After listening to alot of vBSEO owners, the new vBSEO will now feature:

The Branding Removal Option permits you to remove the vBSEO copyright notice from your vBSEO licensed forum, for the entire lifetime of your vBSEO license, without any additional fees.

Upon installation, the vBSEO copyright notice will be automatically be removed. No configuration settings are required.

If you purchase the branding removal option for a forum that is already installed, you may need to delete your current license key from your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php) and save your settings in order to get your new *brand-free* license key.

You may or may not remember when vBSEO had auctioned off 4 or 5 branding free licenses. That was back in March of this year, and although I didn’t stick around til the auctions ended, my assumption is the auctions may have gone well over $500.00 each! Well now, you can purchase the vBSEO branding free option for a one time, additional fee of $117.00.

vBSEO 3.1.0 is the first official release that is 100% visible source code and requires no IonCube/Zend encryption! The encryption free version of 3.1.0 has been getting several reports from vBSEO’s pre-release team that you should expect a very significant performance boost from vBSEO 3.0.0.

Looks like once again, the guys at vBSEO have a winner. If you are not using vBSEO and want a search engine optimization solution for your vBulletin forum, try vBSEO!

These are questions most new users of vBulletin ask themselves when trying to choose the hosting solution best suited for them.

What I have found is, in the beginning, getting by on a shared hosting plan will be fine. You’ll just be starting out. Visitors, members, thread counts, post counts, and overall server load will be minimal. For shared hosting, I recommend using HostGator. The have three shared plans to fit your needs, and you can start small and upgrade at any time. Additionally, HostGator offers dedicated servers should your forum outgrow the resources of a shared hosting plan. Cost of shared hosting plans typically range from $4.95 to $12.95.

Other companies offering shared hosting that I’ve had good experience with are BlueHost and iPowerWeb.

If you are a existing vBulletin owner that is in need of the next step in hosting solutions, you may be interested in a VPS server (Virtual Private Server). An advantage to a VPS server is, you get Root access, which makes backing up your forum and database a breeze. VPS plans also isolate clients sharing the same physical disk space. This makes it much less likely that your site will be hacked through a neighboring site because your VPS site is isolated – a distinct entity on the server. Additionally, with a VPS, you can host as many sites as you like (within the ability to provide those sites with adequate resources. A VPS server is more secure, and prices range from $44.50 to $120.00 a month. I highly recommend PowerVPS (www.powervps.com). They don’t offer a affiliate plan, so if you sign up, please tell them you were recommended by me (mark[at]markbolyard.com)

Last but not least, there is Dedicated Server hosting. If you would like to read more on the benefits of dedicated hosting, you can read this article Benefits of Dedicated Hosting. This hosting solution is the highest performance, but also the most expensive. A dedicated server is YOUR server, and only your forum(s) and/or websites are on the server so your not competing for server resources. However, you either have to know how to manage the server yourself or pay a company to manage it for you. There are many companies that offer dedicated servers, a few being ServerPronto.com and HostRocket.Com.

While online forums are popular and the perfect method of relationship building, starting a forum and maintaining one can be challenging, especially in the beginning when members can be “few” and “far between”. The challenge for most new forum owners is to get beyond the initial start up phase and move onto a phase where the forum members themselves promote the forum simply by posting.

Although each forum is individual and personal, a few general guidelines should be followed or at least kept in mind when starting and maintaining an online forum. These are as follows:

1. Take care when choosing the type of forum and forum script or software that will be used. The forum should be easy to access, easy to use, and come with “visitor- friendly” features. All visitors should be made to feel welcomed and find the navigability of the forum, user friendly. Forum scripts and software may be overburdened with ads from the parent company and lead to a poor experience for visitors.

Some recommendations:

vBulletin® - Instant Community

2. The forum should have a good number of interesting and focused topics. The content should reflect the interests of the target audience, and every care should be made to have well-written and informative content that is updated regularly. This not only helps attract new members, it keeps older members from losing interest and defecting to other forums.

3. The forum should be Search Engine friendly. High activity forums, like popular blogs, provide a great reason for Search Engines to visit them frequently as they are brimming with fresh content all the while. Dynamic urls, session ids, etc. used by most forum software can be very detrimental to the forum health from Search Engine point of view.

When selecting a forum software, check if they are Search Engine friendly. With vBulletin, you can have a search engine friendly community by adding vBSEO: The Ultimate Search Engine Optimization Solution for vBulletin forums.

4. The forum needs to have a clear list of rules, a disclaimer, and most of all, good solid moderation. Visitors will quickly become frustrated with forums that have no clear guidelines, or feature rude, obnoxious, or overbearing members. Good manners are required as much online as offline.

5. Promotion, especially in the early days, will take considerable time and effort. Forums can be difficult to start (members generally are “shy” when there are only a few present), and the more posts that take place, the more individuals will join. This is a “snowball” effect of forums, so marketing must be done consistently, day in and day out, until the forum becomes more self-sustaining.

6. The owner of the forum should take an active interest in the forum and SHOW this interest by contributing regularly. Above all else, people join forums where they feel they will learn from the owner of the forum, and if the owner is never present, they quickly lose interest in the forum.

7. The forum should be targeted, yet diverse, encouraging older members to contribute, without making newer members feel uncomfortable. Cliques can form in forums, and this type of behavior should be discouraged by the owner and moderators. Every effort should be made to answer questions or comments by all members as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

8. As with all other Internet related ventures, care needs to be given as to hosting and maintenance of the forum. A forum that is always experiencing “downtime”, will lose members quickly, and a forum that has many coding mistakes will quickly frustrate visitors. As with Web sites, “cheap” providers of hosting and maintenance are not always “better”.

All in all, online forums can be a great way to generate income, develop a good reputation among clients, and provide entertainment and instruction for many individuals. Like with everything else, however, they take marketing savvy, and a great deal of time and attention to detail. The old saying, “You only reap what you sow” really applies to the world of online forums.

This release is a patch to 3.6.8 to fix a security issue reported to vBulletin within the WYSIWYG editor for Firefox. Only 3.6.8 is affected by this issue. The only changes in this release are for this security issue, fixes for 3.6.8 Patch Level 1 are also included with the patch.

The changed files are:
includes/functions_editor.php
includes/class_bbcode.php (This is part of the Patch Level 1 fix)
includes/version_vbulletin.php
There are no template changes.

If you are currently running the original release of vBulletin 3.6.8, you will want to apply this simple patch to fix the potential security issues.

Let’s start by taking a look at the retirement plan offered by your company. Once upon a time, these plans were quite sound. However, after the Enron upset and all that followed, people aren’t as secure in their company retirement plans anymore. If you choose not to invest in your company’s retirement plan, you do have other options.

First, you can invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, certificates of deposit, and money market accounts. You do not have to state to anybody that the returns on these investments are to be used for retirement. Just simply let your money grow overtime, and when certain investments reach their maturity, reinvest them and continue to let your money grow.

You can also open an Individual Retirement Account (IRA). IRA’s are quite popular because the money is not taxed until you withdraw the funds. You may also be able to deduct your IRA contributions from the taxes that you owe. An IRA can be opened at most banks. A ROTH IRA is a newer type of retirement account. With a Roth, you pay taxes on the money that you are investing in your account, but when you cash out, no federal taxes are owed. Roth IRA’s can also be opened at a financial institution.

Another popular type of retirement account is the 401(k). 401(k’s) are typically offered through employers, but you may be able to open a 401(k) on your own. You should speak with a financial planner or accountant to help you with this. The Keogh plan is another type of IRA that is suitable for self employed people. Self-employed small business owners may also be interested in Simplified Employee Pension Plans (SEP). This is another type of Keogh plan that people typically find easier to administer than a regular Keogh plan.

Whichever retirement investment you choose, just make sure you choose one! Again, do not depend on social security, company retirement plans, or even an inheritance that may or may not come through! Take care of your financial future by investing in it today.

You probably have seen this three-letter acronym in the course of your internet surfing. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary; syndicating means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website.

An RSS is a means of publicizing updates about websites. It may or may not include a summary and photos of the latest posting. But those that provide summaries (thus Rich Site Summary) allow users to skim through the article so that they could decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually contains the title of the update originating from the website. It is also usually the link to the website source.

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1. It will introduce your site to many that may not have known its existence until now.

2. Allowing others to review your site may point out small glitches (perhaps browser issues, misspellings, etc) that you overlooked, or were never brought to your attention.

3. Gain some link popularity. By posting your site (with its link of course) for review, you automatically establish yourself another back-link which will ultimately help with your rankings.

4. As you take the time to submit your site, and speak with others about its design, content, and functionality, you have the opportunity to perhaps meet other professionals, web designers, site owners, and maybe even develop a new friendship or two in these communities.
Below is a listing of 21 web communities (Forums) that allow you to post your website and / or forum for review; either by the members, staff, or both (Most forum Moderators and Admins will give you their opinion, and some may in fact write you a complete review in lue of just a quick comment!).

Sometimes, it’s hard to allow others to comment and provide feedback on things we have worked so hard on, only to hear what we could have done differently, but you may find, that allot of the feedback you get will be positive, and may even point out some serious issue that you simply have overlooked. So what are you waiting for? Have a look at the forums below. Registration is free for all and you might just get a tip or two that could make a significant change in your site.

Website URL: http://www.adminfusion.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://codingforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=37
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A community for all forum administrators to come together, strategize, share stories, and improve their forums.

Website URL: http://www.codingforums.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://adminfusion.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=71
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Web coding and development forums. Discuss JavaScript, PHP, CGI, general web building.

Website URL: http://www.daniweb.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/forum55.html
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Tech support, programming, web development, and Internet marketing community. Forums to get free computer help and support.

Website URL: http://www.designerstalk.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.designerstalk.com/forums/showcase/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A forum for designers to discuss ideas and get feedback on graphic and web design.

Website URL: http://www.devshed.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://forums.devshed.com/website-critiques-89/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A forum for developers of many different technologies including PHP, SQL, ASP, Perl, and Java. Includes HTML tools, free tutorials, development software, shareware and freeware downloads.

Website URL: http://forums.digitalpoint.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=23
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Discussion related to search engines, including optimization, marketing, tools and other technical aspects.

Website URL: http://www.dnforum.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.dnforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=183
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: The place to talk, buy and sell domains. Includes webmaster resources, web design forums, marketplace, and more.

Website URL: http://www.earnersforum.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.earnersforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=29
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A discussion forum for those earning money on the web. Includes webmaster resources, monetization advice, and more.

Website URL: http://www.htmlforums.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.htmlforums.com/f-website-review-20.html/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Discussion forum that offers free HTML and web development help to webmasters, web developers and small business owners.

Website URL: http://talk.iwebtool.com/

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://talk.iwebtool.com/website_reviews_forum.html
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A discussion forum covering topics such as Search Engines, web development, marketing, monetization, web tools, and other webmaster related subjects.

Website URL: http://www.namepros.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.namepros.com/web-design-reviews/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Buy, Sell, And Discuss Domain Names. A marketplace and community for domain name owners. Includes webmaster resources such as web design and review.

Website URL: http://www.ozzu.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.ozzu.com/forum39.html
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Webmaster discussion on numerous topics including Website design, programming, scripting, hosting, server administration, search engines, and operating.

Website URL: http://www.searchengineforums.com/

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.searchengineforums.com/apps/searchengine.forums/action::topiclist/forum::site-reviews/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Discussion forums dedicated to the topics of search engine optimization and industry issues. Includes forums on marketing, building and hosting your website.

Website URL: http://www.seochat.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://forums.seochat.com/site-reviews-17/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Discussion forums dedicated to the topics of search engine optimization.

Website URL: http://www.sitepoint.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=12
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A community in which webmasters can ask for help with topics such as site design, site programming, web hosting, site promotion and running an online business.

Website URL: http://www.talkfreelance.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://talkfreelance.com/f22-the-gallery-showcase.html
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Web design forum for webmasters and freelance developers interested in website design, programming, search engine optimization (SEO), html, and more.

Website URL: http://www.theadminzone.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=77
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A discussion forum with resources for forum owners and administrators.

Website URL: http://www.v7n.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.v7n.com/forums/website-review/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: John Scott’s Internet marketing and web development resource. Learn how to create and market a website professionally on the Internet.

Website URL: http://www.webdeveloper.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=29
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: Where Web Developers and Designers Learn How to Build Web Sites, Program in HTML, Java and JavaScript and More.

Website URL: http://www.webhostingtalk.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=10
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A leading discussion forum for all things related to web hosting.

Website URL: http://www.webmaster-talk.com

Direct link to Website Reviews: http://www.webmaster-talk.com/website-review-and-suggestions/
Review offered by members: Yes
Review offered by staff: Mods and or Admins may participate
Description of Forum: A discussion community of web designers, internet marketers, and programmers.

I run into people I know in different forums all the time. I had someone e-mail me today in a private forum that I’ve bumped into on numerous occasions at namepros.com… Out of the blue.

It’s not the first time. It happens all the time.

That’s a good thing. That’s part of doing business online. Building relationships… but you also build personal relationships with some. You share personal experiences. You help each other through good and bad times.

It’s amazing.

If you haven’t already done so, find a good forum to hang around. There are some bad ones, but if you look, you’ll find the good ones.

Just start hanging around. You’ll start to get to know the people. Then you can start participating… or just jump in.

There are forums for everything. Whatever you’re involved in. If you got a career, there’s a forum for it. If you have a hobby, there’s a forum for it.

I hang around mostly Internet marketing, tech, and other business related forums.

I don’t know where I would be today if I hadn’t discovered their power.

Beyond relationships you can learn endless things. Not just anything. Things drawing from experience. It’s better than a reading a textbook. It’s interactive. If you ask there is usually a member waiting with an answer. You can search old threads that could contain untold information…

Experience the Power of Forums… Explore and Grow!

Home: When you design a home page, keep the home link accessible to the user, make sure they know where it is at all times and on every page of your site. A good tip is to keep it in the same place on each page.

Links: If you are going to have links on your site. Make sure they look like links. The underlined blue text you see on sites is a link. Designers don’t like it much but users love it because it makes it clear that the word or a phrase is a link.

Text Size: Designers sometimes use small text to save room but if the text is too a users won’t stay on a site because they have a hard time reading the text. Keep the text at a normal size about 11 will be ok.

Navigation: Navigation is the key to any site. Place your navigational bar on the top of the page under your logo or maybe even down on the left side of the page. Never change location of the navigation that would defeat the purpose for easy navigation.

Orientation: If you have a site that has a lot of pages and many different products you want the user to know where they are as much as how they got there. You want to make sure your site has a click path. It shows how they got there in case they wish to go back they can find their way again.

Content: it is really not a factor in usability but it is a main part of the site. Keep the information pertinent because most users don’t read as much as the scan. Keep it short and to the point.

Placement: Place features where users expect to find them. The user understands that each is different but try to keep in uniform with other sites so the users will not have to search for it. Also, keep banners small and on the top of a page. Keep your search box on top to the right.

The 30 Second Rule: This applies in this context, in 30 seconds a user should know what site they are on and exactly where they are on that site.

Search: If you have a lot of pages on your site, give your users a search box. Place it on the right side of the page where it is easy to find.

Speed: There is nothing more annoying that having to wait for something. Keep your site flowing and keep your Flash effects to minimum. A user wants to be on a site that is speedy.

Many online marketers realize the importance of ranking high in the major search engines. They spend hours and hours optimizing some content and looking for links to get people to their site and optimizing the title and the Meta Tags. Marketers overlook one key fact and that is the web designer has an important role in search engine optimization or SEO.

Web Design sounds complicated but it is not as hard as it sounds. You have to have an idea of what you are doing. If you are creative and can incorporate content and design you can develop a website. Building a site is important but the optimization is very important. Your site has to be user friendly and have all original content, search engines love original content so to optimize your site it should be original.

Traffic is very important to site, without it you have nothing. If you design a great site, people will stay longer but they have to be able to find your site first and that is where SEO comes in. Here are 5 tips to make your site SEO friendly.

• Decide on what you want your site to be on and make a plan on how to do it
• Try to keep your web designs simple, clear and user friendly
• Keeping a simple layout will keep the site easy for you to build
• Keep your content original, complete and to the point
• Review your site, if you don’t like something about it change it.

These following elements are important to any web site design while trying to optimize your site.
• CSS Style Sheet, this type of format is good to use to do the formatting of your site because it has the ability to help you lay out your site.
• Try using Content Management Software or CMS
• HTML Code Compliance is a great way to format your text, make sure your HTML coding is compliant with your browser so the search engines can see it.
• Keep your graphics to a minimum, search engines do not index based on graphics
• Multi Level Navigation Menus are good ideas and many are used in JAVA, try to use HTML because search engines aren’t crazy about JAVA.
• Bad Web Design, avoid this by making your site user friendly for the search engines avoid using redirect and frame methods.
• Flash gives you site more appeal and it can also improve the way the site runs but don’t depend on it for SEO.

The professional sites are websites selling products and sometimes giving out technical information but a personal site is having a place like a blog to say what you feel and maybe invite others to do the same. Video sites are a form of a personal website. They have fun videos that anyone can see and maybe share a video of their own.

In the professional website arena, more goes into developing a site. Designers actually use a creator’s tool called Storyboards. They plan out their site in sequence and when it is complete then they create it and upload. Storyboarding is a very good way to layout your site and see if any changes are going to be made. When the site is done, the developers get the credit for making the site look the way it does.

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You can use a tool called Picture Dicer or an Image Splitter that allows you to take large graphic files and put them into smaller pieces and then put back together again using a table. You can also use thumbnails to point to a larger picture. The user can click on which picture they want to see so that all of the other pictures are small; the larger picture will come after.

Another method in improving loading time your site is to cut down or eliminate Flash intros, they look great but they take way too much time to load. You can loose a lot of traffic by wasting time loading flash intros. The same can be said of Java Script. If you really don’t need it then leave it out don’t add another reason for a slow site.

If you have any audio or video pertaining to your site, don’t have it come on automatically it will slow down your loading time. It works better if you create the site so the user can turn on the audio or video. You want to keep up the upload time and having it come on automatically could freeze up the browser.

If you have a site and you have traded links with blog directories or with just other people know, some of them may require you to put their logos on your site. Which may sound fine to you but again it will slow down your loading time. Try keeping them in your server until you need them.

As we have discussed many ways to keep your upload time to a good degree, there are also other factors that can contribute to the slowness of a site. Other things to take into consideration are your hosting provider how fast is your hosting service. Another way for a site to upload slowly also depends on the type of internet connection you have. If you have dial up then there is nothing you can do to improve the upload.

An average amount of time they say should be enough time to upload a site is 15 seconds. Some people with patience will wait for up to a minute, anything after that, they are going to leave the site. Nothing is more frustrating than waiting for a site to load. Anything you can do to help is a big plus.

Here is an example of what a PPC ad may look like:

Free Credit Report
See Your Credit Report in Seconds!
URL appears here

If you would like to see actual Google AdWords PPC ads just do a Google search on any keyword or phrase. Once you get to the page of search results you will see the PPC ads on the right hand side. These PPC ads were created by other webmasters just like you. Each time someone clicks one of these ads the owner of the ad has to pay a fee to Google. The fee is determined by a bidding system in which advertisers compete to obtain the highest position in the listings. The more popular, and therefore more valuable, a keyword is the higher the successful bid amount will be on that particular word.

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Your website can have many points of interest such as content, blogs, products and services but if you market them the wrong way on your site then you won’t get repeat users. That is one thing you want, repeat users and then by word of mouth, blogs or email, they can spread the word to their friends about how great your site is and then you will get even more natural traffic.

Once you have developed a site over the course of time you will want to update and maybe even change some things and that is ok if you remember one point. Stay on point, keep the focus on your site and remember the goal of the site. If you remember those things when you do update, then you won’t stray off the focus of the site and it will keep your traffic flowing. Here are five important tips to help you keep your site fresh and interesting.

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When I began my first site that I designed totally from scratch I had no way of knowing what the perfect site should be but because I used guidelines and my own personal touch my modest sites bring in over 50,000 visitors a month and Google upgraded me to a Page Rank 6 or PR6. Your goal is to build a site that is going to bring you income. Income from a site comes from things like Google Ad sense and affiliate clicks as well.

Your goal is to get your site to a modest page rank and to get indexed by Google so many people will see your site. If no one sees your sites then you have no traffic and without traffic your website just sits. You want to make sure your site has something whether it is a product, service or content that people need. If your site has no relevance then no one will come to it.

When building your site make sure you target a certain keyword or key phrases. The more keywords you use the more the indexing robots will come and access your site and rank it accordingly. You want to keyword enough do not make every other third word a key phrase because that is all the bot will see and it won’t recognize the content as original. Remember use your keywords wisely and always keep your content original. The better your site is the better the page ranking and the more traffic you get.

Key wording is not the only way to make a site successful. Your site is no good if you have a top ten indexing in the search engine if your site is non navigable. You have to make sure that your site is easy to use. A user won’t stay on a site if they are having trouble finding what they want. Don’t confuse the user, keep one topic per page and remember keep the lay out simple. Stay on point!

It is ok to use headers and graphics to enhance your site but do not make it your entire site. Keep it clean and simple; don’t use loud colors or huge graphics. People don’t want to use your site for the graphics they are coming for the information, product or a service you are providing. You can use extras such as blogs, social networks and other directories to promote your site as extra insurance.

Web Analytics is a useful and easy to use tool that can help you to understand important information about your site’s visitors. It provides a way for you to study the people who visit your site, how many and what pages they visit, how long they remain on your site, and why they leave.

If you plan to sell products on your website, web analytics will let you know which product pages are getting the most views. If you have plans to market your website through search engines there’s nothing that will help you more than Web Analytics. You will be able to know what keywords are working best to bring you traffic and how many visits you are receiving from your ad campaigns. With this information you will be able to create web content that focuses on the most productive keywords and campaigns which will bring even more traffic to your site.

There are many advantages to using Web Analytics

Traffic Count

Web Analytics does much more than just count your visitors. It will tell you how many of your visitors are new and how many are returning. It will also tell you how many pages and which pages were viewed.

Record IP Address

An IP address is a numerical address which will show where your traffic is coming from. You will be able to know their geographical location and the time of day they visited.

Entry and Exit Pages

The entry page is the first page viewed by your visitor. It is where they first entered your website. It could be that was the page they found in the search engine or perhaps they had bookmarked that page on an earlier visit. Exit pages, of course, are the page the visitor was on when they closed the browser or went to a different bookmark.

Total Time

Web Analytics keeps track of the time each visitor stays on your site. It will also tell you what path they took as they browsed through your site. This can help you to understand how well designed your site is so that you will be able to make changes to get your visitors to stay longer.

Tracing

Web Analytics traces your visitors showing you how they arrived at your site. You will be able to see what other websites that have linked to you are providing traffic.

Web Analytics will also show you what keyword searches resulted in you receiving traffic. This is useful information that can help you to optimize your pages contents.

Web Analytics will help you to provide a better website experience for your visitors, while at the same time making it more worthwhile and profitable for you.

So how do you effectively do directory submission? Well, it’s not something that is overly easy, but if you know what to do, it’ll be as quick and painless as possible. The how-tos are covered in this article on directory submission.

Why Directory Submission?

With the popularity of search engine spiders, computer programs which automatically browse the web looking for sites to add to a search engine, people would think that manual directory submission is no good anymore. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Directory submission is a great tool for web masters. Popular sites like MSN and Yahoo still use directories and users who are looking for sites within a specific genre often use directories as a way of quickly finding only the sites they want to find.

In addition to the fact that directory submission allows specific users to find your site, it also offers to you a unique way of link-building. You see, with directory submission, you are able to link-build without having to pay for your links and without having to return the favor by linking back to the specific site. You are able to have your site listed on a well-known site for free.

Tips for Successful Directory Submission

Directory submission can be easy for those who know what exactly to do. Follow the tips below to make directory submission easy for you.

Tip #1: Complete the Site Before Submitting

If there’s anything directory submission people (who are responsible for reviewing sites before adding them) hate, it’s sites being submitted to them that are not finished. By submitting an unfinished site to the directory, you’re not only setting yourself up for rejection, but you’re also making it harder for the eventual finished site to be listed. Always finish the site before submitting.

Tip #2: Make Sure the Site is SEO’d

In other words, make sure your site is search engine friendly and has quality content on it. Make sure the titles of the pages within your site are good (avoid the user of CAPITALIZED letters) and that the layout is user friendly.

Tip #3: Come Up With a Good Description

Don’t simply state “this is the best x site on the internet”. Instead, create a good, accurate description for your site. Talk about some of the features. Be as concise as possible and make sure the description is appealing to the directory submissions reviewer and users of the site.

Tip #4: Adequately Fill Out the Form

Many people make the mistake of skipping over forms or not filling them out correctly. Don’t make this same mistake. Fill out every single required field, and try to fill out as many of the optional fields as possible.

Tip #5: If There’s a Comments Form, Say Thank You

Since actual people are reviewing your site, it’s a good idea to thank them for taking the time. If there’s a comments field, be sure to say thanks.

About the Author
Abul Kashem owns and operates bdseo.com that provides manual directory submission,article submission service. He also operates a couple of web directory- AheadDirectory.com , allrelevantsites.com

80% of the traffic goes to those on the first half of the natural search results on the first page.

A recent eye-track study done on Google clearly shows that searchers spend more time looking at natural results than paid ones. Only 38% click on paid or sponsored results and searchers only look at the first one or two.

With billions of pages now in the search engines, is there any hope that your website could be on the first page for your best search terms? If you’ve given up on this possibility–and you’re spending a small fortune on pay per click ads–there is some good news. With a good Internet marketing strategy and excellent optimization of your site, it is possible to improve search engine visibility and even to get on page one for your best keywords.

Why is a page one result so important? A recent study by OneUp Web revealed quantifiable data on the value of a page-one search result in the natural or organic search listings.

In the first month a site appears on Google’s first SERP (Search Engine Results Page), its conversion rates rise 142 percent, according to the study. The second month, conversion rates are nearly double (194 percent), compared to the month prior to entering the top SERP.

In terms of unique visitors, the average site appearing in Google’s top natural SERP could expect a 337 percent increase in traffic in its first month and a 627 percent increase in the second month.

When a company first gets listed on Google’s first page, the traffic in the first two months goes up almost exponentially, and conversion rates also improve strongly because it draws a more qualified customer that converts more frequently. For sites that make their initial appearance on Google’s second and third SERP, the study found the number of unique visitors to the site increased 517 percent in the first month and 942 percent the next (compared to the month before the site first appeared on either the second or third page.)

Power PR, a marketing publicity firm in Torrance, California, recently adopted the Expansion Plus Internet marketing strategy and web review and implemented all its redesign and optimization recommendations.

“We had done a web redesign a year ago that cost us $20,000 and produced absolutely no results,” says John Elliott, founder of Power PR. “It was not an easy process either–we wrangled with the developers for six months and this embroiled our executives in time consuming meetings.

“The process with Expansion Plus was easy and fast. They are true search engine optimization and content professionals–what I would call gurus in the area.

“The week the site went live we broke into the top 1000 for our best keyword-marketing publicity–for the first time. Two weeks later we were at #21. Now we are at #3. And we are getting qualified leads off our website for the first time. We’re all very excited.”

If you’d like to improve your website’s search engine visibility and experience similar results, contact Expansion Plus.

About the Author
Sally Falkow is President of Expansion Plus, Inc., and author of Website Marketing Strategy Ebook. She is an authority on Internet Marketing and search engine optimization strategies. For more information, visit http://www.expansionplus.com.

You can write them for your websites and you can also submit them to other article sites. For instance:

GoArticles.com
Ezau.com
EzineArticles.com
Web-Source.net

There are many other article sites. Just do a search on Google for “article submit”.

This is what article writting can do for you:

1. Bring traffic from the Article sites which you submit to.
2. Help boost your PageRank with Google. This is done by providing backlinks to your website in your article.
3. It can establish your expertise in a particular area. The more people that see your articles the better. Article writting can contribute to your reputation online.
4. If you use your articles on your website as well, it provides great content for your website which is food for the search engines.

There are many more benefits to article writting, but as you can see it’s a great idea to do it.

Compared to traditional advertising practices, affiliate programs are more effective, risk-free and cost-efficient. But why do many people still fail in affiliate marketing? There are a lot of reasons and a lot of areas in the program to look into. The most critical aspect in the affiliate program is advertising. Many affiliate marketers fail in this aspect because they lack hard work, which is the most important thing in affiliate marketing and in all other kinds of business as well. Although it pays to be lucky, you cannot merely rely on it. Affiliate marketing isn’t as simple as directing customers to the business site. If you want to earn big, of course, you have to invest time and great amount of hard work in promoting the products. As earlier mentioned, the competition is very high and customers nowadays are very wise, too. After all, who doesn’t want to get the best purchase—that is, to pay less and get more in terms of quantity and quality.

Lack of preparation is also a reason why one fails in affiliate marketing, whether he is a merchandiser or an affiliate. Part of the preparation is researching. On the part of the merchant, he has to be highly selective in choosing the right affiliate websites for his affiliate program. In order to be sure he has the best choices, he must have exhausted his means in looking for highly interested affiliates whose sites are sure fit to his products and services. The affiliate site’s visitors must match his targeted customers. On the other hand, the affiliate marketer must likewise research on the good-paying merchandisers before he signs up for an affiliate program. He must ensure that the merchants’ products and services match his interests so he can give his full attention and dedication to the program. He can get valuable information by joining affiliate forums, comparing different affiliate programs and reading articles on affiliate marketing where he can get tips from experienced affiliate marketers on how to choose the best merchants and products with high conversion rate.

The website is a very important tool in the whole affiliate program. As an affiliate marketer, you should plan how your site is going to be, from domain name to the design, the lay-out, the content, and ads. Some users are particular about what they see at first glance and thus when they find your site ugly, they won’t read through the content even if your site has many things to say and offer. On the other hand, there those who want information more than anything else. Affiliate marketers with “rich-content” web sites are usually the ones who prosper in this business because the content improves traffic to the site. Websites with high quality contents—with relevant keywords and more importantly, right information about the product and not empty hyped-up advertisements—allow you to earn big in affiliate marketing even when you’re asleep. If you won’t be able to sustain the interest of your site visitor, you won’t be able to lead him to the merchants’ site. No click-through means no sale and thus, no income on your part.

Selecting a top level domain name is also crucial to the success of the affiliate program. Lots of affiliate sites don’t appear in the search engine results because they are deemed by affiliate managers as personal sites. Major search engines and directories would think of your site as transient ones and thus, they won’t list it in the directory. Before you decide on the domain name, know first what you are going to promote. Many fail because their sites are not appropriately named, so even when they feature the exact products the customer is looking for, the customer might think the site is not relevant and thus, won’t enter the site.

Above all, an affiliate marketer must be willing to learn more. Certainly, there are still a lot of things to learn and so an affiliate marketer must continue to educate himself so he can improve his marketing strategies. Many fail because they don’t grow in the business and they are merely concerned about earning big quickly. If you want long-term and highly satisfactory results, take time to learn the ins and outs of the business. Continue to improve your knowledge especially with the basics in affiliate marketing ranging from advertising to programming, web page development, and search engine optimization techniques. Likewise, study the needs and wants of your site users and how different merchandisers compete with each other.

Keep on trying; don’t get disappointed if your first attempts did not pay off. Thousands are attracted by the possibility of generating skyrocketing incomes through affiliate marketing and so they sign up in any affiliate program without carefully understanding every aspect of the business. When they don’t get instant results, they quit and sign up for another program and repeat the process of just copying links and referring them to others. When you sign up for an affiliate program, don’t expect to get rich in an instant. Work on your advertising strategies and be patient. You’ll never know how much you can get if you don’t persevere.