you use your keywords properly you will be indexed high in SERPs. And again, no matter what PR you have.

If you want a proof take a look at the picture below:

My blog is very new and has zero PR. Despite of that Google.com displayed my blog in the first SERP (note that there are 79,800,000 other results). And first SERP often means higher chance of getting traffic.

How to keep visitors longer on your website?

2009-08-13T23:06:00.016+02:00

First of all I would like to ask a question: Why would actually webmasters want to keep visitors longer on their websites? I think there can be many different answers based on blog owner’s intentions. If somebody runs blog to make money, the main intention to keep visitors on the website for longer time would probably be the higher chance to receive more clicks on ads.

If the person runs online business the answer is probably different: He would like to keep visitors longer online to persuade them to buy something. Many visitors leave very fast, but if they stay longer the probability they will purchase is higher. Therefore one of the prime concerns of every online business seller should be increasing of the time visitors spend on the website.

In this article I am not going to tell you 10-20 “guarantee” ways, how to keep your visitors online longer, because I personally did not try that many methods. Instead of that I will give you few techniques I have tried and which I believe can make the difference.

1. Keep your website clean and easy to navigate
The first impression is the most important. If visitors don’t like your website they will probably leave immediately. So make your website attractive. People like clean, simple but well designed websites. For example: white is a great background color I think, supplement it with other catchy color, add nice original and professional looking logo and you are on your way to impress.
Put your navigation bar at the top of your website, visitors will notice it immediately after they arrive. So it will be easy for them to navigate through your website.
No aggressive glary colors, no big pictures, no flashing ads on the front page are allowed (quality pictures of your products in appropriate sizes are of course fine).

2. Add related articles at the end of each post
If you get the attention of visitors and they will read your article, they are probably interested in your topic, so give them option to learn more about it. Placing links to related articles is a great way how to encourage visitors to read more and stay longer on your website. Through the articles you can show your good knowledge of the topic and your professionalism. People are more tend to buy when they believe you are the expert in the area. But your articles have to be good quality, otherwise you will make bad impression and people will probably leave very soon.

3. Enable links to open in new tabs
There might be a lot of reason why to place links to external websites in your articles. But the problem is, if visitors click these links they will be redirected to the external websites. Placing a short html code into external links can solve this problem because it allows opening these links in new browser tab. So you will not lose visitors.

Here is a simple guide how to add this code into links: (for Blogspot blogs)

• When you are writing an article you can choose between 2 options: Edit Html or Reach text. Choose Edit Html option.

• Inserted link in Edit Html option will look like this:

• To open this link in new browser tab you have to add following html code into link:

The new link will look like this:

Note: You can add also title to this link. If you look at the added part of html code there is title=" ". You can put the title between quotation marks. As a result when visitors place mouse over the link this title will appears.

4. Encourage visitors to subscribe to your website
Another great way how to keep visitors on your website is through their subscription. To encourage readers to subscribe to your website offer them freebies or allow them to download your e-book if they subscribe. Don't forget to place the subscribe button at the top of your website, so it will be noticeable easily.
You can contact your subscribers later with special offers and they might come back to you. But be careful don’t spam, you will loose your reputation of honest seller. One or two mails in a month are enough.

Building one-way links to your blog

2009-08-12T15:52:00.015+02:00

Link exchange is probably one of the most effective tools which can significantly improve your Google PageRank. But the way how Google evaluates backlinks today is much different from previous times. Reciprocal (or 2-way) links, which were very popular in the past, are currently almost worthless. If you not exchange link with high PR website than don’t even bother to build 2-way links.

Nowadays the only valuable links you can gain are one-way links. These links pointing to your website but you don’t link back. Google understand these links as a signal that your website is very valuable for other website owner and therefore the power of these links is substantial. But the problem with one-way links is how to get them? In this article I would like to point out three proven techniques of building one-way links.

1. Commenting on dofollow blog (for all bloggers)
Lets first talk about what are dofollow blogs. In the past when blogs were just starting there were many spammers who were trying to promote their questionable businesses by spamming blog comments with URL links. Google fought them back by implementing nofollow tags in comment areas. As a result Google spiders started to ignore links in comments, so they were not counted into PageRank.

Did this solution discourage spammers from publishing their spam comments? Unfortunately no, but what happened was that also honest bloggers who were posting useful comments were discouraged to comment because of nofollow tag. Therefore many bloggers decide to remove nofollow tag to juice honest bloggers up to comment again.

Before I tell you how to find dofollow blogs I would like to give you few useful tips:

• Read the whole article before you decide to comment
• Write useful comments. Try to contribute to the theme. Comments like “Hey, nice article.” Will be probably denied by blog owner.
• Try to correct all your grammar mistakes before publishing.
• Don’t post more URL links in your comment. Comment forms usually give you the option to publish one URL link along with your name. One URL is enough.

Now how to find dofollow blogs?
You can use dofollow website directories like dofollowblog or followlist where you can find many dofollow blogs.
You can also determine if the blog is do or no follow by installing Firefox add-on NoDoFollow. This useful add-on is a simple extension which highlights links in any webpage according to nofollow / dofollow tag. So you can see if the links in comments are do or no follow.

2. Submit articles to free articles directories (for intermediate bloggers)
If you are good writer, submitting articles for free directories is good way how to gain valuable one-way links from the websites with high PR and nice traffic as well. For this purpose I recommend directories like Ezine, Articlesbase or ArticleRich. All these directories have high PR and many readers. But before you decide to submit your article make sure you read FAQ section, to find how to submit articles and other useful information. You can also read few already submitted articles to see how the article should looks like.

3. Guest posts (for experienced bloggers)
Guest posts are articles you publish on other high PR blogs, at the end of articles you can add your short bio and URL link to your website. This is great way how to build one-way links. I admit this is quite laborious technique therefore I recommend it for more experienced bloggers. It is not enough to be a good writer, what is more you have to be able to persuade problogger that your article is worthy to be published. But if you manage to release excellent guest post, except of great and valuable one-way link, you will probably receive also nice traffic to your website and gain reputation among bloggers.

How to ask Alexa to dance: Or easy steps how to increase Alexa Rank

2009-08-09T21:51:00.011+02:00

In my previous article I was writing about the importance of Alexa Rank for website owners. Well I was more talking about its unimportance because of its inability to determine real website traffic. If you want to learn about this I would suggest you to read my previous article: How important is Alexa Rank?

Despite its inaccuracy and easy manipulation, most of average internet users still rely on Alexa Rank when determining the credibility of any website. This is the reason why it should be still important for every website owner.

Since this is a very new blog I decided to try some well known methods of manipulating Alexa to see if they will work for me. And guess what? They do, my Alexa finally starts to dance:)

But before I will discuss about the methods which have been working for me, let’s face few facts about Alexa Rank.

1. Its traffic measurements are based on the Internet users who have installed Alexa toolbar on browser. It not counts visitors without Alexa toolbar.
2. There is no security policy, to prevent unnatural ways of increasing Alexa Rank. For example if your friends with Alexa toolbars will brows your website daily your Alexa will count them all.
3. Alexa toolbar is used especially by Internet users who are interested in website SEO and making money opportunities. So websites from these segments will probably have better Alexa rank.

So which manipulates techniques work for me?

1. I installed Alexa toolbar on my Firefox browser and I use it when I surf my website.

2. I have set my website as my home page.

3. I have installed Alexa widget on my main page. You can get your Alexa widget here.

4. I often refresh my website. Since I have new site I do a lot of template customizations and update content a lot that is the reason of my refreshes. But there are people who refresh just to increase Alexa Rank.

5. I am active on some webmasters forums with high traffic. Webmasters and people who visit webmaster forums usually use Alexa toolbar. So you can receive nice traffic which Alexa counts.

These are the main tricks which I have personally tried and which brought me results within few days (I was Alexa indexed pretty fast and my Alexa Rank is progressing well). There are also many other tips to increase Alexa Rank, if you will find those which work for you, don’t be shy and share them here:)

Useful articles:
http://www.doshdosh.com/20-quick-ways-to-increase-your-alexa-rank/
http://www.marketingscoop.com/improving-alexa-ranking.htm

How important is Alexa Rank?

2009-08-08T19:44:00.029+02:00

If you have been trying to learn how to create successful website with high traffic you certainly come across search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the tool through which you can optimize your website and as a result it should appears on the top positions in search engines. The quality of website SEO is often measured by Google PageRank (or PR) and Alexa Rank. Before we move on, let’s clarify a bit these two ranking methods.

Google PR evaluates the importance of your website in comparison with other websites which are indexed by Google. The PR is measured on a scale from 0 to 10 (10 means the best PR).

On the other hand Alexa Rank focuses on the amount of traffic your website gets in comparison with other websites on the Internet. More visitors you have the lower is your Alexa Rank. The most visited websites have Alexa Rank 0-1 (like Google or Yahoo).

But many people argue that Alexa Rank is inaccurate when determining the real website traffic. Why? It is because there are lots of controversies about the way how Alexa measure the traffic to your website. It is the fact that Alexa Rank can be manipulated easily and also it is the fact that ranking system is based solely on the Internet users who have installed Alexa toolbar on the browser. These are the main drawbacks of Alexa Rank. John Chow pointed on the easy way how to manipulate Alexa rating. He said that if you would have few friends with installed Alexa’s toolbar on their browsers and they will brows your site daily, you can easily break into top 100 000.

Another problem is that huge number of Alexa Rank toolbar users are related to online business sector and SEO search engine optimization sector what result into higher ranking of websites from these areas.

So why do people still care about Alexa Rank?
It is because many Internet users either don’t know or dot care about Alexa’s inaccuracy while they are assessing the credibility of the website. They simply trust to the websites with high Alexa rating and Google PR. So be careful before you start to trust somebody, there might be lot of online business speculators who want to increase their business credibility through high (manipulated) Alexa Rank and average PR.

And second reason why many people still care about Alexa Rank is that there are still many ads publishers who want to advertise only on the websites with high Google PR and Alexa Rank.

Useful article:
http://www.google-success.com/how-important-is-alexa-ranking-for-webmasters.htm

Why 2-way link exchange not works anymore?

2009-08-07T15:53:00.006+02:00

2-way link exchange also called as reciprocal link exchange is a direct link between two websites. The process is simple: You add the partner web link to your web or blog and the partner adds your link. 2-way link exchange used to be very popular and easy way how to improve Google PageRank quite fast. Google took this linking as a positive point to your website reputation which subsequently enhanced your website PR.

Iif the link exchange would be done in natural way, you will link only with the websites which are really interesting or useful for you so you want to share the information with your readers. But this natural approach works better in theory than in real life. The most of reciprocal link exchanges are result of agreement between two website owners so we can not talk about natural link exchanging but about a trade. The extreme examples are link farms which were benefit from huge amount of backlinks. This way Internet equilibrium was disturbed. And Google have to take some steps to prevent this kind of behavior.
The easy way how to discourage people from excessive 2-way link exchanging was to decrease its SEO value. Although there is no official declare about this stešp, there are no doubts that it was done. This step was wise and it really works. People are less interested in classic 2-way link exchanging, or exchange only with old and well established websites with high PR.

Is link exchanging useless?
But I don't think the link exchanging is useless, it can still influence your Google Page Rank but the times of 2-ways link exchanges are gone. If you want to benefit from backlinks today, you need one-way links. These are the most powerful back links you can get and their power was not decreased by Google. It is because one-way links are not the results of agreements. These are the links pointing to your without your link back (so only one site is profiting). Google believes they emerge naturally to share useful and interesting websites. But it is very hard to get them.

How to get one-way backlinks?
Of course there is a way hot to get one-way links, people are smart enough to find the solution for every obstacle. The answer is 3-way link exchange. Although there is no evidence that 3-way link exchange works as good as one-way link exchange, most of web site owners believe they are the best solution for current situation. This way you get powerful one-way links to your site. However I think in the future (and maybe it is already in the present) Google will be (is) able to uncover 3-way link exchanges and mark them as unnatural, so their SEO importance will be downgraded.

Higher PageRank means higher website traffic?

2009-08-06T19:30:00.005+02:00

Page Rank is an evaluation tool developed by Google. Page Rank determines the relevance of each web page or blog article and subsequently influences the position in Google search engine. The higher PageRank your web has the more likely will your website appear on the higher pages of Google search. The most common way how to improve PR is through backlinks. Backlinks are simply links which point to your website from other sites. Many people think there is a direct connection between PageRank and the amount of web traffic because you will probably appears higher in Google search so you should be seen by more people. There is no doubt that better PageRank can influence web traffic (in the way of higher position in Google). But I doubt it has significant impact on the traffic. Despite this people often ascribe to the PR higher importance than it really has. The PageRank it self will not guarantee you more visitors. It may only give you higher probability of getting them, that is all.

But if the Page Rank is not the main factor which can improve the traffic, what is it?
In my opinion what will really bring the traffic to your website are well selected keywords and the quality of your content. Well selected keywords are essential for your traffic. If you choose the words which are not searched very often, despite your high PR or the quality of your articles you will never gain high traffic. So writing about things which interest lots of people is great prerequisite which can noticeably influence your traffic. Another very important thing is to write articles often because regularly updated blogs appear on the search engines higher.

Come to the conclusion. In my opinion (and I think I am right about this:) The PageRank is not very important factor which can influence the website traffic. People should focus more on writing of original articles with well selected keywords. If you don’t know how to select right keywords (those which are often searched in search engines) I would suggest you to use Google Keywords Tool. This helpful tool can help you to choose the most appropriate keywords.

How to add Google sitemap to blogspot blog?

2009-08-05T17:48:00.008+02:00

Sitemap is simply a list of links (pages) which belong to your website. There is no doubt about its SEO importance for website owners because it helps Google spiders to crawl your entire website so you will get your web pages Google indexed. Its importance rises up along with the depth of your website. I have read on one forum that Google spiders generally crawl your web into 2-3rd web page level and sitemap helps them to find also pages which can be much deeper.

But what about blogs? Despite there are some controversies about SEO importance of blog sitemap I think it may help to get indexed by Google. Especially when you have many articles sitemap can point Google spiders to crawl them all. Unfortunately bloggers are not able to create the classic kind of sitemap. The only way is to create Google sitemap. In this article I will write short guide how to create blog sitemap.

1. First of all you will need to create account at Google Webmaster Tools and verify your blog.

2. The process is simple. After you registered at Google Webmaster Tools, log in to your account. And add your blog (see Picture 1).

Pic 1

3. Next you will have to verify your ownership of the blog. Click on “Verify this site” (Picture 2).

Pic 2

4. On the next page you will be able to choose what kind of verification you want to pass. Choose Meta tag option (Picture 3).

Pic 3

5. Now you will have to add the Meta tag code (you can see the Meta tag location in the Picture 3) into the Head section of your blog. Log in to you your blogspot account. Select Layout and choose Edit HTML. Use Ctlr+F to find the head section, now place the Meta tag right after this section (see Pic 4). Save your template.

Pic 4

6. Return to Google Webmaster Tools and click on “Verify”. Now we are ready to create sitemap for the blog.

7. You will be taken to the dashboard of Webmaster Tools. Click “Submit a Sitemap” (Pic 5).

Pic 5

8. On the next page click on “Submit your sitemap”. Add your blog feed URL which looks like this

http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full

(replace the red part of URL for your blog address) and click Submit. That is all, now wait some time to get crawled by Google spiders.

How to move your blog to your own domain and gain some respect?

2009-08-03T15:40:00.004+02:00

Blogging is a great way how to show up your business or your thoughts to the whole world. If you are just starting with blog you can take advantage of free blog hosting providers which allows anyone to have own blog. While many bloggers prefer Wordpress I personally get used to Google Blogspot. I like it because it is easy to setup, easy to use, SEO friendly and you can customize your blog in many ways, but I admit these are just my excuses why I am still stuck with Blogspot, the main reason is very simple I am just lazy to learn how Wordpress works. Ok but now let’s return to the main point...

There is one big drawback which all free blog hosting providers have and its importance increase especially when you want to create professionally looking and credible blog. I am talking about the extension such as blogspot in your blog URL. I have read on many webmaster forums that if you have blog with a URL name such as www.yourURL.blogspot.com, you may be not taken very seriously.

Personally I don’t see the reason why you should be taken less seriously just because of your domain URL. I think the blog credibility should be primarily measured in quality of content which blog offers and not in domain name. I have seen many “blogspot extended” blogs which looked professionally and offers really valuable and useful information.

But on the other hand I have seen many blogspot blogs whose only purpose was to spam people (in one study almost 80% of blogspot blogs were detected as spam, for more details see Picture 1). Also if your purpose is to create a business blog the blogspot extension is just not suitable.

Picture 1

Source: http://www.seroundtable.com/TR-2007-27.pdf

So it can be useful to remove the blogspot extension to gain some more respect. If you own small online business or you are inexperienced blogger, you are probably not willing to pay lot of money for own domain and hosting. Also you probably don’t want to spend hours and hours searching for the best suitable blog hosting solution.

So how to get rid of blogspot extension simply and at low price?

Fortunately there is great method how to shake off your blogspot URL extension without the need of additional payments for web hosting. You will save your money and your time as well. This way your only expenditure is $10 per year for registration of your own domain. There are no further fees for hosting because you will be still hosted by Google for free. You will also get your own business email based on your domain name so no more “gmail” extension for your professional email (although the email will be still hosted by Google, it will appear like own hosted email). What’s more you don’t have to worry about your readers who get used to your blogspot extended blog, your old blogspot URL address will be automatically redirected to new domain.

The simple process of migrating to own domain

1. Log in to your blogger account click on Settings and then on Publishing tab. Now you should see window like this

2. Click on the Custom Domain link (it is underlined in the picture above). you will be taken to another page (as seen at the picture below).

3. Here you can choose your desired domain name and the extension (you can choose .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz). If you are done check the availability of your chosen domain.

4. If your chosen domain is available you will be redirected to this page.

This si your order page, check if your domain name is correct. If you are satisfied with the order click Continue to registration. Now you will be able to buy your domain. After your purchasing will be processed your blog will be moved to your new domain name. The whole process will take not more than 5 minutes.

Tip: Don’t wait any longer

If you are thinking about your own domain you should know one unpleasant thing: You will loose all your SEO value you have built up with your old blog. Therefore I recommend you to register the domain as fast as possible. Later you will move to your own domain the more (in the terms of SEO) you will loose. If you are starting new blog and think seriously about blogging, buy the domain immediately after you start your blog, you will avoid painful loss of your SEO value in the future.

Free SEO search engine optimization software: Find your niche market

2009-08-02T15:58:00.002+02:00

Online business is very competitive. If your website is not belonging among firs few sites which appear on the first search engine page you are nobody. The question is how to find the niche market which is attractive? I think attractive market is the one which is not overcrowded by competitors and still have the potential to bring you high traffic (what comes along with potential customers). It is not hard to find out how many competitors the niche market has. You can simply write your keyword into search engine, hit the Enter key and the sites which appear are your potential competitors.

But how to find out if the niche is capable to bring you nice traffic? I think this capability can be measured if you know how many times have been the keyword searched in search engines. If you know the amount of competitor and the number of searches for the keyword you can easily decide if you will be able to penetrate into this niche or rather look for the one which is less competitive.

I will give you one very useful tip. There is great free easy to use SEO software which I have been using for some time and which is capable to determine the attractively of any niche market. I still can’t believe this software is for free (of course only for personal use).

It has few very useful features but the best one I will like to point out is keyword suggestions. How it works? You write your keyword, the software will show you how many competitors this keyword has and what is the approximate average search frequency within one month. You will also see the annual search trends and suggestions for similar keywords which can be relevant to your business. This program offers really valuable information for free. So if you want to find your niche this program can help you a lot. You can find and download this software at the website of Web CEO company.

Affiliate internet make money online program: How to increase sales?

2009-08-01T21:54:00.002+02:00

Affiliate programs are very popular way how to earn money online these days. But how do affiliate programs work? These are simply pay per sale programs which allow the affiliate (owner of affiliate website which promote merchant’s products) to make money (commission) every time when the customer find the merchant product and buy it through affiliate website. Many merchants prefer affiliate programs because this kind of promotion is cheaper and it is 100% effective because they pay commission only for sold product.

New relationship
Affiliate programs are very popular way of promotion and there are huge amount of affiliate websites. That means huge and still growing competition between affiliates what leads to lower commission earnings for each affiliate owner. Attract potential customer is still harder. To become successful affiliate these days means working much more than in the past. The classic relationship between affiliate and potential customer based on the sell-buy process simply not work that well as it used to. Customers are changing they are more demanding and less perceptive. The online advertising is pushing from everywhere people are just disgusted and simply not react. Therefore the relationship between affiliate and potential customer should change. Rather than pressure selling affiliate should focus on recommending. Instead of creating “another affiliate website”, try to create website which is focus on reviewing products from your personal point of view. You should tell your referrals how the product helped you, how it really works and what the main advantages are. Be honest and don’t push. At the end of the review put simple link to the merchant web. If your review will be credible the referral will be tend to buy the products. This is what a lot of affiliates still don’t understand, they just want to sell products actually this attitude just discourages people from buying.

Importance of 3-way link exchange

2009-07-31T16:30:00.003+02:00

Having a link on quality websites which are pointing to your web or blog is one of the most fundamental and very powerful tools of search engine optimization. More relevant websites are linked to your web the higher page rang will Google assign to you. In other words more quality sites linking to you the higher page rank you will have and that usually means also higher traffic for your online business or personal blog. There are different link exchange techniques witch have different value for your site.

One-way link exchange
One way links are those which are pointing to your web but you are not linking back. If there are quality websites which are linked to you this way, it is the best type of links you can gain. For search engines they are most powerful and they are giving you the highest value. It is because this is the signal for search engines that your site is very useful and interesting for other administrators and they want to tell about you to their clients or readers. But if you don’t have well established quality website with wide unique content it is very difficult to get this kind of links.

Two-way link exchange or reciprocal link exchange
This is the most common method of link exchanging. You make an agreement with the owner of other related site and place his link on your web for that he will place link to you on his site. This is also good for your SEO, but the relevance of this kind of link exchange is much lower than one way linking. It is because this is usually not natural linking but agreement between two related webs and search engines know that.

Three-way link exchange
This is the latest link exchange technique. It is usually works this way. You have a new site (A) and one older site (B) with good PR. You want to increase the PR and traffic of your new site so you make a deal with other website administrator that he will link to your new site (A). For that you will link from your site (B) to his website. Last step is the link from your new site (A) to your site (B). This way each website will receive one-way links which are most valuable from the SEO purpose. There is also four and five way link exchange which works on the same principle. But if there are more sites involved it is harder to control location of your site.

How to change Blogger icon: Add favicon to Blogger URL

2009-07-30T21:14:00.007+02:00

Have you ever heard about favorite icons or just favicons? Those are that little images which appear next to the web address in the web browsers. If you are thinking about creating your business blog this is the great way how to incorporate your business identity into your blog. If you want to be different than the others this is fancy way how to do it.

So first of all we are going to need small software which changes your common image file (.jpg) into icon file (.ico). I use free software called Imagicon. Just google it, download and install. In the options of this software you can set the dimensions of the icon file choose 16x16 or 32x32.

Second thing you should do is creating your own image which you want to use as your icon. If you want to use it for business blog, it is great to have your business logo as your icon. Great software for creating images is Photoshop. But if you are not skilled enough with Photoshop or you are just lazy to design your own icon, there are many free icons available on the Internet.

Now if you downloaded free icon form the Internet, you can skip to the next paragraph. But if you designed your own image, you are going to need to convert it into ico file. It is simple open Imagico software and drag your saved image into the window. The software will automatically change your image into ico file and save it.

The next step is to upload your ico file into hosting server. I prefer free hosting by Google Page Creator. If you are logged in click on the Create a new page. You will be taken to layout of your new website. We are not going to design the website so just click “Back to site manager”. On the right site of your site manager you can see “Uploaded staff” widget. Click on the link Upload and add your icon. After you uploaded your icon, write down its url.

Log in to your blogger dashboard. Click the Layout of blog where you want to have your icon. Now click on Edit HTML and look for this part of html code (use ctrl+f for search)

Copy the following code right after the link above.

Change the part “URL of your icon file” for the url link of your icon you written down before.

Preview your template and if you are satisfied with result save it. That's all.

I just want to thank for the great tutorial from Tips For New Bloggers website which helped me to learn this great trick. If you are using png or gif images, or need more information I suggest you to visit this tutorial.

How to shop safely online

2009-07-29T16:48:00.002+02:00

There are million of people shopping on the Internet every day. The biggest advantage of online shopping is probably the comfort of this method of shopping and also you can buy anything from around the world. On the other hand there are some risks which are related to online shopping. There are many dishonest sellers and scammers who are just waiting to steal money from you. So be clever and before you decide to buy anything protect yourself.

Use online payment processors if possible
If it is possible try to avoid submitting your credit card information and look for online payment processors alternatives. Most of reliable sellers already have this option. This way you will protect your credit card information. There are many online payment processors but the most popular among sellers and buyers as well is probably PayPal. Good alternative to PayPal is AlertPay. I have written a review on these online payment processors.
Avoid shopping from shared and wi-fi networks
If you don’t know if the source of the connection to the Internet is well secured, avoid submitting your personal information. This is quite common cheat. I prefer buying just from my home.

Use official version of antivirus software
Don’t use crack version of antivirus software always use official one. This way you can be sure your antivirus is always up to date and the risk of spywares infiltration is low. (*spywares may collect your personal information)

Update your browser
Make sure your are using the latest version of browser. They use the most advanced encrypting methods which protect your personal information while purchasing.

Buy from well known sellers
Great example is eBay which is well established company with many satisfied customers. You can be sure your personal information will be not misused or sold.

Avoid suspicious offers
Use your brain, if the offer looks just too good it is probably just a scam.

Look for the seller’s contact information
Honest sellers should provide their contact information such as phone number and address. If the seller provides phone number you can also call there and gain some information about the company before buying.

"S" for security
Before you submit your private information look for https in the address (you can find this in the upper browser window with the url). Https means secure server.

Verify the seller
Look for the small padlock icon (it should be located on the bottom right of your browser window). By clicking on it you should be able to see seller verification certificate. However this does not guarantee seller’s ethical business behavior.

Read private policy
You should be able to find here information about how will be your private information used, if they are stored or sold.

Don’t buy from spam mails
I think there are no more words needed.

How to display HTML code as a text in blog?

2009-07-28T16:09:00.006+02:00

I know this topic is not related to the online business. But I have to share this. I spend last 4 hours trying to display HTML code in previous article about SEO optimization. I must say it was the biggest challenge I had to face since I have started blogging. Why? Because all the tutorials I have found on the Internet were simply not working for me. I don’t know why, maybe it is because of my layout. After all my trying I manage to do it. I admit it is not the easiest way but the only which works for me. So if anybody else have problem display HTML code in ordinary way (by using only escaped code). Try this method which uses Iframes.

Tutorial: How to display HTML code using Iframes
1. Copy html code you want to display in blog and past it here. Click on the “Make it friendly” button on the bottom. You will see the text which will looks quite messed up. I don’t want to bother you with the explanation why we had to do this or what this newly created text means. Just copy the whole text.

2. Open your Notepad and past this text.

3. Save notepad using Save as option and change the .txt file extension for .htm

4. Now you have to find free hosting provider. There are many of them but almost all of them delete your files after 30 days. So I rather decided for free Google pages. As far as I know they don’t delete files.

5. Now log in to your account and “Create a new page”.

6. You will be taken to newly created page, since we don’t want to design the layout, for our purpose just click “Back to site manager”.

7. On the right side of your site manager there is an "Uploaded staff" widget. Click and upload your .htm file.

8. Write down the link location (or simple right click on the uploaded fail and choose Copy link location).

9. We are almost finished. Now just copy the code below:

10. Replace the example link from the box above (example link is: http://hosting-provider.com/your-file.html) for the link which you noted down in the step 8. You can also change the width and height of the box. And that's it. If you follow all the steps correctly you should have the box with the code similar to mine in step 9.

Hope this was understandable and helpful. I must thank very much to BlogerBuster where I learned this trick.

SEO optimization: Creating SEO friendly blog

2009-07-28T14:43:00.003+02:00

I have already talked about the importance of SEO for online business. If you are in the industry with many online competitors getting on the first Google search page can be really hard. Good SEO optimized blog is giving you an opportunity to overtake your competitors and increase your traffic. In this article I will share few simple tips how to improve the SEO of your blog.

SEO friendly title

This is really simple trick which allow Google spiders to crawl your articles easier and increase the popularity of your blog. When you click on your article you may see the headline of your browser in this order: Name of your blog / Name of your article / Name of your browser. What we want to achieve is to place name of your article on the first place. This is very good for SEO of articles. We can do it easily like this.
1. Log in to your blogger account. Click on Layout then choose Edit HTML tab.

2. Find this line of code (use CTLR+F):

3. Now replace the line of code mentioned above for the code below:

Save your template and we are done. Thanks Amada for simple tutorial which helped me a lot.

Add meta description and keywords easily

Meta description is important tool how to attract visitors to visit your site. This is the description which appears under your link in Google search. If you don’t use meta description Google will simply choose a part from your site and use it as description. This is not very good for people who search on the Internet, they may miss what is your blog about.

Adding meta description and meta keywords is really simple:

1. Again we are going to change HTML code of blog. So log in to your blogger account. Click on Layout and choose Edit HTML.

2. Search for this part of code:

3. Immediately after this tag add following code:

THE DESCRIPTION – delete the Caps Locked text in the code above and write there short description of your blog. It should not exceed 30 words.

ALL KEYWORDS here – delete the Caps Locked text in the code above and write there all you keywords which you are using, separate them by commas.

4. Save your template.

Thanks to blogkori blog which showed me this awesome and simple trick.

Use image ALT tags

Another technique how to optimize your blog is using ALT tags for your images. ALT tag is alternative text used to describe your images.

Here is the way how to add them:

1. Log in to your blogger account. Click on the Edit Posts tab. Click on the Edit link next to the article where you want to add image ALT tags.
2. Now you can choose 2 views of the article, one is Compose (this is how the article will look for visitors) and there is Edit Html tab. Click this tab.
3. Find the image, it can look similar to this code

4. Now add the key words you want for this image (article) so you will have something like this

Delete the Caps Locked text and instead of it write your short description (*you dont have to use cams lock font).