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Jun 06 2011

SEO Race to the Top

Published by under Search Engine Optimization

Creating a website that will catch your audience is key when creating a top blog or site. However, you will never see an audience if your site is never found. This is where SEO becomes important. It is a race to the top and only the fittest websites survive the challenge.

Reaching the top of the major search engines requires quality SEO services. There are two ways to create this, do it yourself or pay a professional to do it for you. Many major cities offer quality companies that can create a website and do your SEO work for you. If you live in New York, it is a preferred to use a company from New York, if you live on the west coast like in Portland, you would look for a quality Portland SEO Company that can handle your needs and offer an array of services. However, if you find the company you want to deal with in any part of the world, most jobs can be conducted through the Internet.

It doers not matter if you do the work yourself or hire it out, the key is to use all methods to reach an audience and achieve a top spot in the search engines like Google. Link building has always been and still stands as one of the best ways to get noticed. Along with links, you can use the many social media sites to both advertise your site and draw in a audience who will naturally wish to link to your site. Writing articles is good way to get noticed but be careful of those over used article directories because they can backfire and cause negative damage to your reputation and website.

Finding the best method for you and your websites seems like a huge hurdle but the investment will be worth the reward when you win the race to the top.

9 responses so far

Nov 05 2008

Failure is Not Possible

Published by under Webmaster Advice

I see webmasters complaining that their website or blog was a failure. Either it did not make the money they wanted or it did not attract the amount of traffic they thought it should. I am here to tell you from one webmaster to another, there is no such thing as a failure when it comes to blogging or creating websites.

My first every website looked like a 4th grader created it. It was so childish that I am almost embarrassed to think about it. I could not get anyone to visit it, I made no money, and it was lonely all by itself. Did I fail? Hell no! I learned from that website and I improved on my next site.

My next site was better and I learned a few webmaster tricks to get some good traffic. Still, I made very little and the site was still unattractive but I did have some traffic. Once again, I was not a failure because I learned even more from that site. I improved on the site and worked hard and sold it for a little profit.

There are very few webmasters who have stepped into the world of the Internet and was a instant success. The key is to do your best and learn from every success and every mistake. I am still, after many years, far from an expert. I still make mistakes and I still get frustrated over not making enough money. However, I have found that each mistake (no matter how big) is a learning experience that will increase my profits in the future.

Being a webmaster is not for everyone. There is so much competition on the Internet. However, with patience and hard work, you can cut your little piece of the pie and become a winner one mistake at a time. Reading everything you can from other bloggers and webmasters will help you get there quicker by learning from their mistakes.

It is not the fear of failure but the goal of success that drives you to be the best at what you do!

12 responses so far

Sep 05 2008

Imhosted.com Webhosting

Published by under Webmaster Resources

I am always on the look out for quality webmaster resources to share with my readers. One of the biggest problems for new and even experienced webmasters is finding quality hosting for their website or blog. If you have followed my blog, you will know that I prefer quality hosting even if it is not the cheapest.

I recently discovered Imhosted.com which offers great Website Hosting. I decided to check into the different packages and see what they were all about. The first thing I discovered on their website was that they lay it all out in simple and easy terms. What you see is what you pay with no hidden cost.

They offer one shared hosting plan at $6.95 a month. This is not the cheapest plan I have seen but they offer unlimited websites on that plan and it comes with 2,500GB space and 20,000 GB bandwidth. This is a huge package and will be more than enough for any webmaster. They also offer a full 24/7 support system for the hosting package.

On top of the shared hosting package, they offer three different reseller package to meet the needs of hosting resellers. On all their hosting packages, they offer a money back guarantee and they promise a 99.5% up time. Unlike many other hosts who promise that, if they fail to deliver at least that, they will credit a portion of your fee for that month. For the last six months, they have had a 99.998% up time for their servers.

I liked everything I have read and have spoken to a friend who uses them. I would welcome comments on this blog from others who have used their services. I also have provided a link for you to check them out for yourself.

Remember, when deciding on a web hosting company, do your research and look for a guarantee. Be willing to pay a little more to go with a company that offers good support and great packages. Cheap is not always better when your site is always down. I recommend checking out Imhosted to see of they have what you are looking for. If you sign up, please come back and share your experience with my other readers.

2 responses so far

Jul 07 2008

Finding Good Web Hosting

Published by under Webmaster Advice,Website Creation

Finding good quality hosting is always a challenge. There are many hosting sites that off free or super cheap rates and when you start using them, you end up with slow loading, massive downtime, and no support when you need it. This can be super frustrating. That is why it is important to look for a company you can trust.

The good news is that there are  affordable web hosting companies that will provide excellent service and provide great uptime. The key to finding this is to read all terms of service and read what they promise to you.

There is a limit to everything when it comes to hosting. Packages that promise unlimited everything for $1 a month is the type of stuff you should avoid. Cheaper is not better and you should look for reliability. The company should offer at least 99% uptime and 24/7 support. Problems do not always happen between 9 to 5 weekdays so their support team should be there when you need them.

Be sure that the plan you pick covers what your needs are. How many sites will you have? How much space will you need? How much traffic will you have each month? These are all questions you need to answer and than ask upfront if the plan you choose will cover that. Remember, if you use a lot of big images or loads of video, this will require more bandwidth than just a text site.

Ask everything up front and make sure you know what you are paying for. One thing to consider is who is in charge of keeping back ups of your site. If the host provides back ups, this is a huge plus if anything every happens. You also want to know if the price is discounted if you pay by the year instead of the month. This could save quite a bit of money for you.

Good hosting is out there and with the right research and the right questions, you can find the best for great prices.

5 responses so far

Feb 23 2008

Stumble Upon for Traffic

Published by under Social/Book Marking Sites

If you are not familiar with Stumble Upon, it is a social bookmarking site owned by eBay. It works best if you are using the Firefox browser. It is an installed tool bar add on that allows you to thumbs up or thumbs down a site you come across. It puts that site in a cycle where it is sent out to people who are looking for a certain topic.

On Stumble Upon, you can also get friends (up to 200) and have fans of your personal page. When you have friends and fans, you can send pages to them for them to view. When you hit the stumble button, you will also view pages that your friends have sent.

Along with thumbs up and thumbs down, you can give a review of the page rather you liked it or not. This is helpful to other people.

Stumble Upon is fun and you can spend hours just stumbling sites and finding interesting sites to view. However, I just wanted to give a basic overview as an opening to the main point of this article so to find out more, just download . Once you have the browser go to tools and add ons and download the Stumble Upon add on and sign up for an account.

I use Stumble Upon everyday and every time I write a post on any of my blogs I stumble them. At one point I started a blog dedicated to website reviews and stumble exchanges but I was told this is no longer allowed so I changed the site to just website reviews.

Now on to the point of traffic from Stumble Upon. In my experience and the experiences of many webmasters that I converse with everyday, Stumble Upon provides a lot of traffic. The problem with the traffic from Stumble Upon is that it does not convert well. If you are selling something or trying to make money on clicks from ads, this traffic does not turn into money as well as regular search engine traffic.

Many users of Stumble Upon just keep clicking through and do not stay long enough to even read what you have on your site. I would venture to say that less than 1% converts into any ad click or sale. I am not sure what the percentage is that stay on your site and read it but I would say that is low too. There are those who search for your topic and are really interested in your site but like I said before, many just click right on through.

So after reading that, I am sure you have one big question. Why should I use Stumble Upon at all? The answer is clear. It is free and though it may not be the best traffic, it is still traffic. If you get just a few people out of thousands that will really enjoy your site and make you a little money, that is more than you had without Stumble Upon. It is also a great way to get your site seen. If you site get many thumbs up, you can thousands of visitors a day to your site. Many will not return. However, some will and you could end up with a nice loyal reader base.

I love Stumble Upon and find it both fun and a good way to drive traffic to my site. Do not use it as your only source of traffic because you will be disappointed. However, mixed with other sources, it can add visitors to your site and money to your pocket.

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