Making more money from your site

So you have visitors arriving on your site and they are ticking over making purchases, but how else can you turn these visitors into income? Here's some ideas.

1) Display external advertising. Depending on your site, it may be suitable to carry some advertising. Maybe Google Adsense or banner adds.

2) Sell add on products. Look at what they have in their shopping basket and see what other people who have chosen those items have bought with them.

3) Sell special offer. Add small ticket price items that they might be interested in. Display them around the basket areas of the site.

4) Offer free postage. Take a look at your customers' average basket order value and offer free postage for a small amount above that. Then watch and see if the average order value increases.

5) Offer special offer items for basket amounts. Again, look at average basket order values and offer free or discounted goods when the basket total is a little more than average.

6) Add monthly 'trinkets'. Have a special low-cost item made and each month make one of these available for above average order baskets.

7) Ask your customers to join your mailing list.

All are very simple ideas, aimed at increasing sales and bringing in more cash in other ways. I'll talk more about each of these ideas over the next week or so...

Run a site forum for more repeat visitors!

I knew the 20 would become more than that before I finished!

A good way of getting plenty of traffic onto your site, whilst building fresh and unique content it to run a forum. This is especially good when you already have a list of regular visitors.

But why is a forum so good and what are the problems? Well, a forum is just people discussing whatever they want to. You as site owner set the topics to be discussed and act as a moderator. Whatever is on people's minds they can discuss and if it's on their minds, it could just be on other people's minds. If they are searching for this then they might find your site!

So how does it work as far as visitors are concerned? Well every thread that's started adds more content to the site that the search engines should index and send traffic to. Everyone posting on that thread will keep coming back to read replies and add further comments.

Sometimes posts will be a little controversial and will attract more people - through current visitors sending links to their friends and acquaintances. This is spreading the word of your website.

These visitors might not be adding directly to sales, but especially if you are displaying adverts then you are bringing in traffic that might be clicking on these adverts.

You are also developing a base of regular visitors. Some of these will sign up for your newsletters, others will browse your site and start to buy products and services. This is the aim! For just the cost of a forum and maintaining it, you have a continual stream of traffic.

You do need to appoint a moderator to watch for posts that go a little too far - but as long as visitors can flag posts then that shouldn't be a problem. And some people will try to fill posts with links to their websites. You either need to be checking for blantant self promotion or adding the tag rel="nofollow" to every hyperlink in posts.

There are plenty of off the shelf packages that can be installed or use a custom built one. Whereas a custom built solution might not have so many fancy features and can be a bit more basic, it can combine into the site far more effectively. For example, latest posts can be displayed in the header of every page on the website so that every visitor can see what's happening in the forum.

A forum is an excellent way of generating loads of unique, fresh content. With a little work it should really drive plenty of traffic into your site.

PopUnders to Sell Your Website

If you want loads of traffic and fast, then PopUnders could be the answer to your dreams. Visitors direct to your site, from another relevant site. But what are they and do they still work?

Very simply put, popunders are the display of your website in a new window when a visitor enters a page on another person's website. Popunder campaigns can start off as campaigns of 5,000 visitors and easily work up to 60,000 visitors or more, for an incredibly low cost.

The general idea is that popunders appear under the screen the visitor is currently browsing. They will then see it later, when they close the current screen. They don't always work this way - within a campaign large numbers of the people seeing your website loading will just close the screen down, maybe even before it fully loads.

There are a myriad of popup blockers around - built into browsers or as add ons in tool bars - but in a popunder campaign these won't (usually) count as they haven't opened the window.

For all of these problems, popunder campaigns are cheap and send a lot of traffic in a very short time. 2,000 - 3,000 visitors per day is easily possible. If you choose a good supplier, you can carefully match the category of the website showing your website to your own website's content.

For a small outlay you can rapidly boost your traffic in no time. As with other website marketing ideas, it's not guaranteed that it will work for all sites and I've known customers who have had no success whilst others who's businesses hinge on the results of popunder traffic. For a small outlay, a trial campaign is a must.

Link Building for Marketing Success (not finished)

Link buidling isn't just about getting your website listed in directories no-one looks at and search engines ultimately ignore. Arranging decent and honest links can not only increase your traffic but also your search engine ranking. But what is this all about?

Link building is as simple as you saying to another site owner, "I'll put a link to your site on mine, if you do the same back for me." One of the easiest ways of maintaining these links, whilst allowing other people to initiate such links without a lot of manual work on your behalf, is to use a links directory tool. With these a lot of the processes are automated, or at least made easier. It's a contact point for people wanting to exchange links with you. They can find out how and where to link to your site; they publish this on their site; they enter the links details into your list and the tool will check that their link is in place and adds their link to your site.

It all sounds very easy! But how do you start off? Where do you find those first sites to exchange with?

Firstly, there are 2 types of exchanges you are looking for. There are those that are for the original purpose - because you can exchange traffic - and those just for link building sake - because every link ultimately helps to increase your search engine positioning. In theory, at least.

Finding link exchanges for genuine traffic is basically about finding similarly themed websites and getting them to put a link in a suitable page. You want to find sites that share a theme so that their visitors will be interested in visiting your site when they see the link.

But many sites these days don't show links in prominent position - instead hiding links away in 'resource directories' and the such like. No problem, but these exchanges are mainly for improving your search engine position.

With these you want to quickly find other sites that will exchange links with you. Search for terms such as 'exchange link', 'add site' and other suggestive phrases along with a word associated with your site, e.g. mortgages, insurance etc.

Once you find these sites, look up what their link requirements are and then add this to your site. Then use their form to tell them where your link is and keep an eye out for the email saying that they have exchanged links.

It can take a while to find such sites and quite often the links aren't that great, but they are a starting point. Once you get used to the idea you can then start choosing sites based on page rank etc. And once you have a reasonable links directory in place, a lot of people will be coming to you for links, meaning you don't have to do the hard work!

Using forums to promote your site

Forums can be a powerful way to promote your website, but care must be taken to not cross the unwritten boundaries. Here I'll look at what you can do, and what you shouldn't do.

First, promoting your website in forums doesn't mean spamming every forum you come across. Done properly, it is subtle and no-one will complain. Done incorrectly and everyone will complain and you will be booted off your forum.

So what shouldn't you do? Unless the topic of a forum is ultra-relevant, you shouldn't open new forum threads with the idea of promoting your site. Moderators will quickly close the thread.

You should also not be replying to open threads just with the intent of name dropping your site. This can also upset the moderators and they are likely to remove your site name and its links. They might even remove your posts and your logon.

So what can you do? If your site is very relevant to the forum then you might be able to announce a new product within the forum. If in doubt, mention it first in an existing thread and see if anyone minds you opening a new thread.

But the main time you can get a site mention is in open threads. Look for people asking questions and needing some help, that your site provides. Maybe you offer accommodation around an event and they are looking for that. Or maybe they are looking for hard to find presents and you sell a suitable idea. A mention of your site name in these instances is (usually) allowable.

Also, many forums allow you to use a signature in which you can mention your website name. Or as part of your forum nickname maybe your site name is relevant. If so, then try it out. I've seen both of these done well and no-one minds. In signatures, the forum may block the link to the site from the search engines, but whenever you are posting replies your signature is seen. If you are posting often and become seen as an "expert", then it's likely that people will want to read more about what you say and that's when the signatures come in useful.

Just don't go randomly posting links to your websites in random forums. Use forums well and they can be your friend.

Marketing Your Website With Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click marketing is sold as a quick and easy way to huge amounts of traffic. To the opponents, it's expensive and open to fraud. What is Pay Per Click and who might use it?

Pay Per Click marketing, PPC, is where your advert is displayed on search engines or websites and you are charged for every viewer of the advert that clicks on it and becomes a visitor to your website.

This means that you are only being charged when someone who is interested in your advert actually clicks on it. If the site showing your advert places it somewhere on the screen where it is hidden away or the page the advert is on is not appropriate to the content of the advert and it's not of interest to people seeing the advert, it doesn't matter to you. These people aren't going to be interested and aren't going to click.

So what are the essentials of PPC advertising? Well, you are going to have to encourage the right people to click on the advert. Advertisers are not going to carry your advert if no-one ever clicks on it and you won't gain loads of traffic if there's no-one clicking on it.

Starting off, you usually choose the keywords that are applicable to your advert. If you want people to visit your shoe shop, then shoe shop is a good starting point, but it's so general that you probably won't actually get that much good traffic. Try instead choosing keywords more closely matching what you actually sell. Do you sell brands, specialist shoes or hard to find shoes? If so, then base your keywords around these ideas. If you sell mismatched shoes for people with different sized feet, then that's what your keywords should concentrate on.

Not only does this mean you are finding the correct audience more often, you are getting more relevant visitors, who are more likely to convert into customers. By targeting your advertising closely then you get less wasted displays and more relevant clicks. This increased 'click through rate' can, on systems like Google, mean that your advert is displayed higher up the list.

How should the advert look?

Taking the typical, Google format, you usually get a title, 2 short lines of description and a URL. Make the title snappy and to the point. Sell your services in that first line. 'Oversize Shoes', 'Discount Lelli Kelly Shoes' etc tell viewers straight away what you are selling. Writing the title in 'title case', where the first letter of every word is in upper case has been shown to encourage more clicks.

In the description lines give further information about what you sell, without over selling. People act negatively to adverts that are too pushy. Mention benefits like in stock, free delivery, discounts etc. Finish the description with an "action statement" - "click here", "view our range" etc. Don't get carried away with 'title case', write the description as a normal sentence - title case can make this look too much!

How many adverts?

To allow you to closely match titles with keywords, it is a good idea to write a different advert for each keyword, or set of keywords. This technique also allows you to watch the stats from the advert and see which adverts are getting the most clicks - and you can compare that to orders taken.

It is also quite often possible to have more than one advert per set of keywords. This allows you to experiment with different titles and texts. For example, does "Discounted Lelli Kelly shoes - Click here." work better than "Click here for discounted Lelli Kelly shoes."? Try small changes and see which one works better. Then create a new advert with a slightly modified text based on the best advert and see what happens then. By finding out which advert gets the best relevant click rate, you are getting maximum visitors for minimum cost.

How to control the advert?

Just setting off the advert with various combinations and 101 keywords isn't a good idea. Make sure that you set a realistic cost per click and daily budget. The cost per click is the most you are willing to pay per click - not necessarily the actual amount you will be paying. You should also set a daily budget for your campaign so that you don't get an expensive fright when you next logon a day or two later.

Who is PPC suitable for?

PPC can be used by almost any site (just some adult and gambling sites are excluded from certain schemes), but I would always recommend a cautious trial before throwing huge amounts of marketing budget at a campaign. It does suit itself more to established products that people are searching for rather than brand new products lines that no-one has heard of yet, but even these, with careful thought, can be promoted.

As with all website marketing ideas, if you haven't already tried it then give it a go and see if it works for your site. If there isn't much search engine traffic in your niche or most custom is usually reapeat loyal customers, then PPC might be slow. But if you are a market that people are searching for your products, then you stand a good chance of plentiful traffic.

Website Marketing With Expired Domain Redirects

If you are looking for a cheap way to send plenty of targetted website traffic direct to your website, expired domain redirects could be just what your business needs.

What exactly are these? Across the world people register URLs and publish a website to them. They actively promote their website - through link exchanges, forums, one way links etc. This can develop long term traffic - for example, a site that I removed 8 months ago is still generating enquiries as to where the links have gone.

So for many months after a website closes it can be generating high volumes of traffic still. Traffic, or visitors, who may be looking for a service that no longer exists. If you had the time and the money, you could buy the URL when it expires and use that as your own. So instead of visitors going to the expired site, they go to your site instead. If you know this site sold similar services to you then you should be onto a winner.

But it takes a lot of time and effort to find and buy the right URLs and they can be quite expensive. So what's the easier alternative? Well, quite simply, you buy the traffic from someone who is doing the hard work for you!

Allow a traffic service to buy up the domains and categorise them. You tell them what category of traffic you want and what page on your website is relevant to the traffic and they sort the rest out for you.

Given that the seller knows what the content of each old site was, there's a good chance they can acurately match traffic to website wanting traffic. Usually these services have hundreds of different categories to choose from, making it very accurately targetted marketing.

Another benefit is that the seller can see the IP address of the incoming visitor and usually work out with a degree of accuracy their country of origin. This means that you can not only choose a category, but also a country that your visitors should come from.

What are the downsides? Well, on the whole it's usually very cheap. But there are times when the traffic can be slow, especially if you are needing just UK traffic. Some service providers have stopped offering UK traffic over the last few months. But if you aren't worried about just having UK visitors, then this isn't a problem.

Expired domain traffic can be highly targetted and given it's low cost is well worth trying out, even if you just run a small campaign or two.

Writing articles for more website traffic

Writing articles, if you can think of plenty of content, can be a useful way of generating more taffic directly to your site. If you are very lucky, it also brings in some one way links.

It works like this. There are loads of people out there running e-zines, blogs and websites that want more content. They want a quick and easy way to provide their readers with fresh information and it can be extremely difficult to provide this often enough.

On the other hand, there are a load of people that are 'experts' in their fields. These people have plenty they can say, but are without the circulation list to distribute the content they can put together. Some are inspired by wanting to publicise their knowledge, whilst most want to give their websites or businesses a higher profile.

So there are article distribution sites that bring the two together. The experts write the articles and submit them to the article sites. The articles should be well written, interesting and saying something new, or in a different way.

At the end of the article the expert author usually adds a brief biography about themself, linking to or mentioning their website or business name.

The publishers then come along and find articles that are interesting to them and useful. They publish them as they require and include the biography. Within an e-zine, this is just a link so that interested readers can find out more about the author or their services. Whilst in a website, it is usually a live link to the website, giving not only a chance of traffic, but also one way links from new sites to the author's own site.

So what are the important aspects of article writing? Well, apart from finding a good site to distribute them on, it them centres around writing about content that publishers want to print in a way that they are happy to include. If your articles aren't interesting or are poorly written then publishers are less likely to pick up them and use them.

Articles must be spell checked, written about a subject that is useful and most importantly of all - they should be original. There's no point ripping off someone else's content. Write a good article for yourself and then get it published. Once you are seeing the article spread around the internet you should not only get a good feeling - but also plenty of traffic!

Keep your content fresh for more traffic

Search engines and visitors love fresh content. By keeping your website updated you can keep both happy and therefore bring more traffic to your website.

Why is this the case? Well very few good websites sit still. There are new findings to report, further information to add, corrections to make to the copy etc. Many top websites grow over time as further information is added to them.

Visitors are more likely to return to sites that are maintained. Think through your own list of sites that you look at often - forums, news sites etc. If shops never add new stock then where's the interest to return to browse latest ranges?

Search engines look for these updates and expect them. If they don't see them then the site is thought to be unmaintained and drops in the rankings. A well maintained site on the other hand can climb with time.

But there is a balance. Over doing changes can be as bad, if not worse, than no changes. I've seen sites putting up random blocks of text on every visit. This doesn't trick the search engines - they see through it. There needs to be a balance between stability and additions to the site.

This can be as simple as a regularly updated news feature. Have a news page and list latest headlines on the home page. This acts not only as a link in from the home page to the news items - making it easier for all concerned to find the new pages, but it also means that the fresh content is shown on the home page. The news can be a mixture of news about your business and about news that affects the area that your business works in. For example, on comparemortgagerates.co.uk I try to add relevant financial news a couple of times per month.

If you are running a shop then keep the stock updated. As new lines arrive add them to your ranges on your website. This keeps the pages displaying the stock ranges fresh and adds new pages in the form of stock descriptions.

Even if you do not carry stock and maybe your company news isn't that exciting and neither is the business news in your area of expertise, there are still ways of producing fresh content. Maybe you are holding events that could be reported on? Publishing a photo with a caption on a regular basis seems to provide fresh content for the search engines and the people attending the event can be told that the photos will be published, which might attract them onto the site. If the pictures are good they will shoe friends and colleagues - just make sure that your site name is printed onto that photograph so everyone knows where it came from!

Even just a photo gallery of visitors or a diary of what's going on can be of interest to visitors and search engines. If you can think of original material to put on the site on a regular basis then it can be of help to the site's traffic.

Advertise your website in your shop

Here's a simple way of driving in traffic to your website for next to free - advertise it in your shop (or other outlet). But amazingly many people forget or simply choose to ignore this simple idea thinking that it is not necessary, because the people are in the shop already.

But what when you are closed, or they want to see if you carry certain products before making a trip out? Or maybe they want to print out your menu? What about publicising special offers and keeping their interest in your services? If they are more aware of your website, they are more likely to find it and show it to friends and maybe return to you.

Keeping the website name in your customers' eyes is important. Simply adding the website address to a shopfront facia can be enough for a starter. That way, people driving past when you are closed, seeing an offer in the window can look it up when they get home. They might be more likely to remember the offer if they noticed that you had a website address shown outside.

And the shop front sign is not the only place to display the website address. Buy from any of the main highstreet shops and you can almost guarantee that they will display their website address on the receipt. How much would it cost you to change your receipts to show the URL?

Maybe try adding the website URL to price labels next time you are getting them printed, or to menus, leaflets or anything else that you hand out. If you are not a shop, for example a solicitor, then there are still plenty of avenues to explore. Letterheads, compliment slips, business cards and the likes can all be printed to include your website address.

If people are visting you as customers then make sure that they go away knowing your website's address. If they don't, then it's going to be a lot more difficult for them to find your website and return as a customer through it.

Run a mailing list

Sending a newsletter to a mailing list is an excellent, and typically free or low cost, method of promoting a website. A newsletter, or e-zine, can be used to encourage loyal and not so loyal customers to return to your website or even your outlet. You can use a newsletter to advertise new stock, clearance items, special offers and the likes.

There are considerations when sending a newsletter to ensure that you stay within acceptable guidelines and don't fall foul of anti spamming measures. A newsletter should only be sent to people who have signed up for it and they should be able to opt out easily.

This also means checking that people really have opted into the newsletter, else you can fall foul to pranksters signing up their friends. The usual method for control here is 'double opt-in'. With this technique, the person signs up on your website for the newsletter by providing their email address. You then send them an email with a link and only when they have clicked on this link are they included in the list.

Likewise, it is accepted practice that all emails should have an opt-out link so that people no longer wishing to receive offers can quickly and easily opt out.

Sending newsletters can also be a tricky subject. Many people like to blast out the email from their own PC - but there are limited options here and all can get you into trouble. The first is to email all of the recipients directly with one email. But this displays every email address to all recipients and doesn't look professional.

Hiding the email addresses by putting them all in tbe BCc field does improve the situation, but many people will not read emails where the to account is 'undisclosed recipients' and likewise, some email services and spam blockers are more likely to delete such emails. It is very rare to receive an email where the BCc field is used for its intended purpose - it is usually an indication of spam.

The next step is to individually email every recipient, but on a large list this can take a long time. Also, by sending so many identical emails, whether sent individually or using either of the two above methods, either your own ISP or the mail services receiving the emails could notice the large amount of traffic and suspect you of spam. At best your newsletter is not received, at worst your email account is closed down.

So what's the answer? Well there are plenty of mailing list providers out there offering varying services. Depending on the features that you require, you might be able to use a free service for lists with even a good number of subscribers. These services deal with sending the emails, opt-ins, opt-outs and everything else and even enable you to sned HTML based emails for extra special looks.

But what is the point behind a mailing list? Well, the people signing up have visited your site or business and are wanting to know more about you. They are showing an interest in your services. You don't need to contact them often, in fact weekly newsletters could be far too much and scare subscribers off. Just email them a newsletter every couple of months. Maybe whenever you can a large number of new ranges or want to tell people about the latest special offers. Unless you have a very large mailing list then the chances are you will be able to find and use a free mailing list provider, so all that a newsletter is costing you is your time to create the newsletter and set it up.

If sending it is free and it generates more purchases or customers, what could be a better form of advertising?

20 website marketing ideas

I've been asked to put together a series of marketing ideas for my web design customers - ways in which they can drive more custom through their websites. After a quick scribble down I came up with 20 basic ideas that anyone can use to market their site, so here starts the list.

With a little further information they will be passed onto my customers - just adding details as to how we can help them implement the ideas. It's my sales guy's idea and he's hoping that some customers come back to ask us to help them run some of them.

And I'm putting these into practice myself! Not only am I publishing them here first, but after a small rework they will also be submitted to article directories - spreading my ideas whilst hoping to get links back to these pages! Why publish them here first and then rework slightly - to make sure the search engines get the content here and then don't punish me with the duplicate content filter! So that's 5, 6 and 11 (below) sorted in one sweep!

In no particular order, and certainly not the order I'll tackle them in here, here's the list of ideas I'll work through. Knowing me, by the time I've finished it will be 21, 22 or more ideas...

1. Pay Per Click

2. PopUnders

3. Expired Domain Traffic


4. Link Building

5. Fresh Content

6. Forums

7. Blogs

8. Video Clips

9. Google Maps

10. Email Signatures

11. Articles

12. Advertise name in shop / on literature

13. Run up newsletter


14. Paid Directories

15. Free Directories

16. Fliers

17. Word of Mouth

18. Give aways / promotional items

19. Affiliate Marketing

20. Magazine Adverts / Printed Adverts

Watch what you ask!

You can easily get into tricky situations sometimes. Take, for example, when a customer has emailed a set of photographs for you to use in building their site. Most of them go into the photo gallery, but maybe one or two get dotted around every page in key positions - making sure that the site looks special to that customer.

You choose your photos carefully, try a couple of different shots in the positions you are thinking of and make your choice. You probably chose based partly on colour matching, or match the colour palette of the site to the chosen photograph.

And then you pass the completed sample over to the customer. The list of changes comes back, along with 'please change the photo on the side to the one of...'. You know instantly it's not going to work, but can you say that?

So, you cut, crop, manipulate and whatever to prepare the photo for its position. Then along with the rest of the changes the next draft goes back to the customer. And what's the response - "That photograph doesn't look as good there as the first one - what can you do to make it look better?"

What can you do? What can you say? You can't exactly say "Well, I chose better than you!", but that's the answer to their question. It might be that changing the site's colour scheme will help it match, but there's usually an amount of experience that straight away gives you that gut feeling as to which photographs will work in key positions, and which just won't. And it's unfortunate when the customer chooses a photograph not based on cold, hard, technicalities, but on their own emotions of which photograph means the most to them.

But that's the world we live in. It doesn't matter that the favoured picture won't mean anything to their visitors, it's their site and they want to see that picture for a reason. So just get on with it!

Link exchange maintenance

What should you be doing to check you link exchanges and how often should you be doing it? If you are already running a link exchange program, my answer will probably frighten you!

Personally, based on my experience with search engines, I believe that you should be checking link exchanges every week! More often than this is probably a little bit of overkill, but less often, especially by much, and you will find that a lot of the people you thought you were exchanging links with have gone away.

On a weekly basis you should check that every site that you have agreed to link with is still linking back to you. Any sites that have removed their links need checking. Email them to ask them to replace the link and if they don't then remove the from your pages link. It's no benefit to you to be linking to them from your directory, it may even hinder your efforts. This is why weekly checks are important.

Whenever there is a Google page rank update, have a look through the page ranks of those sites linking to you and check that they all still have a page rank. Any that don't need further investigation.

It could just be that the links page is too new or too well buried to have a page rank. If it's cached in Google then it's probably OK. But if a links page has been showing your link for a couple of months and it's still not cached, then you need to check that you aren't being tricked.

First, have a look around the site and make sure that you can find your way to the links page. Then, have a nose at the robots.txt file - does that block their links directory? Lastly, take a look at the path of pages from the home page to the links directory. Does page rank suddenly vanish? If so, check that page hasn't been blocked somewhere.

It's also important when using a links directory tool to make sure that people haven't changed their links to inappropriate sites and that sites that you are linking to still exist, as sites that you are happy to link to. You don't want to be proudly linking to a family friendly site only to find that someone has bought the URL and put up an adult site!

So, on a weekly basis, be checking that your link backs still exist. Plus, every few months, see which link back pages don't have a page rank and investigate them.

What to look for in a link exchange

Link exchanging can reap rewards by giving you more 'link popularity' and increasing your search engine ranking. But not all links are equal. What should you be looking out for?

Firstly, links from pages with higher page ranks are normally better. But it could just be that the page is new and soon enough it will have a high page rank. So what is important?

Well, the link must be 'visible' to search engines. There are various ways that other sites could have unintentionally, or intentionally, made your link not visible to the search engines. This is because it is believed that it is favourable to have links pointing in from sites that you do not link to. So here are some warning signs to look for.

The first, and a very simple one, is there is a command that can be inserted into a link to tell search engines to ignore the link. If you see rel="nofollow" in a link then search engines will not follow that link - so it's not worth while accepting that link exchange.

Slightly more involved is that the page could be blocked from search engines. This can be because the links to that page include rel="nofollow" or that the robots.txt file blocks the page from the search engines. How can you check for this?

Actually, it's quite simple. Just search on your favourite search engine to see if the page is there. If it is, then you know it's not being blocked. You can check by searching on a unique piece of text; by clicking on the 'cached version' button on the Google Toolbar (if you have it installed) or by searching using the 'site:' command. Unfortunately, these methods tell you that nothing is blocking the page, but failure to find the page is cached doesn't mean it is blocked. It could just be too new.

The next trick to check for is whether the version presented to search engines is the same as you are seeing. Again, look at what a search engine has cached and make sure that your link is in place.

Another important check is that the link isn't using javascripts or redirects. It should point directly to your site, not to another file or page and definitely not to a counter. A lot of sites put the link through a counter to track clicks. This is fine if you are exchanging for traffic, but not if you are exchanging for popularity.

The last check I'll mention is that 'framed' pages are frequently not properly dealt with by search engines. If your link is not on the actual page but in a frame, then it's almost certain that the link isn't visible to search engines - and won't count.

So, check that the link page is cached; that on that cached site your link is shown in basic HTML and that it is not blocked. And then the link should count for you!

Link building for popularity

Most link building these days is not to attract visitors, but to build 'link popularity' within the search engines.

With links for link popularity, it is accepted, even normal, to offer links through a dedicated links directory. The usual format is one site owner puts up a link to another and then sends a request. But what is it all about?

In short, search engines measure the 'importance' of a site and even pages within a site by the number of links pointing to that site or page. The more links there are, the more important that page is. And the more important the pages are that give those links, the more important again that page is.

So the idea is to find sites that will link to your own site in return for a link back. Then search engines will see these links and start to rate you more highly.

This requires a large number of link exchanges. You need to be requesting potentially tens per week to allow for that fact that many won't respond and to keep this up week in, week out. It's the gradual growth in inbound links that the search engines want to see.

The easiest way to manage the links of your behalf is usually through an off the shelf link exchange directory. Using one with plenty of the required tools can really help you and means that when people come to you to request an exchange the process can take place automatically.

You as the person in charge of links building then go out hunting for sites to exchange links with. You review the other person's site to find if they have requirements for how their link should appear and then add such a link to your directory. Once this is complete, you then email the other site's owner, telling them where their link can be found on your website and asking them to put a link to your website onto their website. Hopefully, they get back to you to confirm this has been done.

Give them a week and if they haven't replied then remind them. If they still haven't replied after another week, then it might be best to remove the link, possibly with a friendly reminder to them of the missed opportunity.

Link building for popularity is all about getting plenty of links in from other sites.

Link building for more traffic

Building links between websites has a few different meanings. Here I'm going to start off by looking at how it started and how the search engines would like to see all links - as 'genuine' links built for traffic, not to trick search engines.

With this method of link building, links are exchanged purely on the understanding that by having links on each others' site there's a good chance that your visitors might find the other site's link interesting and visit the site, and vice versa.

It's all about finding sites that share mutual interests, similar visitors etc and putting up small links in the hope that you add interest to each site. By adding your link to the other person's site, their visitors should see the link and think that your site could give them more of what they are interested in. Maybe the other site is a hobby site and you are offering a price comparison for related products. So their visitors might be interested in your site for that reason. Or maybe you are offering more information on certain pages of theirs.

What you need to do is to find sites that share an interest or themes and put a link from your site to their website. Then approach the other site and ask them for a link back. This type of linking can be a bit harder to plan and arrange as you really want the link to be on a proper 'content' page rather than a links directory page - it should be somewhere that visitors will see it. For this reason, you also need to be placing your link to them on a content page. Now, this can be any content page of your site or a dedicated 'you might like to visit' sort of page.

If you are really keen for links, there's always the option of paying for link placement on another site. You would need to approach the owner and ask how much for a link from a certain page would cost.

Another method of gaining links for traffic, and one I have often used successfully, is by getting your site listed on "top sites" pages. This usually entails putting a link to the top site website onto your pages and the number of clicks is counted. But, especially for hobby orientated websites, this can bring tons of traffic as lots of people are searching for more sites to read about.

In summary, in link building for traffic you really want to place a link from a content page on your site to another site whilst they place a text, or banner, link on a content page back to you.

Keeping content fresh to improve your search engine position.

What steps are needed to ensure that your site betters its current search engine position and maybe even gets to the top of the search engine listings? There are plenty of tricks and tips you can try for yourself.

The first and foremost is putting in plenty of unique, fresh content. This can be done in various ways and depends on your site and its content.

If you are a shopping site, then you will no doubt have a catalogue of products to sell. By loading these products and having a page per product, you create a large site. By then continuing to update these products, your site is seen as fresh. This can be as simple as adding new products on a weekly basis, or just going into the products and updating their descriptions a little on a weekly basis.

Maybe review your product texts and make sure that each one is at least 100 words, or 200 words. More importantly, make sure that you have not copied the text from any other sites as this is a huge killer - search engines will see it's 'duplicate content' and may not even list your pages.

Another trick is to feature a product or few products on the home page - a product of the week sort of feature. Set a day and once a week change the product or products and in doing so you are keeping the home page updated.

If you don't have the luxury of a product catalogue, then there are still ways of keeping the site fresh. An on-site blog to which you post a couple of times per week allows for a growing site and new, fresh content. On a similar vein, you can have a latest news section - either a page or a set of pages. Either of these can be worked so that some of the content appears on the home page to keep it fresh.

And a further idea is a forum. If you have regular visitors to the site they might like to participate in a forum. Every time they write a post they are adding to your site's material.

So why is this important? Well, the more content you have the more pages and more possible combinations of keywords are on your site. By having lots of extra text there are more chances of someone finding your site.

Also, by keeping your content updated, search engines see that the website is being maintained and should rate your site higher. They calculate that the site is not getting stale and full of old, outdated, information. Also, with forums, blogs, offers and the likes, real visitors are more interested in coming back to the site to see what you have to offer.

So keep adding content - it creates a lot more opportunities for people to find text on your site and it keeps the search engines interested.

Don't just buy a website and expect it to work.

Many people expect that because they pay for a professional to build their website that they can pass a list of favourite keywords, or that the designer will produce a suitable list, and that the new website will automatically be top of Google and get them loads of traffic.

And this, for just a few hundred pounds. I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way. My sales guy thought of a "brilliant idea" (if only he'd put it to me, first). He'd happened tp be given the contact details of a local 'SEO expert'. So he thought, if I can build the sites but not get them to the top of Google then why not pass the customers to the SEO expert for the next stage. He'll do anything for a commission!

So he spoke to the guy and started telling him his story. The guy stopped him in his tracks. The budget we build a site for wouldn't even buy a couple of weeks' worth of SEO optimisation from this guy.

And that's the problem. Some customers are expecting bargain basement sites, with every bell and whistle going. You don't walk into a Mercedes showroom with the cash for a Smart car and expect to drive out in their top of the range sports car for the same price.

I told him that I'm not saying I can't do the SEO - just not for the prices he secures. If you want a site for a few hundred quid then I'll give you a good looking site, but it won't be a site that I can spend hours on every week getting it and keeping it at the top of Google. But I can give you the tools to do it yourself. So what's needed? I'll look at that over the coming days.

If you don't market, it won't sell

It's always a shame when an existing customer closes a website because it's not working - even more so when the reason for its failure is lack of marketing. And ironic when the owner is actually working for the IT side of the marketing department for a large company!

It happens all of the time. People see the internet as some 'get rich quick' solution. Think of an idea, get a site built, cash the cheques. If only it were that simple!

I won't detail the full idea here, but it was based around affiliate selling and I've seen other (successful) sites working on the same principals. The shame is, but for a small adsense budget, building to some flyers left at relevant events and then magazine adverts when the site is really flying, the site should have worked well.

It's one of those ideas that I'd wished I'd had a couple of years back - when work was quiet and I had time to invest in building, and marketing, my own ideas. Now I'm just too busy building sites for customers!

Give it 6 months and get some of my other little personal website projects pushed on a little, and there may be time for me to tackle something similar - with a clear conscience that the customer is no longer trying to do the same and I'm not stealing her idea.

When you need a site quickly, throw some insults

I think I need a new sales guy (are you reading this P??)! Working as hard as possible to get him a rushed site live, whilst also trying to get him another site live at the same time (that I was only given a couple of days' notice from getting instructions to going live) and trying to get him other changes out, and he tries a new tactic.

Insults. After emailing me stupid unrelated questions for 90 minutes and getting me to change parts of the screen, change them again and then put them back again, he throws at me 'you computer programmers are far more slapdash'.

Nice, inspirational talk. Just because I told him (again, 2nd time in 90 minutes) that if the customer takes and loads pictures that are a mixture of landscape, square and portrait format, then they will appear different proportions on the screen.

He's making out that retailers want things doing properly, I just throw things together. Actually, when we're up against deadlines and the magazine advert started running 5 days ago, then I think that getting something live is important. Personally, I'd have waited on agreeing the magazine advert until after the site was nearly ready. I wouldn't have advetised it and then told the designer when I needed it for.

Who's the slapdash one there?

I just wish he'd get on with his job and maybe collect some cash. Another 3 emails from him - they are waiting until this afternoon. I've got plenty of work to do without answering him!

Translations galore

On the same night, two customers passed me translations for their sites. The first was a Turkish translation for a site currently being built whilst the second was a French translation for a site I built about 9 months ago. This is to be an entirely stand alone site, and I've been expecting the translation for 6 months.

I did have one customer mention that he'd like to provide a Polish translation for a page or two on his rentals website. So could be more to come.

Translations do have practical problems that are different in each case. Do you run an entirely separate site, or a sub site, or just offer a page or two of alternate content in the appropriate languages?

The answer isn't a hard and fast 'this way' - it depends on the site. For the 2 that passed be translations over night, for the French site we are definitely running a separate URL. For the Turkish, it will be either a sub site or at the very least separate pages. There's too much inter linking of the pages (video clips, images uploaded) than are shared to make managing 2 sites easy.

I need the site live now, and oh...

Yes, the saga of the site that 'must be live in 7 days' gets better. Actually, they got the date of the magazine advert wrong, they needed it live that day! But we've had to continue aiming for the end of this week.

Except, the customer is now adding more complications into the project. For example - "What do we do when there aren't enough products in a sub category? Can you fill the page with something else?"

The obvious answer is not to have such 'elite' sub categories. Easy and simple answer. At this stage in the project, when they are desperate to go live (and before that they need to load products) then I really don't think it's time to start adding complications such as adding a random number of space fillers.

I blame the account manager for letting go of the reigns, yet again. Every project he does this and doesn't keep the customer focused on getting the site live for the same day that the advertising is going live. He seems to think that every question is a chance of making more cash, although the price stays fixed, so no idea what he's on.

Hopefully with time I'll teach him the right ways, but when time is not on my side and he's asking silly questions, the answers he gets are brief, to the point and probably not the sort of answers he is expecting!

Popunders - Waste of time???

Well, I'm very disappointed in the popunders campaign I tested. Very disappointed.

I had hoped for a little success, but near enough nothing. Not even my money back, which at the cost of the traffic, is very surprising. I suppose it's my old answer - if it was that easy, these guys wouldn't be selling the traffic they would be putting up their own affiliate pages and earning the commissions themselves.

I didn't think at first that all of the adverts had been used. Looking at Google, the special page I'd created had only been shown 2,106 times (in a campaign of 5,000) popunders. And some of those were me viewing the page. So I was surprised to logon to the provider's stats and see that all 5,000 had been delived in about 2½ days.

So far, no sign of any commissions earned and hardly a click generated. 1 click through the Google adsense scheme got me back about 2% of my outlay. Not worth bothering with.

And looking at the huge variation in the number of displays of each advert, from 1962 to 2119 displays across adverts from one network, most screens are being closed before they even open.

There were around 10 clicks to the advertisers - so there's still a remote chance of commission. But I'm not keeping up any hope!

Listed again in Google

Not sure what was going on when I noticed that my home page had vanished from Google, but the CompareMortgageRates home page is back on the 6th page of the search results. Now I've got to work at moving it up!

I was looking at the site and I noticed that all links to the home page state the website address, not index.html. This could be very useful - it should mean that changing the page to a PHP page isn't as painful. At the very least, I don't need to change every page. At best, Google will still page rank it the same...

Why do I want to change it from HTML to PHP? Quite simple - I've introduced a news feature, a bit like a blog. Ideally, I'd like to include the latest news snippets onto the site's home page, but I can't do that in HTML, without having to manually update the home pagee each time. And I'll never manage that! Unfortunately, my hosts don't allow me to change the htaccess file to treat HTML as PHP.

What I intend to do, with time, is to just display the first paragraph of each recent news item on the home page, leading to the page with the full news item on it. This not only helps to build up a large network of pages but also helps to keep the home page fresh and constantly updated. What else must I do to regain my page 1 listing of last summer!

Testing Popunders

One of my customers swears by popunders. I know the site he used to buy them from - I recommended him to use them. But I know he's now using someone else. Maybe I should have asked him where he's using now before I tried a campaign!

I set up a page on my mortgages website full of car insurance banners - the company I'm buying the popunders from have a car insurance category, so I thought "great match".

I set up a campaign with my "old favourite" supplier and it's kicked off. Early days, but I've been looking at my affiliate stats....

There's been around 250 displays of some of the adverts, but some of the adverts have only shown aroun 230 displays. So these have probably suffered the recipients closing down the page before it's finished loading.

To be honest, with the cost of the popunders I only need to achieve 1 sale from the 5,000 popunders I've bought. I thought if I could get 0.1% success rate then I'd be pleased, but with 250 impressions and not even 1 click yet, that's very much in doubt! My very optimisitic 1conversion rate is very much in doubt!

I'll post back another day when the campaign is over, here's hoping I get at least my cash back!

A complete fall from grace?

Well, I noticed that the traffic on my Compare Mortgage Rates website was down so I took a look at its position on my favourite keywords - "Compare Mortgage Rates". Up until late October 2007 my site was first or second in google on this term. Sometime in mid Octover it dropped from favour and the home page has hovered between pages 5, 6 and 7 of Google for those terms since then.

But today, it's vanished! Compeltely gone. Not there. No where to be found! The page is still cached - a copy taken 7 days ago, so not sure what has happened or for how long it's been vanished.

Around page 15 of the results I did find the Mortgage Products page, so the site hasn't been dropped. And I was surprised that the page did appear in the results anyway.

WHat do I think is wrong? Well, I've negelected the site recently. Prior to its October fall I was putting news on weekly, at least. Not I've only put news on once last month and we're almost a week into this month.

I'm the first to shout that websites need plenty of content to stay up top, so why don't I listen?

Well, I'm moving my mortgage news blog to the site itself - I've written a custom blog to do this for someone else so I might as well also use it!

Here's hoping my preaching works - with my sales guy unable to collect cash (where do I get them?) I need an income from somewhere!

I don't always like my sites...

I wish I could say that 100% of the sites that I've produced I'm proud of. OK, the early sites were nothing compared to what I do now, but even if I could say that 100% of the sites in the last 12 months I'm proud of would be a good thing.

Problem is, I'm not. There are 2 or 3 that I'd rather hide and not have my name against than put on my portfolio. There's probably a handful more also from the last 12 months that aren't what I would consider my best work.

Why do I do that? Why give customers what I'm not proud of - in fact sites that embarass me?

Quite simply - they have been so involved in the design process that I've not been able to steer them around to what I think looks good. They have passed me sample sites that look cheap and colour schemes that just don't work together. Take the site that has a different colour scheme on every page - it's disgusting. But the customer insisted on it - in fact she has a CMS to enable her to change the individual page colours and that's what she has set them to. The present colours are nothing to do with me.

Why's this on my mind? Well 2 new pieces of work this week have both brought this home. The first provided links to two websites they really love. One of these, their favourite, looks like a child has produced it! Over use of mis-matching colours. Too many fancy tricks here and there and the rating of the site shows it.

For the second the customer has approved the sample, saying that he "loves it". My comments, after passing the sample to his account manager, was that it was produced to spec but I didn't think the colours were quite there. It's almost good, just not enough colours and the wrong shades where they are there - there's a lot of pale blue everywhere and little contrast.

But, in all my work the customer is always right. Just so long as 3 months down the line they don't return asking why they have a horrible looking site!

I need the site live - in 7 days

Now a request such as "I need the site live in 7 days - I've paid for the advertising in a national magazine" isn't necessarily a problem. Work with your web designer; answer emails and phone calls; tell him (or her) what you want and generally get on with the project and as long as there aren't huge complications then it shouldn't be a problem.

But when the project has stumbled along for 3 months already and the customer has changed their mind several times not only about the look and colour scheme but also the content, then the task starts to get more difficult.

Then when I hand over draft versions of the page and I hear nothing back for 2 working days (and still waiting) then the task is becoming more complicated - we have to be live this time next week and I have to build the database still and the customer has to load the products...

Also, ask for "That thing that Amazon does with other products". Erm, what? 2 days later the answer comes back "You know, show products people also bought". Not a problem, usually, but the clock is ticking and we still haven't had an agreement on what the pages will look like. 3 months in and I'm still producing new versions. At least there haven't been any major re-writes for a week.

Hopefully, one of the variations of buttons on show will be satisfactory, else it's back to the drawing board for them. To be honest, I don't like any of the buttons I've been given to work with - but if the customer loves them then so be it.

June Benchmark

Should be starting to see some results soon, if I'm going to see any! So comparing against the May benchmark.

First, the bookings. Up this month to 6 bookings, with 4 confirmed, bringing in £65.28. This compares well to the 1 of 4 worth £26 in May, but not as good as April, which had 5 of 7, worth £90.48.

How are the traffic levels? Well, they were up on both sites - 5,146 and 1,927 on the changed site. That's about 90% more traffic on the changed site against not quite 5% on the unchanged site.

The earnings - $181.74 and $24.46 - just over 7.5% up on the unchanged site - good - but down by 30% on the changed site - very disappointing with the traffic levels up so much.

My only consolation is the hope that a lot of the extra traffic is because the site has generated more interest in its link exchange - so hopefully there will be lot's more inbound links and the site will become more popular.

Because, between the 2 sites, an income of under £170 isn't that great!

Trademark Infringement Investigation

I received an email with the subject "Trademark Infringement Investigation" last night. At first I was just about to bin it - I don't ever remember receiving a digitally signed email before and thought it was spam!

I eventually clicked on the 'continue' button and read the email. One part states 'This notice is being sent to you as a courtesy to inform you that a fraudulent business impersonator may have involved you in the unlawful act of Trademark infringement, as we feel you may be unaware that the use of our Trademark and Trade-names was not authorized.'

Erm, what? It continues: 'Please, remove any and all of our Trademarks and/or Trade-names, which are the exclusive property of Emerald Passport, Inc., from every web property (e.g. websites, PPC ads, link exchange, etc.) that you own and/or operate and kindly provide us with information as to how you came to use our Trademark as a link advertisement on your website (e.g. copy of a request to partner with you using our Trademark/Trade-names, name of link exchange provider, method by which you were contacted: email, telephone call, etc.)'. So what dreadful act had I taken part in to infringe the trademark of this company (if, indeed, it is infringement - I'm no legal expert)?

I'd accepted a link exchange! The link was probably accepted when I first set up the site - in early 2006. Maybe even before that. And they are demanding that I tell them where I got the link exchange from. I think that would be fairly obvious - the affiliate or reseller that I was linking to.

My question quite simply is - is sending threatening legal demands via email the most efficient way of dealing with this problem? Surely it would be more efficient to tell their affiliates / resellers to sort their act in the first place. I suppose that if some have arranged hundreds, or thousands, of link exchanges, some might not have the documentation to follow up and request the changes. But why ask me to potentially break the Data Protection Act and pass my exchange's contact details? If it's a link to their affiliate's site - do they not know who the affiliate was?

I looked on the link exchange directory and there were at least another 3 or 4 sites using similar anchor text, so they must have quite a task on their hands. I was just amazed they found the page - what search engine actually has that ancient page cached?

A Turkish Translation

Quite an interesting twist on a new site that I'm building - it's going to be my first site that has a foreign version. I've built the English version of the site and now I've got to pull together all of the phrases used and get the customer to provide the translations for me.

How will I do the other language? I've not decided yet how I will handle the dual languages. On the surface, a copy of the site with everything translated seems easiest, but that means duplicate pages. The alternative is to set a cookie that swaps the text to Turkish if set.

Either way is simple, but I'm coming around to the first way as being easier to run - the button with the Turkish flag will just link to the home page of the Turkish version and vice versa. Now, is that done as a subdomain or a sub directory???

Another customer mentioned months ago about having a Polish translation for his potential rentors, but that would just be a page. And another has talked about French and Spanish translations of her website - but that was months back that she was talking about getting a friend to write the translations and I've not heard back. Maybe I should ask her about the progress.

Anyway, multi-lingual websites seems to be a popular feature at the moment.

What is it about images

What is it about pictures that customers frequently don't get? I've already talked about this a few months ago, but it rears its head every so often.

Last week a customer emailed me a sheet of their latest offers to update their website with. It contained offers, menus and various other information to be cut and pasted into various points on the website.

It was a massive file, but sent as a PDF so the resolution wasn't actually that great. By the time I'd removed the images at their full size, they were a little small and fuzzy. Not sure why when this was what was going to print - maybe they'd sent me a proof.

Of course, this morning the email arrives saying the pictures are too small and fuzzy. Make them bigger and clearer. Of course, I can do one of these quite easily from the original, but not both. If I make the images bigger, they lose quality. If I make them clearer, they lose size.

If you are emailing pictures for use on a website, send them at least as big as you want to see them on the page, but not too big...

Don't Just Affiliate - Add Value

Too many people think that it's easy to set up a website using an affiliate feed, get it listed on the search engines and sit back and wait for the cash to roll in.

I even had people come to me and ask me to build the sites for them. They look blankly back at me when I ask them how they will promote the website, expecting me to produce a website for £300 that will do all of this for them.

Well, if I could spend a couple of days to produce a website that would earn thousands of pounds per year, would I be charging a few hundred for it? Or would I be producing those websites for myself...

What I try to offer is the opportunity for them to add something themselves to the website. Product reviews is usually a good one and let them choose which products they try to sell and add just these to the website.

If you are a travel affiliate then instead of just listing the same old huge list hotels or villas, make sure that you are including resort guides researched and written by yourself just for the site. Maybe even start a travel blog and include the accommodation details in that rather than just listing the 10,000 hotels available.

Whatever you are trying to sell, make sure that you add something to the information available. This means that there is less risk of falling to the search engines duplicate content filters and more chance of visitors stumbling across your new website. Just remember that if you are expecting to make a couple of thousand per year from the affiliate scheme then you are probably going to need to invest the appropriate amount of time to that site.

Feel free to post ideas in the comments!

Adwords Content Network

I've already touched on whether I think that Google's Adwords is a good idea, but then I was referring to the search network (e.g. Google itself & other partner search engines).

So what about the Content Network - the millions of small and large websites that display Adsense adverts?

I think if you are careful then this network can be great. It's possible to hit your potential customers right where you want them - whilst they are browsing relevant websites. These websites can have (in total) huge volumes of displays of your adverts so there is a lot of brand exposure for you.

It is said that the site owners can click on their own adverts to make more commissions. Yes, some people try this. But Google have loads of ways to detect this activity and anything that looks suspicious is not charged for. Too much suspicious activity will result in the account being closed. It's not in Google's interest to have any fraud at all.

It can also be a lot cheaper and if you are getting low click through rates it doesn't affect the charges for the search network.

Yes, there can be problems. I've found in my own experience there is a lot more evidence of more general browsing than people hungry to shop. But it's still getting people onto your site and your name known. As long as your product is right, they might come back next time.

Adsense - Friend or Foe?

There's a lot of debate around about whether Google's adsense should be included on websites or not. One side of the argument states it's a good way to earn money. The other says that often little is earned and it can detract from the content of the website.

Which is right? Well, I think both (not really sitting on the fence!!!).

Simple. For a corporate website selling their own product then it's unlikely that adsense will bring in any significant revenue and the adverts will distract from the content.

But if you are running a blog, ezine, review or information site, then why not? If your main income from the site (or the site doesn't have an income stream) is affiliate selling, then I think it can be very worth while adding another source of income.

Some people will shout me down saying that it's rare to earn much from adsense. Yes, plenty of people earn very little, I'm sure. But in my experience the adverts can be well worth while. If your site has original content, plenty of traffic and especially if it's targeting keywords that are likely to be move expensive, then it's well worth the short amount of time it takes to sign up and add the code to your site.

What advantage PDFs?

What search engine advantage is there in displaying your thoughts in PDF format, rather than in plain old HTML? I'm sure I mentioned this only a few weeks ago, but I've seen another example of this on a website today.

On the site today, the home page is PR1 and the internal pages that or lower. Except for the information stored as a PDF document - that's the only PR2 page on the site.

It's not a site built, intended or used for search engine traffic. There's no link building scheme to help the search engine rating - the page rank is just what it's got from the few sites it's linked through, including my portfolio.

I noticed on my own site a few weeks ago that a couple of PDF documents that are only linked to from 1 page have a higher PR than the page linking to them. This goes against convetional wisdom as to how page rank is inherited - it's supposed to diminish as it is inherited, not increase.

So why is this and why could it be happening? Well, the first and easiest answer would be that Google hasn't fully updated and that the higher level pages have dropped, but not the PDFs. I know with my own site this hasn't happened. Maybe there's an increase coming, but it's only showing on the PDFs. But that would be too hopeful that both sites are going to increase in page rank...

So what else? Well, I can only assume that page rank works on multiple levels. You get the main level of a page rank, which is what inheritance is based on. Then you get marked down (and maybe up???) depending on other page factors.

What could these be and why? Well, with a PDF it's not full of links to other sites - or even your own. It's an end product that someone can pickup, print out and read. It's not full of Google Adsense or affiliate adverts and they aren't created just to drive traffic to your site - because people arriving there may never actually visit your site.

Or maybe it's just as simple as you lose some of your page rank by linking out to other pages. Now, how many people does that make sweat!

Whatever the reason, and it will be easy to monitor the situation through a couple of page rank updates, it does seem that there is a page rank advantage to putting your materials into PDF format. But, what advantage does this actually give you? It's difficult to then put links into your site - people would have to cut & paste or even retype the required URLs and maybe find the page they are after on the site.

I suppose that's why there is a page rank difference - if you are supplying the information it is just to give that information to your visitors. There would be no great advantage for me to fill Compare Mortgage Rates with information in PDFs, because there's no guarantee that anyone reading the information is then going to visit my site to click on adverts etc.

I suppose in some markets it can work. I'm working with pure strike on their website. With them, golfers might be reading up about golf putters and if they read about the pure strike putter and saw the URL they probably would be interested.

So maybe reviews etc would be useful in PDF format, but not for affiliates. As an affiliate I could write up how brilliant a driver is, but then the reader is just going to go off to find the cheapest about, they aren't going to come to my site to by it.

There must be a few good ways of using this quirk. How, I haven't quite worked out. And that's probably the answer - move up the search listing results that are there for results, not because people can manipulate the traffic that arrives.

Rebuilding another site

I run several of my own site - compare mortgage rates and holiday cottages to name just 2 of many! These are all promoting various affiliate schemes and including Google Adsense.

The top 3 sites of my own all include a good element of my own input, but there's a golf site that when it first went live got loads of traffic and plenty of commissions - in fact the affiliate provider quickly moveed me up the reward levels. But for ages now it's not had a single commission.

Most of the site is built along the same lines as my divingg website, which currently does much better for traffic, adsense and commissions. What's the difference? Well the diving website started off and gets most of it's traffic not through the product information, but from reviews and information about diving in different locations and the dive centres there. It's got plenty of unique content.

But the golf site has none. It's just the products put together in different ways. A bit like the cottages site before that was rebuilt. So, although I've not actually finished rebuilding the cottages site - there's still a lot more information to add to the pages, I've decided that my next target is to be the golf website.

At the moment it's just a list of products for sale. I'll keep this, maybe even the same directory structure. But it's getting a new look along with new sections to review UK golf courses and whatever else I can think of linking to. Yes, most of it will be driven by what affiliate schemes I can find, but I'm learning the lesson that these sites don't work unless you put plenty of time and effort into creating something else - something that the public want to read.

Top 7 Low cost Website Marketing Ideas

Need to get more traffic to your website but working on a budget? Not all ideas need to cost an arm and a leg - here's my top 7 ideas of getting new customers to your site, whilst not spending too much, some are even free...

PopUnders - this is where when a website on a similar theme is visited by a customer, your website is opened in a window behind the main one. This is low cost and can really provide tons of traffic. It's good because you know what theme of site the person is looking at and therefore a bit about what they are interested in.

Link Building - if you want to maintain a good search engine position then swapping links with other sites is a must. Not only can this actually allow people to find your site through these links, but search engines also see these links and assume that you are becoming more popular - and list you higher in their search results.

Fresh Content - by keeping your website updated with fresh content is a must. Whether it is freshly added information, the latest news or just maintaining your product database, make sure that changes are there. Not only does this make the search engines see that the site is maintained, which means they are more likely to list them highly, if the updates are interesting enough visitors will bookmark your site and want to return to see the lastest changes.

Articles - writing articles that your potential customers want to read about and that other people can distribute for you can interest new people and tempt them into visiting your site. Don't try to over-sell your services, write about what they want to read about and at the end tell them how you can help them. Go to a few article distribution sites and keep an eye on the increasing traffic.

Advertise name in shop / on literature - this is one that is often missed by customers, but such an easy way to promote a site. Just make sure that your customers and visitors to your outlet know about your website. They might be wanting to shop out of hours or compare your prices to someone else during their lunch break. So put your URL on your shop sign, on your price tags, on all of your stationary and everything else that your customers might be picking up from you.

Run a newsletter - sign up to a free newsletter provider, put a signup form on your website and encourage visitors to sign up for the newsletter. Maybe even encourage them to sign up by offering special discounts via the newsletter. These people have then shwon an interest in your product and are more likely to want to buy from you - if they are reminded about you enough. Just don't over do the newsletters and annoy them.

Free Directories - depending on your website content, free directories can generate loads of traffic. I personally consider these more relevant to websites where the theme is one where people are taking more time to search for new websites. For example, I've used these to great effect on dating sites and sports site, sites about hobbies, interests and recreations can all have plenty of people digging around for more websites to visit.

Top 7 Online Website Marketing Ideas

Now you have a website, how can you get plenty of traffic onto the website? There are 7 top ideas for marketing a website online that every website could be using to generate more incoming traffic.

Pay Per Click - do you want a quick feed of traffic? Well in my opinion, pay per click systems offer just this! Sign up for a Google account, or MSN, Overture or whoever you choose, select a few appropriate keywords, write a concise advert and in minutes your website can be receiving targeted customers. There is an element of quality advert writing required and careful selection of keywords, but as long as you set limits for the advert and monitor the advert's progress, pay per click can be quite useful.

PopUnders - this is another way of generating fast traffic and this one is quite cheap. I've got a customer who relies on this to generate website traffic to support his business. How quick and well it works does depend on the provider you are buying from, but basically your website is displayed in a new window when a person visits another website of a chosen theme? Sounds complicated? It's not! For example, you choose a Golf category and then for 5,000 visitors the traffic provider gets to their golf websites, they also open a new window to display your website. Simple and can be very well targeted.

Fresh Content - if you aren't providing new content to your website then you are virtually killing it's content. It doesn't have to be weekly or even monthly. It depends on your website theme and competition. Whether you are adding new information, news or even just maintaining the freshness of yoour products, keep updating your website and traffic will be a lot better.

Forums & Blogs - by keeping your eye on other people's suitable blogs and forums there are time when you can genuinely post or leave comments that are usful and informative that can link to your website. Don't do it needlessly - you want the people reading the comment to see that you are making a valid point and want to visit your website - no spamming please!

Google Maps - on certain search results for businesses, Google displays a map and a list of businesses it is aware of. It is well worth signing up for free to this service to make sure that your website is listed and will appear in search results.

Articles - writing informative atricles that people find useful and getting them published in other people's newsletters, blogs and websites is an excellent way of being seen as a useful expert in the field and a way of generating more traffic. Like commenting in blogs and posting to forums, if the reader finds what you write interesting they are likely to want to visit your site.

Run a Newsletter - people visiting your website can be encouraged to sign up to your newsletter. If they do, then they are probably interested in your offer so likely to be happy to visit you when you have special offers. Sign up for a newsletter service and get it running now. Even if you only have a handful of subscribers, it can be fun.

Top 7 Free Website Marketing Ideas

It's always nice getting something for free - and publicity for your website is certainly on that list! Promoting a website can be expensive, but with a few DIY ideas under your hat you can help build your website traffic for free. So here's by top 7 free website marketing ideas.

Link Building - this is really a must for anyone wanting more traffic! By building links with other sites you can exchange traffic with them. Even if you aren't exchanging links on content pages, just links pages, that can help the popularity of your site and increase your search engine traffic. Getting listed in popular "Top Sites" lists may not help your page rank teriffically, but if it's a popular list it might have plenty of traffic and send some of it to you. This is particularly true when the topic involved is a hobby, when people are tending to browse deeper than just a quick flick through sites.

Fresh Content - by constantly updating and maintaining your content you are giving search engines a reason to come back to your site and a reason to send you visitors. If this new content forms new pages then you can quickly build up a large cataglogue of useful pages. Try adding one new page each week of content that you have written yourself. Don't worry too much about keywords - just write what comes easiest. Make sure the pages are easy to find - linked to from the search engines, and let time take it's course. If you aren't a content site, e.g. a shop, then make sure that your catalogue is updated on a regular basis. Search engines will pick up on special offers coming and going. Likewise, using a forum on your site can help as this is constantly producing new content on a site.

Forums & Blogs - by actively participating in other people's forums and leaving comments on blogs that track back to your own blog or website their readers can see what you have had to say and if it is interesting maybe they will also visit your blog or website. I've had people asking for advice on forums to which I've posted replies leading to commissions.

Video Clips - using amusing video clips and posting them on social networking websites where others might show them to their friends can be a useful idea. Done subtly is best - give the viewer something to enjoy and they will tell other people. Maybe demonstrate a product in use in an unusual way and drop in the name of your website as providing the product. I've seen this well done, with just the comments on the top of the page saying where the products could be bought from if any viewers wanted to try it for themselves.

Google Maps - the Google maps service shows on the map the location of businesses for variouse searches. If Google decides a search is relevant to a business and a location, then the map is shown at the top of the search results, along with a list of the displayed businesses. It's free to get listed - go to maps.google.com, search for your business and location and assuming you aren't listed, use the link at the bottom of the page to list your business.

Articles - promoting your website through frely distributed articles is an effective way of helping traffic. If you write an interesting and informative article, publishers should pick up on the article and reprint it. If it makes interesting reading then the readers will want to read more and visit your website. Also, so of the articles will be reproduced on websites, with pne way links into your website.

Run a newsletter - if you can collect email addresses of people that are visiting your site then you can later email them when you want to generate a bit of interest. Maybe you have special offers to promote, or have too much stock that needs clearing quickly. Well, if these people have enjoyed your site and offered you their email addresses then it's likely that they will be open to your offers - make use of this!

Top 5 Off Line Website Marketing Ideas

There's more to advertising your website than search engine optimisation and pay per click marketing. There's plenty of advertising that you can use that doesn't even involve the website. Offline marketing can bring plenty of good results for your business and a lot of it can bring long term customers without too much expense.

Here's my favourite 5 ways of marketing your website - without using the internet!

Advertise in your shop - if you are a shop owner, or at least have a premises that your customers might visit or pass, then advertising there is a definite must. Get your shop sign altered to include the website name. Have your price tags printed up with the shop name and on posters around the shop include your website address. Remember that people might be passing your place of business and see you and want to get in touch. A website address is far easier to remember than most phone numbers. It could be that you are a solicitor and they are about to move and drive past you every day to and from work. Whatever, make sure that passing trade sees your website address.

Advertise on literature - basically, put your website address on everything you print. Every receipt, invoice, statement, business card, letterhead etc should show your website address. This one, unless you are throwing away old literature to make way for newly printed stock, is a free one! But it's reminding current customers at a later date how to contact you.

Fliers - getting a batch of fliers designed and printed isn't going to break the bank. Then get them out as quickly as reasonable possible - they aren't doing any good in your drawer. Stick them on cars; give them out to potential customers you are meeting; post them through letter boxes; even just drop one into each carrier bag. You could be reminding existing customers about you or drawing in new customers depending how you distribute them.

Give aways / promotional items - similar to fliers, here you get some pens, stress toys, keyrings or whatever printed and distribute them as you wish. Maybe you give them out on the street or to customers. Or give them to customers who spend a certain amount (to encourage further spending) or have a set printed and give out a different one each week, saving the last one for online orders only. Whichever way you use them, having your URL printed on them means that your recipients are seeing your message and website name and can visit your site.

Magazine Adverts - this one is saved to last as it's probably by far the most expensive of all of the off-line ideas. By being listed in a magazine with a good circulation its readers are finding out about your site and associating you with the magazine. By using a specialist magazine you can really target your audience well and several of my customers use this, with some having sites just to give the readers a point of contact. But, depending on the quality and circulation of the magazine, this can be an expensive exercise. Done well, the returns can be even greater.

Top 7 Paid For Website Marketing Ideas

Using paid for advertising to market your website can be very expensive. Here I present what I consider to be 7 of the best ways of spending your money.

1) Pay Per Click - using services such as Google and MSN, you can select a variety of search keywords that people might be searching on and pay to be in the adverts column next to (and sometimes above) the results. You can usually control quite carefully the budget and pause or cancel the advert is you are spending too much and it can produce quick results. So a good one to start with.

2) PopUnders - this is one that is very controversial in some ways! With these, when someone opens a website, a new window opens in the background displaying another website. Because you know what sites are being used as the trigger, the advertising can be accurately tardetted. But there are so many popup blockers about that most people must have at least one - my computer has one built into the browser, one within the Google toolbar and one within the Alexa Toolbar - popunders don't get through! So with so many popup blockers available, will these services work? Well my thoughts are that with so many blockers availahle, if you don't have one installed, that is almost a conscious decision to allow them through. Therefore you are probably happy to receive them. Popunders are usually cheap, so another good starting point for marketing a website.

3) Expired Domain Traffic - this one is also cheap and cheerful, but at the moment in my experience many providers are struggling to provide UK traffic. With these, when a person tries to visit a site that has been deleted by the owner they are instead sent to a similarly themed website. The idea is that with a careful choice of sites you can generate plenty of well targetted traffic. Very cheap, rapid delivery usually, but stuggling with UK traffic at the moment,

4) Paid Directories - paying to be listed in a directory can be quite expensive and does not necessarily get a quick result. I have tried many directories and some are worse than the free directories! I now go by the theory that if they are phoning me and hassling me for business, then can they be that good? But there are some usful directories out there - you just need to see where your competitors are advertising and research whether those directories will be good for you.

5) Fliers - these can be useful but are often overlooked. A well designed and printed flier, made available directly to your customers can be used by them at a later date to recall your website address and visit it when they need it. Depending on your target audience there are many ways of distributing leaflets - handing them out on the street; handing them out in a shop; door to door posting; leaving on car windows; mailshot etc.

6) Magazine Adverts / Printed Adverts - advertising in the daily press or relevant magazines can rapidly get your website noticed by many people. By advertising in these your website gains credibility with the readers and some respectibility as you are advertising in a publication they trust. On the upside is that your advert can be seen by thousands of readers. In the downside is that this exposure comes with a cost. If advertising this way, make sure that your advert is professionally designed - even if it's only a couple of column inches. Whatever space you use, you want the advert to stand out and the costs of a designer can be recovered with a well produced advert that pulls in more customers.

7) Affiliate Marketing - and finally the 'big one'. Not necessarily just for big sites. As long as you can cope with the traffic then getting a team of marketeers working for you on a commission only basis could be just what your business needs. A lot of networks have large monthly charges and setup fees, so if your marketing budget is small start out with a network that avoids these, but they usually involve setting up everything for yourself. All that the network does is act as a contact point for affiliates and to help with the reporting of sales.

Build traffic with a competition...

OK, so I said that yesterday was the last of the ideas, I was wrong. Here's something else that I was suggesting to a customer. I'll describe it as I described it to my customer for his promotional items website.

Basically, what I suggested is that he run a promotional items competition. He invites his existing customers to send in ideas as to how they have used his products. This could be descriptions, images, videos etc. It doesn't matter - it's whatever he wants to use. It could even just be the most unusual place to give out his products, the most unusual model to build etc. It doesn't matter - all that matters is that there is a competition (and simple prize) that interests his customers.

And the competition doesn't need to be restricted to just his customers, as long as the entrants are using the right products. More about this in a minute...

So he gets the customers posting their entries. Each of these forms a separate webpage (more content...). But he's the important part - customers and their customers vote for the winners. This is vital! That way, customers who have signed up and entered the competition then tell their contacts about the cocmpetition so that they get votes. These people visit the site and vote.

You can incentivise the voting to encourage more votes by offering a prize for those voting as well. So to be able to award thee prize, and to make sure that people are only voting once, you capture email addresses.

So, what do you get from this exercise, rather than just a bill from your web designer for the work!

For a start, customers are returning to your site so they have you in mind. It's an excuse for you to email them and remind them you exist.

Second, the customers are telling people about you, so they are spreading the word about your site. There's a chance that your customers' contacts could then become your new customers.

Third, you get to capture a mailing list of your customers' contacts and can email them competition updates - and remind them you exist.

Fourth, some of your customers will be keen on the competition and link to your voting pages from their websites - one way links.

So, keep the voting rolling and maybe reset the counters every month or so. That way, your customers keep the votes rolling in and the benefits continue.

Word of Mouth

The last of the ideas for marketing your website is very simple, but works. It's one I use time and time again, it just takes a bit of getting used to to do it well.

What's the simplest idea of all, that's free and takes no time - simply tell everyone you know or talk to about your website and business. There's a chance that they, or someone they might know, might need your services.

It works. My very first customer came this way and I'm currently working on a neighbour's site. And a few months back I was giving another neighbour my phone number for a new homewatch scheme - so the easiest way was to just give her my business card. It had all the contact details I needed on it. The other morning she was driving past me when she stopped and asked for a quote.

I've also had close friends send their friends to me for work and, of course, on the line odf referrals is the fact that if I do a good job then my customers will be telling their friends who built their website. If it works for me, then why not everyone? Even if you are selling clothing, books or whatever, if your target audience is the people that you mix with then let them know about what you do.

Using Email Signatures

Have you ever noticed that some free email services add adverts to the bottom of the emails? The reason why is that these adverts pay for them to run the service.

If it works for them, why not for you? Now OK, for them you are distributing their adverts to people you know that might not know about their services. On the other hand, most of your emails are being sent to people you know. But what if not everyone knows what you do, or that you are trying to earn an extra income on the side by promoting an affiliate scheme or whatever website you are trying to promote?

By adding a signature to the bottom of your email you are showing everyone who receives your email your message and maybe some of them will look at the website. This is at it's best when people then forward your email. Every sent a joke to a colleague? More to the point, have you ever received jokes and see that people haven't deleted the original email?

If you look down that list and see what's at the bottom, others might later do the same. And that could be your advert.

And it's not just this sort of distribution that works. Quite often you may be emailing people you don't know - trying to make bookings and so on. Well they also might see your advert - it's always worth a go when the advertising is free.

The same can happen when you use an email address from within your domain. The recipient might just notice that URL, and if it's something that interests them then bingo - they might turn into a visitor.

I'm not promising overnight riches from email signatures, but they are totally free so well worth giving a go.