Boost Site Traffic the White Hat Way

Gone are the days where Google search results are filled with unrelated articles or pages to the keywords you search. This is because of the continuous updates (e.g. Panda, Penguin, Hummnigbird) by Google. Every websites should run according to the rules of Google and every time they try to manipulate their way towards higher rankings, Google intercepts them and create a harder update. In the end, following their rules is still the best way to improve your website, increase on-page activity, and improve site traffic. 

If you are struggling with the black hat SEO strategies you often use, maybe it is time that you shift to the other side. While there are different white hat strategies that you can try, doing the basics actually benefits you more. Here are a few of these tips:

Stop Pushing Visitors Away

4-3-2-1! If your webpage still don't load in 4 seconds, then you site traffic is in jeopardy. Shaun Anderson writes that, Akamai Technologies found out that 75% of 1,058 people won't come back on a site if it takes longer than 4 seconds to load. Optimize your website and make sure that it doesn't have heavy photos and videos. Avoid too much advertisements as well. These are some of the reasons why a site does not load fast.

Use Quality Contents

Focus on quality contents. You have to make sure that every article in your website are well written. You do not have to be a seasoned writer. You can hire writing companies to write for you. There are even editing services that can provide you with great contents. If you want it free, maybe accepting guest posts is for you. Here are few things that you must remember when writing:

- Engaging Articles: Engage your readers by having quality articles. Make sure that your post is not another post that they already read from other sites. It is okay if the topic is old. The important thing is that you side it to another angle. Make it "look" new to the readers and they might share it with other people.

The article should be short because long articles make people bored. Long articles even turned them away. Keep them reading by adding useful information and relevant stories. Who hates hearing interesting stories? Open up and keep them engaged.

- Easy to Read Layout: Avoid hard to read paragraphs because by looking at it, people already know the struggle they have to endure to read it. Even if you have interesting topics, long paragraphs are tiring to read. Avoid this, by breaking long paragraphs. Bullets and subheadings help too.

- Attractive Photos: Make your layout better by adding pictures on your posts. Pictures are breather for the eyes. It also avoid monotony and boring contents. Plus, pictures attracts curiosity so people read on. Some visitors even stay longer because of the nice photos they see on a site.

Promote and Reach-Out

Tell people how good your site is and make them visit it. This is how Google wants you to do because they prefer natural links. Encourage people by doing focusing on these two items:

- Social Shares: Social media is a great way for you to increase social activity. As marketing experts say, word-of-mouth is a powerful marketing strategy. There are plug-ins like GetSocial for Wordpress that gives call for action. The plugin encourage readers to easily share articles on their social media accounts.

- Comment Section: Comments section should also be optimized. There are Plug-ins that rates comments, allows image comments, easy commenting and many more. Of course you have to keep this section spam-free. Try Akismet or Captcha to avoid automatic spam.

Black hats are still used by many but most often, this only gives short term solution in optimizing your website ranking. There is nothing wrong with adhering to standards. Actually, these things are what makes a website stand-out from others.

Author's Bio:

Ethan Harvell has 4 years of on-line writing experience. He has done lots of quality articles for various companies, but currently he is working for paperontime.

How to Create a Website That Yields Reasonable Revenue Daily

Creating a website and write the content according to your own interest is a good passion and profession at same time. You write, express views, get feedbacks and people also click over the ads that are viewable over the content of your website. Daily page views improve the flow of viewers. Every country has different kinds of audience. So advertisers pay you according to the location of viewers. Your website should be designed according to the targeted traffic. Your SEO expert must have capacity to change the target locations for the website. 

Create a blog and make the catchy headings and titles for your post. Your titles are also indexed and saved in search engines’ database. Whenever, a relevant query is typed then the relevant headings appear in front page of search engines. To have a place at the top your site and content must be friendly both of your readers and search engines. A big mistake people just prepare everything for the benefit of search engines. They sometimes ignore the requirement or preferences if readers that’s why a dull and boring site comes in the way. Once a viewer clicks on such website then he or she will not have a desire to check that link again in life. This is really an alarming situation for the owner.

SEO plugins and promotion of website:

Nowadays, a lot of SEO plugins are available that are proved as helping tools for the promotion of your site. You just write, edit, make a draft and click the publish button. Your posts automatically are updated on several channels including major social media platforms. You get likes and comments for interesting stuff. Be specific and comprehensive in your posts if you going to have a blog with the aim to earn a steady income monthly. Don’t include bullets everywhere just to get the attraction of readers because they will just increase the length and as a result you will not get positive effects.

Latest data within the content of a site matters a lot:

Whatever your topic is the ultimate goal should be to offer most relevant and latest data in the website. If some portion is outdated and is not in practice then you can lose the trust of your visitors forever. You should try to include original work in the website. Other things would remain same lie getting a proper and relevant domain name. It should not be too lengthy or of complex nature. Domain name also describes the website’s working sometimes. After that, choose a best hosting provider from available sources. Actually web has contains lot of computers that have connection with internet. Your web pages are placed on their computers. That’s why people can view them from anyplace and anytime. You sign up there and get your own account. There are different packages that are suitable according to your budget and future requirements. If you select a free web host then they will place their own ads on your blog or website. In this way they cover the cost of hosting but they charge nothing from you. So, by keeping these simple steps in your focus you will be able to create a website that will be a long term assets for the ages to come.

Author Bio:

The article is contributed by Gloria Philips. She is content writer and guest blogger. She loves to share the secrets and tips about how to create a website for your business in simple steps.

Essential Factors to Consider Before Choosing the Best Cheap Web Hosting

If you desire to get the websites of yours on the website online, then would need the cheap web hosting. The cheap hosting services range from the free hosting which have limited features to the expensive hosting for business which includes collocation, along with the hosting that you are going to run by yourself and then resell to the clients. The option that you choose depends on how you are going to plan the use on the website.

Internet Service Providers
If you wish to access the internet, then you would need an ISP or an Internet Service Provider. There are various ISPs that include small amount of space in order to create the web pages quickly as well as easily. ISP pages are absolutely perfect for the people who would want to the small sites with the low amount of the traffic, which is essential for the cheap web hosting.

Free Web Hosting
If you already have the ISP which does not offer the web space, then free or cheap web hosting is great. There are various cheap hosting services, and many of them offer advanced services like the CGI, PHP, shell access as well as advanced topics. The free cheap web hosting is mostly supported by advertisements.

Standard Paid Hosting
With the paid hosting, you might even pay some money on a monthly basis for the space and the services, on the website of a cheap web hosting provider. The prices vary from around $1-2 which may rise up to even a 100. Normally, it depends on what cheap hosting services you need.
The standard web hosting is great for most of the web based business. You must be sure in checking the features that are available for the server so you get whatever you need. Do not focus only on the price ranging hosting services, as it might end up being expensive.

Domain Hosting
The Domain hosting may be difficult in order to comprehend. Rather than paying for the site space, you can also pay for the domain and then you can have you website get a cheap host from anywhere you prefer.

Collocation
The collocation put the web server in a machine room of larger companies. You basically connect to very high internet speed connection. The collocation is certainly a good option for any kind of business, which need to more authority over their cheap web hosting.

Internet Access
With the direct internet access, you may have to host the site yourself. You would need web server software, along with a computer, and of course a high speed broadband connection for a flawless hosting service. The companies which have huge data centers or only want control over all the aspects of the web access should consider looking in this kind of hosting. Hosting the site yourself will offer you more control on your web hosting server. 

Now that you are aware of all the factors before choosing cheap web hosting, you will now have no problem worrying about the performance of your website.

Author Bio:
The article is contributed by Gloria Philips. She has several years of experience working in the web hosting industry and loves to share hosting related secrets and how to find the cheap hosting sites.

What Not To Do While Web Designing

We're not perfect, that’s why most of us get some things wrong! Designers can get things wrong because of a lot of reasons, among them one is workload. They serve customers a lot more than they will be in the position of doing so. It challenges such web designers and makes them make blunders. It's essential to contemplate your own flaws for the reason that making uncomplicated flaws might reduce the effectiveness of the website.

Utmost blunders of you will be for the reason that we’re never sure about what we think we know. With this planned, now we have come up with 5 of the most typical blunders designers made while making any website.

• Create uncomplicated and easy web page navigation. Go with the same format for each web page. Visitors like to adhere to the sites which find them their preferred info around the greatest extent of 3 clicks. Give them the information they want as soon as possible. Make sure your website visitors have an idea wherever they were and wherever they are at the present time by way of differentiating between active and visited links.
• Your website should leverage the use of html/css, and load quickly. Bad web development will make you lose all potential customers and search engine also penalize such websites. In each of the browsers, it should function in the similar manner, whether it is Internet explorer, Firefox, or a safari. Mistakes in development lead to various difficulties in every browser.
• Variety vs. Operation is a controversy that has become a history. However, it is reported to be an essential one. No doubt in relation to layout, Web design service is actively playing a serious role when it comes to creating a brand and building credibility. However, overdoing layout might surpass your content and message easily.
• The finest policy on-line is ‘credibility '. Deliver solutions to almost all unnecessary issues, especially the people that are visiting your website may possibly have. Questions left unanswered can be the key reason why website visitors abandon you and do not visit your website again. Try to remember when prospects desire to engage with all your web page, it begins with a question. Answer them all, and you simply will know the distinction between increasing a number of customers and getting a visitor away. 

Not measuring effectiveness of your own web site can be no solution as it is possible through Google Analytics. An instrument obtainable for free might increase web site's effectiveness by giving all types of essential statistics. A superb programmer might commence with Google Analytics by simply creating the account. The effectiveness of a website is crucial to any company owner. For an entrepreneur running an online business, it’s as important as its online presence is. Owners of the business are thinking about just how their website can be working with the best proficiency, since it could become a good reason by switching off both visitors and search engines. You are going to prosper in relation to managing and developing a great web page by simply following previously mentioned suggestions.

  

Bio author:-  Mark Anderson is a happy husband and father enjoying life in Texas. He is a full-time business consultant and Web designer at Studioxcess.net

Pros and Cons of Website Templates for Online Business Projects

Overall look of your website is one of the most (if not the most) important  things to consider when making any project live online. The first impression stays for a while and even flawless product quality and service can't overshadow poor look of your online storefront. So if you are going to create an outstanding website, there are only two basic options: designing a completely new project from scratch or using pre-made website templates. I will try to outline main advantages and disadvantages of using related templates as a much more cost-efficient and less time consuming alternative to custom web design.

Advantages:

1.    Money saving. Creating a completely new, quality, custom-designed website will require decent knowledge in web development and design. In most cases this is impossible to achieve without hiring an experienced web designer or even a professional team. High-end web templates will cost you about $50 or even less each and there are even some absolutely free alternatives available. Also templates are usually easy to manage, so there is no need to hire a webmaster since you can do it yourself.

2.    Time saving. This is one of the main disadvantages of custom-made websites. Project completion takes a lot of time due to programming, testing and designing and moreover sometimes it’s hard to predict how much time will all this take. Website templates provide you with instant access to hundreds of themes. All you need is to choose the right one, perhaps tune it a bit and it's ready to go.

3.    Look of the website. There are a lot of web templates out there, so it should be easy for you to find the one that's perfect for you. They can be customized  in many ways to create an attractive look. The great feature is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get web builder coming with many premium web templates for easy editing and customization..

4.    Functionality. Pre-designed web templates already have standard pages and a lot of  advanced opportunities to create additional ones like galleries, blogs, etc. What can be a breeze - simple and convenient navigation links that will help your users to browse through your project easily and find any necessary information without any hassle. CMS powered  templates (such as Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.) allow you to add your content such as images, videos or blog posts in few clicks only with no special programming skills required.

5.    Search engine optimization. To make your online venture easy to find, you'll need to be ranked highly in search engine results. You'll have to do it yourself or hire a professional SEO expert. Luckily most of website templates come with basic search engine optimization features today that will save some of your time and money.

Disadvantages:

1.    Can't be completely exclusive. While there is a great amount of templates of different types, you can't be sure that yours is completely unique. An absolutely custom website is created for you exclusively and it's design can't be shared with anyone else on the web.

2.    Flexibility and scalability. In case you'll need to add many more elements to your page, you'll need a web developer to rewrite the page, because most of web templates have a fixed size and limited scalability.

3.    Limited customization. The customization of any web template can be done to a certain point. You'll have to keep in mind that the additional content can change the look and feel of your web page so you'll need to re-size it and the same point concerns image optimization. Also, if your template is HTML5 or Flash-based you'll need special software and skills to customize it.
Before choosing between a ready-made web template and custom website it is better to calculate all financial expenses and time associated with both options. I'd recommend to go with web templates first, since it's a much cheaper alternative and you are able to customize it in future. So you won't have to worry about money spent on development and design. What is your personal experience on this? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Author’s Bio:

Post by Martin Lindon - a PR and marketing manager at www.rickyswebtemplates.com, a widely-known online destination for premium and free HTML and Flash templates.

How Marketing Has Changed And What You Need To Do Differently

During the last several years, the most effective marketing strategies have changed significantly. By using a combination of the most effective Internet marketing strategies in 2013, a website owner can quickly drive a large amount of traffic to any website and increase the conversion rates that the website generates.

Social Media Networks

During the last several years, the popularity of many social media networks grew rapidly, and now, millions of people log onto the social media networks each day.

In order to drive a large amount of traffic to a website, website owners create detail profiles on the networks, pay for traffic from the networks, consistently update their status and tweet.

Article Directories

Before Google's algorithm updates, which are called Penguin and Panda, many website owners used article directories to market a website. A website owner could add many low quality and similar articles, which included several links to their website, to various article directories in order to generate a large amount of traffic.

Now, the authority of article directories has been lowered significantly.

Instead of using the article directories, a website owner should consistently post high quality content on their own website.

Local Keyword Phrases

In the past, website owners mainly targeted keyword phrases that were used nationally and internationally, but now, website owners are focusing on local keyword phrases.

Local SEO services provides are helping website owners to target certain geographical areas, and a local SEO report will show the number of people who search for particular keyword phrases in a certain area.

Keyword Stuffing

Before Penguin and Panda, website owners would post articles that had keyword densities of between five percent and seven percent.

Since the algorithm updates, Google has penalized websites that have articles that are stuffed with keywords, and now, articles with keyword densities that are between one percent and two percent rank very high in the search engines for these keywords.

High Quality Backlinks

Website owners used to be able to drive a website to the top of the rankings of the search engines by establishing many backlinks on low quality webpages, and many website owners paid for links.

Now, Google will penalize a website if Google suspects that the website has backlinks that have been paid for, and backlinks that are established on a website with a high pagerank are much more authoritative and valuable.

The best marketing strategies have changed greatly during the last several years. Now, some of the most effective strategies include social media optimization, consistently posting high quality content, focusing on local keyword phrases, posting articles that have a keyword density of around two percent and establishing high quality backlinks. 

13 Tips To Create Effective Ecommerce Checkout Pages

What does any customer want? A smooth, informative and enjoyable shopping process and an even smoother checkout process. A checkout process that’s designed to satisfy buyers, and not just the merchant’s objectives. Here’s how you design effective ecommerce checkout pages.

As a user, my need is to purchase a product – quickly, easily, and securely.

1. No Mandatory Registration

You want to gather as much customer data as possible; everyone understands that. However, forcing your customer to register or create an account even before they complete their purchase can lead to cart abandonment. If the customer is not inclined to build a relationship with you, it should be perfectly fine to let them just purchase and leave. If the overall experience has been good on your site, the customer is likely to come back, registration or not registration. 

2. Reduce Distraction

The checkout area should not contain any distracting and unnecessary information. The process should seamlessly lead the customer to the order confirmation page as quickly as possible. So don’t add any navigational links that can take your customer away from their purchase. If you do have to provide links on the checkout page, make sure the links open immediately on the same page. 

3. Keep The Checkout Process Short

The shorter your checkout process, the happier your customer. Keep this in mind while sorting out exactly what all you need from the customer during checkout, such as credit card details, address and so on. Reduce as many steps as you can, so that the customer can check out in a few simple steps 

4. Display Progress Indicators

At any point in the checkout process, your customers should know exactly where they are and how many steps remain till they’re done. Number each step in the checkout process. Right at the beginning, explain that there are X number of steps, and the exact amount of time it will take to checkout. 

5. Design Institutive Forms

Automatically populate as many fields as you can, using localized analytics. Indicate mandatory fields using asterisks. Use clear drop-downs to indicate list options. Use radio buttons where there aren’t many options. Design field sizes based on the size of the content you expect. Use a legible, bold font for field labels and align them in line with the fields. 

6. Be Upfront About All Costs 

Your customer should know of all shipping costs, delivery costs and additional taxes before the checkout process begins. Provide an Order Summary with detailed cost information including taxes. By doing this, you can prevent cart abandonment and increase satisfaction of shopping experience. 

7. Display Trust Credentials 

Your customer will be concerned about the safety of their credit card information. Make sure you display all trust credentials that you’ve signed up with, such as TRUSTe, or Verisign.  You can display them on your footer, and also at the top of your checkout process pages. 

8. Let Customers Know They’re Safe

Use padlocks and secure HTTP (HTTPS) where appropriate, to let customers know their information is lock-secure on your site. Display a short message about your payment gateway’s security protocol before you ask for their credit card information. You can mention the encryption standards and security information with regard to your payment database. 

9. Offer Multiple Payment Methods

You can offer any number of payment methods – the more you offer, the easier you make it for your customer. So if your customers don’t have a viable credit card, they should be able to pay through debit cards, PayPal, other eWallets, and any other payment method that you’re comfortable with. 

10. Show Remaining Inventory

When a customer selects a particular product, they should be able to see exactly how much you have in quantity. Don’t be afraid that if quantity is more customers won’t purchase immediately. What’s important here is upfront honesty and transparency. Don’t fudge the quantities – that’s a good way to lose trust. 

11. Display Customer Testimonials

Customers love to hear about the experiences of other customers. Gather as many genuine customer reviews as you can. Put up short excerpts from a few top ones on your checkout process page. Customers should be able to click on them to read more. Take care to display expanded testimonial on that page itself, so there’s no distraction. 

12. Offer Real-Time Support

Your customer is allowed to have last minute questions while checking out. Make allowance for this and put up a Live Chat feature on the checkout page. You can do this by using OlarkNew technologies such as Olark and LivePerson. Offering this kind of real-time support is a good way of gaining customer trust, and also to capture real-time feedback. 

13. Put Up An Informative Thank You Page

Don’t forget to display a nice Thank You page after the transaction is complete. Use this page to offer relevant support information including email, phone numbers, shipping details such as time and tracking numbers and so on. 

Hugh Caruthers is online marketer and works as a landing page optimization expert and counselor. He works with several of E-commerce businesses, sharing his expertise in this area.  

4 Fool-Proof Tips to Keep Traffic and Sales Coming to Your Website

When you invest time and money into a professional website, you cannot expect web surfers to just come across your website. While there are a number of different techniques that you can try to drive traffic, there are fool-proof ways to drive traffic to every site, no matter what the topic or brand. Here are 4 fool-proof tips that you must keep in mind to draw visitors who can easily be transformed into sales.

4 Ways to Drive Traffic and Turn Traffic into Sales 

1. Make Sure Your Content is Fresh 

The search engines and your visitors both want to see fresh content on your professional website. Search engine spiders scrub pages to look for fresh, relevant, and updated content, and you can update content on-page in a number of different ways with news feeds or blogs. Showcase your expertise, identify keywords, and you will increase your visibility and ultimately the traffic. 

2. Develop Content for Article Directories 

You should take time to drive traffic to your website off-page as well. While there are a number of techniques you can drive, article marketing is a great way to improve search engine rankings and also to direct traffic to your page with inbound links. You can either develop the content yourself or work with freelance writers to save time. These articles will be posted to popular directories, and can be easily accessed by customers who are actively searching for answers to their questions. 

3. Social Marketing is Important 

Social marketing is just as important as on-page search engine optimization. The new algorithms consider your on-page content, off-page content, and your social signals, so sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are a perfect place to post content and drive traffic to your website. 

4. Comment and Post on Relevant Blogs 

If you can find sites that have a proven record for success in your industry, you can post to their blogs and backlink to your website. This establishes you as a professional and an expert and shows you are involved in the industry. 

For many, just focusing on traffic isn’t enough, you need to focus on choosing the right web hosting services. If you choose the right host, you can design a professional site that is accessible and can be analyzed for success with specific tools that monitor your traffic. After this, you must take time to practice a number of different methods to drive traffic to your website, and turn this traffic into sales, so to learn more about Linux web hosting and becoming a reseller, please visit Midphase.com.

Reliable content, fresh content, and versatility are all important when you want to generate traffic and turn traffic into sales.

Three Utilities Every Website Needs

In order to run a successful website, you have to cater to what people want to see. The average internet surfer only takes ten seconds or less to determine whether or not they like a website enough to stay on it or whether it bores them into leaving. Certain utilities make a website more appealing and easier to use. If a website looks nice, has certain SEO keywords, and contains a search engine, there's a good chance that site will become a success. Having the proper utilities on your website will make a huge impact on the amount of visitors your site is able to gather. Try these three ways to keep your site fresh and popular. 

Quality art design

The first thing people usually notice on a website is the design. What kind of pictures do you have on your site? Does your layout make the text easy and enjoyable to read? Make sure the art on your page has something to do with the content of the page, even if it's a distant connection between the two. For example, a person writing a blog website about baseball should have nice-looking images relating to baseball on the homepage. The text of your pages needs to read quickly and effortlessly, or people will become bored. Once your site looks great, other great ideas can then take your site to the next level. 

SEO keywords and content

Let’s use that baseball blog as an example. If Mike Trout is a trending player right now, you should take advantage of that and fill your content with Mike Trout's name. You don't necessarily have to write articles solely dedicated to him, but mentioning his name would help your blog appear on search engines more readily. Once your visitors find your site, the rest of your content keeps them coming back. Write stuff that people care about. Why and how did Mike Trout just have one of the best seasons for a rookie in the history of baseball? Think outside the box a little bit. 

A search engine

When people find websites they like, they'll come back frequently if they can find related sites and information there. Your website's own search engine provides the visitors with a portal to related content online. Perhaps they'll be looking for other baseball blogs similar to your own. Users should also be able to use your search engine to find information within your site. If you have a forum, links to news, and other interactive sections, these search engines helps visitors find the information they consider most important.

Author Bio

Lyndsi Decker is a freelance writer and techie who has been promoting and looking into reseller hosting. To learn more about website hosting check here. In her free time she enjoys blogging about tech and spending time with her husband and two kids.

Server Not Found Error: Solution To Resolve The Problem

When certain websites usually does not open on your own PC and you can visit the same website from different computer at your friend's home. Here is the best way to detect and resolve the problem.

Fix 1: Look at your Windows HOSTS file – Ensure that there isn’t any entry within the hosts file that maps the website’s address to local host or perhaps an incorrect IP address like 127.0.0.1 – it is just a chance in case you have imported some third-party hosts file.

    Type this particular command in the Run Window:
    cmd /k notepad c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Fix 2: Find Defects within the Pipeline – eBay website may be working however it is quite possible that the actual issue lies using a router which is somewhere between you and the computer system hosting the eBay website. Execute a trace-route and look for messages like “Request Timed Out” – they’ll assist you in finding the position of the malfunction.

    Type this particular command in the Run Window:
    cmd /k tracert www.ebay.com – don’t forget to replace eBay with address of the site which is unavailable.

Fix 3: Clear DNS Cache – The DNS cache maintains a record of websites that you’ve a short while ago visited on your pc. Hopefully gets corrupted, you might have problems opening websites that have been earlier available without having troubles.

    Type this particular command in the Run Window:
    cmd /k ipconfig /displaydns – Look for the cache entries.
    If this unreachable site is shown within the cache, type cmd /k ipconfig /flushdns flush the cache.

Fix 4: Site Can Be Blocked – The probabilities are unusual however it is quite possible that access to some specific site may be have already been restricted through the Workplace firewall program. To check this, send an e-mail to www@web2mail.com with all the problematic site web address within the subject field. In case the site is up, you’ll get notified by a text copy of the website page in the email message.

Fix 5: Stop the Firewall and Anti Virus – If you find yourself running another software program anti-virus or firewall program (like Kaspersky, AVG, Avast, etc), exit and restart the web browser. Could be the issue resolved now ?