Archive for November, 2008

The Importance Of META Tags

Meta tags are used to add information to the HTTP header of a webpage. It also contains hidden information in the coding that the search engines will pick up on. Example: author’s name, title of web site and “keywords” Meta tags can help improve your placement in search engines and can therefore help increase traffic to your Web site. Most likely, if your site does not have “keywords” in the head of your html code, the engines will not find your website.

Choosing your keywords carefully: Choosing the keywords used in your meta tags are very important. If you do not choose the proper keywords, submitting your site to the search engines will be useless, because those keywords are major factors in determining how a site visitor will locate your site in the engines. Lets take a look from the searcher’s point a view…

A searcher goes to Google, Yahoo or Excite, looking for topics or products relating to what your company (or site) is offering. He comes up with 10 to 20 search results on the first page of the engine. Your company listing is no where to be found. After skipping to the next 3 page results . . . Your company is still no where to be found. Why? Most likely you have not inserted the most effective keywords relevant to your website. Example: You have decided to insert your companies name in your “keyword” meta tags, instead of listing your products or services in your keywords. Searchers do not look for company names, unless they are looking for a specific major company on the web.

Tips on choosing the most effective keywords or phrases for your webpage. Start with using General Keywords, then by adding specific keywords. Example: Your company is selling CD’s. Take the general keyword of “CD’s” and add a specific title or word to it, based on the CD’s your are offering. So, your keyword phrases may be “CD’s for Clay Aiken” or even the title of the CD “Measure Of A Man”

List your main products, services or purpose, that surfers will use in their keyword search.

If not selling products, then list a specific topic relating to your sites content in your keywords.

On your website index or home page, be sure to include specific phrases or topics, that a searcher may use to look for your site in the engines. (The engines may pickup on these words in your sites content).

Consider regional keywords- If your company or site only caters within specific locations, you may want to list this in your meta tags. Example: If you have a company only sells products within your state or city, be sure to list the city or state in your meta tags. If your site ships products anywhere in the world, state global distribution in your meta tags.

Choose the most effective title for your webpage. (keep in mind that visitors will be searching for specific topics in their search, not the name of your company). Exception: (If they are looking for a major company or name brand item, song, book, etc.). Meta Tags with Frame pages: Did you know that search engines often times do not pickup “keywords” used in frame sites? Most engines do not support frame sites. It is suggested that you have an “Introduction or home page” (for your index page), which does not use frames, before entering a site with frames. This way the search engines will pick up on your meta tags and you will have a higher chance of your “intro/index page” showing up in the search engines.

Written By Donna Snyder, CEO Of American Association Of Webmasters - http://www.aawebmasters.com

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Saturday, November 29th, 2008

Three Easy and Time-tested Methods For Getting Free Targeted Traffic

For many new marketers who have just come online, they are tempted by many of the advertising services that promise huge amount of traffic to their web sites at extremely low cost. These services included the following:

- Ad Blasters
- Autosurfing sites
- Guaranteed Traffic
- Search Engines Submission
- Safelist marketing

Most of these services do not work and are a waste of your hard-earned money. Even if they do work, the results are usually pathetic. Furthermore, the traffic you received is usually not targeted to your niche.

You have to understand that you do not need huge amount of traffic to your web site to make money. What you need is targeted traffic. And here are three of the best methods to get targeted traffic for free.

1. Online Community Sites

Forums and messages boards are examples of online community sites. There are thousands of forums and messages on the Internet that you can participate and thus you need to spend some time to find those that match your niche.

The best way to use the forums is to provide answers to questions posted by other members of the forums. If you do this often enough, you will gain great credibility and other members will start to view you as an expert!

Now, the important thing to do here is to leave your signature in every post you make. The signature is the only place where you can advertise your product or services. It usually consisted of a 4 or 5-line description and a hyperlink to your web site. However, most experienced marketers do not advertise their products or services directly. Instead, they use their signature to drive traffic to their lead capture page to capture the name and email address of the visitors. In other words, these experienced marketers are building their own opt-in list.

2. Link Exchange

This method requires you to contact other webmasters and persuade them to add a hyperlink on their web sites that point back to your web site. In return, you also put up hyperlinks on your web site that point back to their web sites. This method can give your web site a great boost in the search engines ranking if you do it correctly.

A good strategy is to exchange links with other webmasters who has a product or service that compliment yours. If your product is related to credit repair, you can consider exchanging link with another webmaster who offers a debt management service. This way, you are providing more value to your visitors and prospects when they arrive at your web site.

3. Article Submission

Many new marketers think that writing articles is too difficult and shun away from this simple but effective traffic generation method. However, article writing is a skill that can be learned. Simply enter ‘article writing’ into any major search engines and you will have a ton of free information that shows you how to write good articles. And you do not need any special software to do this. Windows Notepad is all you need to get started.

For each article that you write, you will include a resource box that contain a description and a hyperlink to your web site. This is similar to the signature you use when posting messages to a forum. If your article is interesting and informative, the readers of your article will likely follow the hyperlink in your resource box and visit your web site for more information.

Most of the popular article directories allow you to submit your article for free. Your articles are subject to approval by the owners of these article directories. A few of them may offer you a quicker review and listing of your article for a nominal fee. However, this is usually optional.

All the methods outlined above have been proven to drive targeted traffic to your web site. The result may not be significant in the beginning but over time, the stream of targeted traffic to your web site will start to grow. All it takes is a bit of time and effort on your part to put these techniques into action.

Stephen Chua is an online marketer who use various methods to generate free traffic to his sites. Find out how you can unleash a tyhoon of unstoppable traffic to your site by creating your own traffic funnel Grab your free copy at http://davidvalliereprivatesite.com now.

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Thursday, November 27th, 2008

RAID 0 Failure - The Dangers of Using RAID 0 Arrays

RAID 0 is a very popular RAID level that is not only used in servers, but it is also found in external storage devices such as external hard drives and network attached storage units (NAS). Manufacturers of external hard drives use RAID 0 to increase the storage capacity of their units to consumers. One example is the external hard drive manufacturer Lacie. Lacie uses RAID 0 in many of their products including the Lacie Big Disk Extreme and the Lacie Bigger Disk Extreme.

While RAID 0 has benefits, it is not fault tolerant. A disk failure in the array can cause complete data loss. This is due to the fact that RAID 0 uses a method called striping. Striping writes data in chunks of the same size across each member disk the array. All member disks in the array must be functioning in order to read the data properly. Most Server Administrators understand the dangers of RAID 0 and conduct frequent backups of their data, however many users of large capacity hard drives (such as the ones mentioned above) are unaware such units use RAID 0. These users are surprised to learn that a single disk failure can possibly render their data unrecoverable.

When a RAID 0 disk failure occurs, it is crucial to power off the server or storage device and contact a data recovery company. The failed hard disk must be repaired to its original state in order to recover data from the RAID 0 array. If more than one drive has failed, data recovery is possible but chances of recovery are decreased. To prevent data loss while using RAID 0 devices or servers running RAID 0, it is crucial to perform regular backups of the data.

This article can be freely published on a website however it must not be modified in any way including the author bylines, and the hyperlink must be made active as shown below.

Andrea Stone is employed with ReWave Hard Drive Recovery, a data recovery company serving clients in cities worldwide including Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Orlando, Phoenix, Raleigh, Richmond, San Antonio, San Diego, and Tampa. Visit our website for more information about RAID 0 recovery.

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Thursday, November 27th, 2008

Small Business Disaster Recovery Plan - Critical Tasks You Can Do Now

Research has shown that only about 30% of small businesses have a disaster recovery plan. I believe this is because business owners don’t have a clear idea on what needs to be done.

The main purpose of any disaster recovery plan is to protect business critical data from being lost. Business critical data includes any key business information that could not be recovered if it were destroyed. Examples include customer contact information, financial records, products and job specifications, or any other data you deem important. Successful disaster recovery plans focus on keeping this business critical data backed up and accessible at all times.

Disasters aren’t always hurricane sized. A poorly timed server crash can do as much damage, and is more likely to occur. The tasks listed below should help you get started on building a disaster recovery plan that will keep your business critical data safe in any type of disaster.

  • Make sure you get a full backup of all of your electronic files, email messages, and any other irreplaceable customer data every night. Don’t forget to back up laptops that traveling employees are using. Critical customer data is often stored on these assigned laptops.
  • Make sure these backups are moved to an off site storage facility on a daily basis.
  • Rotate and catalog your back up tapes on a weekly basis, and replace them every so often with new tapes.
  • Run a restore test on that data at least once a month. If you can’t restore the data that has been backed up, it won’t do you much good.
  • Keep your backup hardware up to date. Nothing would be worse than having current back up tapes, experiencing a disaster and the loss of your tape drive, then finding that the technology is so out of date that you can’t buy another similar tape drive to read those tapes.
  • Make a list of all of your operating systems and applications and include the version numbers, license numbers and configuration details. Consider creating a “run book” which includes this information plus screen shots of the configuration screens of your backup software, firewall setup and network drives, at least. The run book should also include details about specific IT activities, for example, how to load operating systems, install desktop software, access and synchronize databases, make configuration changes, restore files from tape, create new user accounts, any special needs for each application, and the personnel who know how to do these tasks. Make a copy and store one off site.
  • Store all of your backup tapes and business critical software and manuals at your off site facility. Remember to include copies of software purchased online and downloaded on all computers and laptops. Also, remember to update these when you upgrade your operating systems and software.
  • Check the security and accessibility of your off site storage. Who has keys, what are their business hours and will they be available if an area wide disaster occurs?
  • Review your IT and phone service level agreements and compare them with your business needs. If a server crashes, can you live with a 12 hour response time from the vendor?
  • Enforce procedures that ensure your data and data equipment are secured physically and electronically via controlled access doors and Internet firewalls.
  • Consider buying several emergency laptops. On these laptops, install and configure your business critical applications and then store them off site. Test and use them periodically and remember to keep them updated as your business software changes.
  • Create a document that includes locations for where to set up alternative office space, who to contact immediately after the disaster, and where to get new servers and computers. Include all business critical contacts, such as your employee home numbers, your insurance agent, telephone company, Internet broadband provider, IT consultant, and the post office. Having this information will help immensely if you have to transfer your critical services to a new location.
  • Review your insurance policy. Does it provide for loss of income after a disaster? What kinds of disasters are covered?

A disaster recovery plan is critical to the health of your small business. Following the tasks on the list above will go a long way in keeping your business critical data safe. The bottom line is this: if your business critical data is accessible after a disaster, your business will be one of the 6% that survive the aftermath.

Ellen Davis is the owner of Computer Sense, a website and computer consulting company in Cheyenne, Wyoming. You’ll find more expert advice about disaster recovery plans and other small business technology issues on her website at http://www.sensible-computer-help.com

The best Way to Get High Google Pagerank

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

The Importance Of Recovery Software

The majority of Americans use computers for business, personal or educational pursuits. With all of the important information that we are continually storing on our computer systems, it is becoming more and more important that we have good recovery software.

This software helps us recover lost data in the event of a hard drive crash or other computer issue. Having a good recovery system in place can save you a huge amount of time, frustration and possibly money, when trying to recover data that has been lost.

When searching for recovery software to recover your data, the first thing you need to be sure of is that the software is compatible with the computer system that you are using. If the software is not compatible or does not support your systems hardware, then it isn’t going to work on your computer.

For example, a recovery program designed for Linux is not going to work if you are running Windows or own a Mac. After you find the correct software package, be sure to follow the instructions for installation.

You will also want to be sure that you are installing the software on a separate drive than where the deleted data was stored. Installing the software on the same drive could result in the data being overwritten and leaving no way for hard drive data recovery.

There are different types of recovery software available for different recovery issues. The trick is to find the software application that works best for your situation. Another key is to stay calm and not panic immediately over your lost data.

Most of the software available today is relatively easy to use if you follow the instructions provided. While some computer issues and data retrieval will have to be completed by a professional data recovery specialist, many issues can be handled by the computer user.

Mike Selvon’s portal will expand your knowledge on recovery software. Visit us and leave a comment at our emergency data recovery blog where a free gift awaits you.

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Thursday, November 27th, 2008

Disaster Recovery Planning

Nobody wants to think about the possibility of tornadoes, hurricanes, floods or any other act that could possibly ruin a company’s data. Although the above aren’t as common in some areas, certainly everybody has experienced some form of power outage. Whatever the cause, the loss of critical data from your electronic sources can ruin your business. So how does one protect themselves? By simply creating a disaster recovery plan and then implementing it.

Surprisingly, statistics show many businesses are unprepared when it comes to creating a disaster plan. It is said that 40 percent of all small businesses will go out of business if they cannot get their data in the first 24 hours after a crisis while 43 percent of companies never resume business following a major fire.

To protect yourself, the first thing you should do in building your disaster recover plan is to obtain top management commitment. Management should be responsible for coordinating the disaster recovery plan and ensuring its effectiveness within the organization. Adequate time and resources must be committed to the development of an effective plan as well. These resources could include both financial considerations and the effort of all personnel involved.

Second, establish a planning committee. A planning committee should be appointed to oversee the development and implementation of the plan. The planning committee should include representatives from all functional areas of the organization. Key committee members should include the operations manager and the data processing manager. The committee also should define the scope of the plan.

Third, perform a risk assessment, The planning committee should prepare a risk analysis and business impact analysis that includes a range of possible disasters, including natural, technical and human threats. Each functional area of the organization should be analyzed to determine the potential consequence and impact associated with several disaster scenarios. The risk assessment process should also evaluate the safety of critical documents and vital records.

Traditionally, fire has posed the greatest threat to an organization. Intentional human destruction, however, should also be considered. The plan should provide for the “worst case” situation. It is important to assess the impacts and consequences resulting from loss of information and services. The planning committee should also analyze the costs related to minimizing the potential exposures.

Fourth, establish priorities for processing and operations. Evaluate critical needs of each department including functional operations, key personnel, information, processing systems, service, documentation, vital records and policies and procedures. When prioritizing, analyze and determine the maximum amount of time that the department and organization can operate without each critical system.

Critical needs are defined as the necessary procedures and equipment required to continue operations should a department, computer center, main facility or a combination of these be destroyed or become inaccessible.

A method of determining the critical needs of a department is to document all the functions performed by each department. Once the primary functions have been identified, the operations and processes should be ranked in order of priority: essential, important and non-essential.

Create a written plan and test this plan once the above is considered. And of course get approval for the plan.

Last, consider data recovery strategies. The quickest and easiest way to help ensure that the business can be recovered should it suffer a loss is to get copies of your data out of the building into a second location.

Whether your business is small or large, practicing the above will keep you from being another closed business statistic.

About the Author: Stephen J. Richards has 25 years experience in Data Management and Information Technology. This information is provided as a public service by Neon Enterprise Software, a leading provider of mainframe disaster recovery and data retention technology.

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Thursday, November 27th, 2008

How to Attract Repeat Traffic to Your Internet Site

The best sites are those people keep returning to time and time again, because those sites are regularly updated with free gifts and guidance, for instance, or because a competition or survey takes place which people can enter and must call back later to access the results.

Competitions are, in fact, high on the list of reason people visit a site in the first place and also the reason they return time and time again for results or to enter another competition.

Here are more ways you can generate first-time and repeat traffic to your site.

* Conduct a survey of interest to a wide number of people, essentially prospective buyers of your products and services. Tell them the results of the survey will be available on a specific date and send an email reminder the day the results go online.

* Start a quiz or competition. The idea is to invite people to enter the quiz for a range of interesting prizes (offer advice or downloadable reports which can be fulfilled virtually free of charge). Remember to keep updating the quiz or to promote new competitions but always make a point of giving results of answers and prize winners on your site on some specified date (another great way to get people coming back to you, time and time again).

* Give reasons for browsers and passing visitors to present their e-mail address for offers of free and discounted goods and services now and in future. ‘Click here for your free report’ is a great idea. But be sure to get their e-mail address rather than let them download the report independently.

* Offer red hot, up-to-the-minute, updated information on your site, email every time something new is available, such as:

- If you’re selling collectibles, offer an updated listing of current values, best auction houses for buying and selling specific items, buying and selling tips.

- Firms selling airfares, holidays, etc., can offer ‘current best deals’. ‘what’s on’ guides, little-known secrets and hideaway haunts of specific locations.

- Firms selling auction guides or specialising in specific items, say antiques or collectibles, can offer auction updates, price valuations, tips for buying and selling specific items.

- Firms selling competitions newsletters and other items to interest competitions enthusiasts, can offer current lists of competitions, slogan-writing tips, and so on.

- Offer special discounts at particular times. For example, invite customers and enquirers to visit your site to access this Sunday’s special end-of-week discounts, or to choose from end-of-the-month clearance sales. Announce these special offers anywhere and everywhere that induces people to visit your site.

* Build a community around your site. A community consists of people interested in your product, and related products and services, who may wish to meet one another in newsgroups and discussion forums to discuss their interests and share advice and information.

Avril Harper is a business writer and eBay PowerSeller who has produced several guides to making money online which you can download free at: http://www.avrilharper.com/freestuff.html

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Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

4 Quick Tips For SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is when you take certain steps in order to rank higher in the search engine results and thus get more traffic. The best ways to achieve this are by site building, link building, on page optimization and keyword research and selection. You will need to work on each of these areas in order to develop the strategies that will help your site rank well. It will be easier for some keywords compared to others. Just remember it will take time and that your goal should be to get more traffic, not rank higher necessarily.

Keyword selection is probably the most important part of SEO. You may think that you know exactly which keywords you should be using, but you don’t. The most common mainstream keywords are going to be the most expensive and difficult to achieve a high ranking for. You will need to think out of the box. I like to sit down and brainstorm on a piece of paper. I write out as many keywords as I can think of and start building my list. Google Adwords has a keyword tool that helps me come up with more once I’m all out of ideas. It is best to put down as many as you can come up with. Once you have your list you should start to knock some off by looking up how many people actually searched for that phrase and who your competition is.

The way your site is built is also crucial to your online success. The way your pages are structured and coded will have a great impact on your SEO efforts. In order for your pages to be found for a search they need to be indexed by the search engines. Javascript menus often throw off search engines when they are trying to index your website. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use them, but if you do, make sure to include another way to navigate your site. This alternate navigation should contain links that are text only. You should also make a sitemap that includes all of the pages on your site.

If you want to read more tips and Internet Business product reviews check out http://www.ibat.ca

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Monday, November 24th, 2008

On-Page SEO - Two Critical SEO Factors

QUESTION: So what is the thing you need to do BEFORE you get all those inbound links?

ANSWER: You need to get your website ready for the search engines. It’s what the search engine experts call “Internal” or “On-Page” SEO (SEO means “Search Engine Optimization”). It’s the work you do on your website that makes it very easy for the search engines to figure out what your page is all about.

And once they figure out what your page is about, they’ll start ranking it higher for those search terms.

So here are two of the most important things you can do right now, on your site, to prepare for the traffic you’re about to receive (and to ultimately crank up your Search Engine Rankings as a result.)

1) Update the HTML Page titles for each of your web pages.

The HTML page title is the text that appears in the top blue bar of your browser when you’re looking at a web page. Your page title is one of the most important factors that Search Engines look at to determine the subject of your page.

They want to know what they’re looking at, too.

Lots of people ignore the page title and leave it empty, and as a result, they get poor search engine rankings. Sometimes, they’ll use the same page title for all their pages on their site, but that’s a mistake, too. (What you want is for the search engines to rank one of your pages highly for a particular term. If all your pages have the same title, then they are all competing for the same term, and the result is that none of them will rank as high for that term, all other things being equal.)

So figure out what each page is about, determine the most important and relevant keywords for that page, and set your Page Title to that keyword phrase.

2) Use good “anchor text” within your website to link from one page to another. What’s “anchor text”? It’s the word or phrase that is the actual link to your page.

So, for example, if you are linking to a page for the XYZ-1000 Widget, what you don’t want to do is have text on your page that says “Go see the XYZ-1000 Widget here, and then make the word “here” the link. Why not?

Because you’re not trying to get that page ranked for the word “here”. You want that page ranked for the search term that your traffic is using. So make the link text the entire model number, or the model number plus “widget”. THOSE are the words you want to rank highly for.

You would still say to “Go see the XYZ-1000 Widget here”, but only make “XYZ-1000 Widget” be the anchor text. Make sense?

Good, because these two tips I just shared with you are forgotten or ignored by most of your competitors. Do them now so that the search engines can read your pages easier, and rank you higher right now for your most important keywords.

It will also pay off once you get all the inbound links you’ll be building. In fact, it will help you CRUSH your competitors for your most important keywords…and that means TRAFFIC for you. And that, after all, is the point.

If you’ve tried and failed to get organic search engine traffic in the past, discover how to simplify your Traffic efforts with Mark Widawer’s ebook, “The Triumph Of the Stupid.” Get your Free copy here: http://www.TheTriumphOfTheStupid.info

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Monday, November 24th, 2008

6 Proven Tools to Generate Traffic For Your Internet Marketing Business

Generating targeted traffic is one the essential ingredients for internet marketing success. In fact, once you have a product and a website that is converting well, the more targeted traffic the better. But do you know about the traffic generating tools that you have at your disposal? In this article we will review 6 proven tools to generate targeted traffic for your internet marketing business.

1. Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay per click advertising, also known as PPC, is one that we’ve probably all heard about. It is a type of advertising that has you putting up a link to your site at a site like Google or Yahoo. Whenever anyone clicks your link, you’ll pay a very small amount of money. You will find that your ad can be made to appear on pages that are related to your site. PPC can be an important part of your internet marketing strategy.

2. Article Marketing
You’ll find that writing articles and submitting them to article directories can be one of the best techniques for generating targeted traffic to your website. Article marketing is also a means of proving yourself an expert in your field. Take some time to look into key word optimization and look at how the search engines will look for your information.

3. Viral marketing
Viral marketing takes place when you have something related to your business that will be passed around from user to user. For example, you might offer a free eBook on a hot topic. Inside you have a link to your website. This has many benefits when it comes to bringing you targeted traffic because it will be spread personally from user to user.

4. Traffic Exchange
Traffic or link exchanges are excellent techniques for bringing targeted traffic to your website. In this strategy you simply exchange sending messages to your list for other same-niche marketers doing the same with their lists. This method can be a source of quality traffic that is relevant to your site. That targeted traffic can be a powerful source for the sales that you need. Don’t miss out on using this powerful tool.

5. A Joint Venture
Joint ventures are another excellent means of generating sales. Start by contacting other sites that are similar to yours. A joint venture can also be a means of building your inner-circle of marketers. Together the marketers in your inner circle can help each other to provide quality products and services. All of your benefit, and your customers benefit as well.

6. Join a Giveaway Event
Everyone likes the idea of getting something for nothing and indeed, this can be a great part of your internet marketing campaign. Take some time to really think about what you can give away and how much publicity you can get for it. You’ll find that this can go a long way towards getting you the attention that you need. You’ll find that if people come to browse prizes that they might just stay to buy!

To your internet marketing success!

Interesting in learning more about this topic? Download my free ebook on internet marketing.

Bob Hamilton is an entrepreneur, author, writer, business consultant and trainer. http://www.OpeningADollarStore.com

Search Engine Marketing

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008