Wednesday, May 26, 2010

How to Choose a Domain Name that will Drive MORE Traffic to a Website

Creating a website can be tricky, but choosing the right domain name is even trickier. A good domain name can drive more traffic to your website, and a not so good domain name may cause a stagnant website. The concept of having your own website is that it should effectively represent your purpose, whether it will be for personal or business use. Once you create your website, it follows that you should and must register your own domain name.

So what is a domain name? It is a unique alphanumeric name that gives identity to a website on the World Wide Web. A domain name has a maximum length of 67 characters, this includes the 0 to 9 numbers, English alphabet composed of 26 letters, and the hyphens. Hyphens in a domain name can only be used within and not at the beginning or the ending of the name.

Domain names have suffixes, and they are called Top Level Domain (TLD). Domain name TLD's are based on the category of organization that they are related to. The following are several of the most popular TLD's:

1. .gov for government agency
2. .edu for educational institution
3. .org for nonprofit organizations
4. .net for commercial network
5. .com for commercial business domain

Since domain names gives identity to a website, it follows that choosing the right one can be a bit complicated. Your objective is to opt for a name that is easy to remember, search engine optimization friendly, and more importantly a domain name that mirrors the content, and/or products and services that your website provides. At the end of the day your chosen domain name can make or break you.

Do's and Don'ts in choosing a Domain Name

Obviously, a domain name should be related to your websites content. If you're selling shirts then do not choose a name such as pants.com. Choosing unrelated names will confuse site visitors and frankly it doesn't make any sense at all.

A domain name as discussed earlier should be easy to remember. So choosing too long of a name is a No-No. Which is better yourshirts.com or your-shirts-in-different-styles-and-colors.com?

However, a short name is also not advisable, because a short name will not have much impact in driving traffic to your website. Try to purchase a domain name with few keywords with relevance to the content of your website. Which is better yourshirts.com or shirt.com?
Integrating keywords in choosing a domain name will help, because it will result in a higher ranking on search engines. Which is better yourshirts.com or yoursite.com? With yourshirts.com you can immediately identify that the website is about shirts as opposed to yoursite.com wherein you are at lost as to what the website is all about, you will loose potential website traffic if you do it that way.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

How to Use Exchanges to Create Traffic

Exchanges are a way of sharing your own traffic to other websites. Brilliant people who are experiencing the same problem of directing an inadequate number of visitors to their sites had devised this strategy not too long ago. The idea is very simple. All a person has to do is to post advertisements of other websites on their own sites in exchange for the same thing.

In essence, it is you-advertise-on-my-website-and-I'll-advertise-on-your-site sort of agreement. People want to increase the popularity of their sites and that's a given. Some people are more than willing to exchange or share resources with others, so to speak.

There are different things you can propose an exchange with to other websites. You can exchange links, banners, content, and a whole lot of other promotional stuff. It is more about sharing what you have to other web masters so that they can share what they have to you in response.

The most popular exchanges in are in the form of URL's. Some web directories are actually requiring websites to put their link on the front page of the website that is requesting inclusion. More often than not, web directories test their live links to see if it is really there before they accept the website for submission.

Web directories are online classified listings of different websites. The links of the websites they contain actually came from the web masters who had intent to be included in the list. Some web directories are paid directories. This means that you need to pay these sites a certain amount before your link shows up on their pages.

However, web directories understand that not all web masters have the necessary funds to pay for advertisements. As such, web directories devised another mode of payment. Instead of web masters paying them money for link inclusion, they pay by publishing the web directory's link on their front page. This setup benefits both parties. The web directory is getting the promotion it gets while your website is getting more backlinks.

But links are not the only things that are used for exchanges these days. There are also inline text advertisements and even banners. Banner exchanges work in the same way as link exchanges. Only in this type, graphical banners are published instead of mere URL's.

Here, you can catch more of an audience from another website because you are free to use eye-catching graphics and sometimes, even multimedia, to get your message across. Banner exchanges with another website is a good idea if and only if the other website you are trading advertisement spots with have a better page ranking and traffic than you do.

Of course, the other website may be a little choosy in selecting a banner exchange partner. Either your website had to be related to their own, or yours has to have an equal amount of traffic and enjoy the same page ranking as theirs.
There are certain requirements that both parties have to meet. And it is very important that the two web masters exchanging links with each other have open communication so that they both maximize their efforts of generating traffic to their respective sites.

There are several websites nowadays that are proposing exchanges to fellow web masters. They serve as a middleman between two websites that are looking for traffic. In essence, they match two or more websites so that they can pool their resources together to gain the traffic they need. Their service makes the whole system easier, as you don't have to personally talk to another web master for an exchange. Most of them offer their services for free, by the way.

Exchanges can really do wonders for your site. If you have distributed your links or banners to a substantial amount of websites over the internet, even if only one unique person gets to click them everyday, you should be getting the results that you want. However, you have to be very careful when entering deals like these.

You don't want to over populate your websites with somebody else's links, advertisements, and banners in such a way that your own content becomes merely a shadow of the ruckus. Be very wary when positioning the links and banners from exchanges as well. They should not, in any way, make your website lose its credibility.

Friday, January 22, 2010

How to Use Google Adwords to Drive Traffic

Utilizing Google Adwords is one of the vital tools in the internet world if you want to drive traffic to your Webpage. And why do you need to drive traffic to your website? Any website administrator or owner sees the importance of this action since traffic makes any site successful by gaining more profit through advertisement. Still confused? Let us take it one by one. We shall start with a discussion of Google Adwords.

When using the Google search engine there are noticeable listings in the right hand corner of the webpage. All of these listings is identified as Google Adwords. Google presents important texts relative to the ads within the search engine results page. This page is named Sponsored Links. When a searcher keys in a word, the links appear separately thus giving superb exposure of the listed site.

How does it work? Since Google is the most popular and the largest online search engines; it receives approximately 200,000,000 queries everyday. Because of this demand, its web administrators desire to have high ranking on the results of searches it provides. The high ranking can denote a high traffic for a particular website.

The results page of any search engine can really be a great spot for promoters to advertise a service or product using links and ads. Particularly, these are helpful to those ticket items needing maximum exposure for sales. As a result, Google launched Adwords service offering businesses an avenue to advertise their services and products to a targeted audience.

Adwords is a pay per click advertisement which is posted by people who want his or her auctions to be seen by targeted traffic on the site. Through Adwords, the item submitted will be displayed several times but these displays, will only be paid whenever a searcher ticks on the posted ad. Adwords by Google guarantees instant traffic.

How can one use the Google Adwords? An initial step is to acquire an account on Google Adwords Service. Next, you should specify your country and language; this is an important step since your prime motive is to sell. You would not want your product or service be advertised in places where they are not known or they are not being used.

After acquiring an account, you are now ready to make your ad group. This ad group consists of ad designing, keyword selection and determination of the maximum cost you are willing to pay. This also includes bidding for the amount of the ad.

Tag title is the next important thing to consider in Google Adwords. Be sure that your title tag is very captivating since this will be an essential tool in catching the attention of the target audience. As a note, title tags must describe your website accurately and clearly. This must be effective in conveying the message for your audience. Having clear messages can attract qualified leads which can be converted to sales. This can therefore signify the importance of selecting concise keywords.
Keywords must carefully be selected. There are words and phrases that can be adapted to attract more prospects. Using different words, derivatives and misspellings can lead to an increased chance of serving your ad on the website.

After deciding on a title tag for your ad, cost must be considered next to have maximum exposure. For each campaign, it is recommendable to have daily budget that is affordable and suitable. Usually, the charges are agreed upon by the client and a webmaster or administrator. Normally, a pay per day amount is considered; for example, a trading assistant who takes care of the selling of peoples stuff agrees on a $10 a day or $300 for one month listing. Generally, the charge can be as low as a dollar a day. The amount will all depend on the set agreement.

Aside from these steps, there are a few mistakes that are overlooked. These can be considered to be a profitable website. One of the mistakes is bidding on a few wrong keywords, thus missing the right ones. Another mistake is unawareness on the keywords and ads that convert web users to sales and which ones aren't profitable.

Your site won't succeed based entirely on its design and content. Although you have a very exceptional services and products to offer, it will all be a waste if you do not have capabilities and skills to advertise. Google Adwords in conclusion is a very excellent tool in gaining your sites success. It will definitely be helpful in letting you have the target traffic you will need to have maximum exposure and eventually the sky rocketing sales you dream of!