Top 10 Web Hosts
Welcome to our Top 10 web hosting company showcase! Of the thousands of web hosting companies - these are some of the best. We factor in numerous variables to arrive at the top 10 list. This is an honor reserved for those web hosting companies that go above and beyond in products, service, and quality.
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Posted in: web hosting
Internet Shopping Carts and SEO - A Small Business GuideIs your shopping cart enticing to the eye and user-firendly, but simply not getting seen by your target audience? | |
| by Tracey simpson |
When ranking Internet shopping carts and web portals, the search engines take 3 factors into account: Onpage SEO factors, Accessibility SEO factors and most importantly Off-page SEO factors.
On-Page SEO factors
On-page SEO refers to what can be done on the page of a website to improve its performance in the SERPs for target keywords entered by a user.
By efficiently optimising a website for popular keywords related to the on-page content, a website has a better chance of ranking well for keywords relevant to the content of the site.
Before pursuing SEO strategies like those explained below, it is extremely important to get your keyword strategy right. When selecting the right key phrases to optimize each page on a website for it is necessary to start with what your targeted visitors would type in. While broad phrases such as 'watches' may bring more traffic to a shopping cart selling watches, than more specific keywords such as 'Leather strap watches' and 'Rolex watches', the traffic will not be as focused and will generally not convert.
More importantly, broad phrases are very competitive - They are extremely hard to rank effectively for. To get your keyword strategy right it is worth doing some research; there's lots of information available across the web and there's many tools available to help you with this task.
Once you have a selection of key terms you are happy with, I would recommend analysing the following components on your website with a view of optimising them for your target key terms, taking into account that they should each be relevant to the contents of that page:
1) Title Tags
2) META Tags
3) The anchor text of your internal link structure
4) Heading Tags
5) URLs
6) Content syndication
It is also very important to frequently add fresh content relevant to your industry to your website. By doing so, the more often your site content changes, the more frequently the search engine spiders will visit your shopping portal. In this case you may think about adding a web blog/ RSS feed to your website.
RSS feeds enable others to syndicate your content and can increase brand awareness. By adding closely themed news regularly to RSS feeds it means search engines are more likely to recognise the sites as being acutely themed.
Accessibility and SEO factors
The goal of accessibility in SEO is to make content accessible to search engines. This refers primarily to the technical ability of search engine spiders to move through your site.
Thankfully, if you design your shopping carts with accessability issues in mind from the start; making your site accessible to web users whom are blind, deaf and viewing your site using text only browsers, you will find you are already practicing effective SEO.
Amongst many, the following components are some of the most important accessibility issues that spring to mind. You may consider taking a look at the W3C guidelines (http://www.w3.org/WAI/), and identifying those that can affect search engine spiders crawling your site.
CSS
Search engines favour CSS based sites, and are likely to score them higher in the SERPs because there is a greater ratio of content to code.
ALT Tags
By assigning ALT text the search engines will be able to understand your images and thus build up an understanding about the topic of your site.
Sitemaps
A site map provides search engines with access to every main page on your website, and allows them to instantly index your entire site. Sitemaps 'Autodiscovery', the new model recently launched by Google, Yahoo and Ask, enables you to submit your content to the search engines universally (http://www.iart.com).
Off Page SEO factors
With so many websites and shopping carts interested in ranking well for particular search terms, the search engines have learned that they cannot always rely on a website's on-page content.
The theory is that if hundreds or thousands of links are pointing to a website your site must be important. If those links are from very popular and trustworthy sites that have thousands of links pointing to them, then their value is multiplied. If a site is deemed popular and authoritative in this way, it has a greater probability of appearing highly in the SERPs for a given search term.
The following strategies outline ways you may generate inbound links from external websites to your shopping carts. While each approach concentrates on generating links for the sole purpose of getting a better search ranking, each technique can also help to drive targeted traffic to a site from other relevant sites.
Article Writing and Distribution
By writing articles and allowing them to be freely published in exchange for a back link, articles have the potential to be re-published multiple times; each time creating another back link to your website.
Press Release Writing and Distribution
By sending news about your company through various channels of distribution it is likely to receive recognition by related sites, and thus be re-published and generate back links.
Press release and article distribution can also help to brand your business as an expert in your field.
Social Media Optimisation
Social media optimisation is quite a complexed subject and does not involve one process like article and press release distribution. In short it refers to optimising your website so it is more interlaced with online communities.
Methods of SMO include syndicating your online content through RSS feeds and enabling means of social interaction, such as bookmarking capabilities. Social bookmarking sites work in a very similar way to your browser favourites functionality. The list of most visited or bookmarked pages appear in the first page of most of the bookmarking web sites. This would give your web site very good exposure.
SMO may also include getting involved in communities that gather on popular website like Flickr and YouTube. If you are able to build up a network of contacts and bloggers, links, traffic and conversions are sure to follow.
In conclusion, there is ample free advice out there in this field that will help you to achieve your shopping cart goals, however there's no avoiding the fact that SEO is time consuming. As a first step, it is important that you start building your shopping cart using software that supports search engine features.
Posted in: Business Guide
6 Ways to Build Websites | |
by Jinger Jarrett |
Although ideally it's a good idea to buy your own hosting and host your own sites, you can avoid the hassles by simply buying a domain, pointing it toward your new site, and simply promoting your new domain.
You can even use cloaking so your site looks like it's actually hosted on your domain.
However, to do this, you need to first decide what kind of site you want to build, what products or services you will sell, and what the topic of your website will be.
If you choose a highly trafficked site like one of the sites listed below, you won't even have to worry about submitting to the search engines. All of this is already taken care of for you.
Once you decide what your products and your topic are, then simply choose the site that best suits your needs. You can even build a list by using a site like Feedblitz.com, and most of these site alternatives already have RSS feeds built in.
If you can cut and paste, you can easily build your own search engine friendly, content rich website.
1. Lulu.com - If you want to sell your own products, which would include books, ebooks, CDs, DVDs, and photos, then this is the site for you. (In other words, this is a great site for writers, artists, and business people who sell their own products, want to expand their product lines from digital to physical and don't want the hassles of distribution.)
You can build your own store, create your own blog, and offer your products for sale. Lulu offers conversion software to make your ebooks available as books, and for only a 20 percent commission to Lulu, you can sell your products and keep the rest. Lulu will handle your distribution, as well as pay you your royalty checks through Pay Pal.
Once you get your site set up, then all you have to do is continue to add new products, post to your blog if you use it, and promote. What could be easier?
2. Ebay.com - Ebay offers you several options for building a website. You can set up an account, absolutely free, and begin selling your products immediately. You can even use Ebay as a way to gather leads for your business (Small monthly fee involved).
If you choose this route, then you have a few options for building a site.
You can choose to simply sell your products there without the hassles of building a website.
Ebay also offers Ebay Stores, and for a small monthly fee, you can build your own store and sell your own products.
You can also choose to have your own blog at Ebay. This is an option you want to take especially if you are selling products on Ebay. The only limitation is that you can't add outside links to your blog; you can only add links to products you are selling on Ebay.
Still, with the opportunity to promote on one of the top 20 sites on the internet, and do it free, this is a great option.
(Excellent for those who sell their own products or sell resale products. This includes both digital and physical).
3. CafePress.com - Talk about options! This site is the ultimate. Whether you want to create your own products for sale, or you want to sell millions of products others offer, or even both, you have a choice.
Cafe Press allows you to open your own store and sell your own custom made products whether it's T-shirts & clothing, posters & prints, housewares, custom US postage, your self-published book, or your own audio or data CDs.
You can set up your store absolutely free, and if you need more space, it's very inexpensive to upgrade. If you don't want to sell your own products, you have millions of products to choose from, and you can make an affiliate commission from everything you sell.
What's even better is that you can take your creations and market them on Ebay and combine these two high traffic sites.
(Primarily for those who want to create their own designs and work like artists and writers. However, since this site offers and affiliate program, anyone can use it to make money and build a website.)
4. Blogger.com
5. Wordpress.com
Both of these are blogging platforms, and each one has its advantages and disadvantages.
With Blogger, you can quickly set up a blog that will be spidered by Google. You can write about just about any topic you want, there are a wide variety of templates, and your blog will be on one of the largest, as well as the most popular, blogging site on the internet. You can also easily add your Google Adsense to your blog.
Wordpress offers more features, including dozens of templates, tagging and categorizing your posts, spell check, photos, and videos.
Both offer a Wordpad type interface, so you don't even need to know HTML when posting your posts. Just write your post, and when you're ready, click "Publish Post".
If you sell your own products, or services, then a blog should be a complement to your main site. However, if you sell affiliate programs, then a blog is a great way for you to offer articles and reviews about the products you sell. You can also offer industry news, as well as any information you think might be helpful to readers.
6. My Space.com - My Space is far more than a blogging platform. It's a community. With My Space, not only can you set up a blog to talk about your products and services, as well as your area of expertise, you can also network with other people who have an interest in your topic.
My Space offers free classifieds so you can sell your stuff, as well as forums, groups, and audio and video. Your profile is fully customizable, including templates you can find on the internet to create a custom design for your site. You can even add a subscription box for your lists so subscribers can subscribe.
Although there have been some negative things written about My Space, if you're looking to promote your business, writing, music, or whatever, it's the place to be. Even if you already have your own website, you'll want to set up a presence here.
Building a profitable website for your business is crucial to your success. I recommend that anyone wanting to start a business learn basic HTML. However, if you're just starting off, then you can easily learn the basics using one of these sites.
Posted in: Website
11:43 AM
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