Many small businesses start their websites and put a “Links” page up as one of their first few pages thinking that this will help them rank better.

While it’s a nice gesture to link to your vendors, associates, resources, and products you like, and your customers may even find this page helpful or interesting having a links page alone won’t help your website to rank better.

Instead, You Want Your Website to Be Like A Prom Queen

That’s not to say you want your website to wear a sparkly dress or a shiny tiara or make a sappy acceptance speech. (more…)

Here is the original:
Search Engine Optimization: It?s Not Who You Know, It?s Who Knows You

Blogging is a hot way for an ordinary person to make some cash on the net. Anybody with a computer and an Internet connection can make it in this market. You’ve no doubt come across many blogs and maybe you’ve thought about starting one yourself.

Here are some common sense advice on how to get your thoughts out of your head and into your blog. Listen up.

1. You’re the boss.

Don’t worry about what people will think when you blog. Just write what you feel, what is in your heart, and your fans will find you!

2. What To Write About.

What if you can’t think of ideas, where can you get ideas to write about?

There is so many ways to research ideas, that I could spend a year writing about each one. Here is just a few things you can write about.

Hop to YouTube, find a few videos you like and blog about those 2 .Go to the major news sites and blog about current events in your home town, the nation, or the world 3. Scan a few community forums and blog about what people are talking about.

3. Ok Ok, I get the Idea, but I really don’t have time to maintain a blog.

If the thought of committing to your blog gives you weak knees, you can always schedule a bunch of posts in advance.

A lot of blogging software give you the option to schedule your posts, giving you the flexibility to post at regular intervals even if you have a short period of time to commit to your blog.

For example, when you have time to blog, generate a list of ideas for articles, tutorials and other things that you might be interested in. Brainstorm at least ten different topics and create a 3-4 sentence paragraph about each topic. Then create a post for each idea using the future post to schedule the posts.

If you want, you can post 1/2/3 blog posts per week. Now, your blog will auto post your articles even if you can’t be at the computer.

4. Show Me the Money!

Okay, let’s monetize your new blog. Once your site or blog has lots of stuff on it then sign yourself up for Google AdSense and some kind of affiliate program like the Amazon Associates Program. I suggest that if you are using amazon you go with products that you hand pick so they are exactly targeted to the subject of each web page.

A lot of experts recommend you wait a month before you start thinking about site monetization. I can see the logic in this. After all, you want to have a decent collection of interesting projects, ideas, articles and related stuff before you start looking for the money.

But, don’t expect overnight riches. In fact, don’t expect a dime for at least 3 to 5 months after you start your blog. If you use money as your primary motivation for blogging, you will burn out.

5. Time is Your Best Friend.

A lot of the popular blogs that are making nice change have been around forever. Maybe you’ve heard of a friend of a friend that’s making a ton of money on a crappy blog he started only a few weeks ago. Every time you hear these stories, remember that these great results are not typical. I guarantee you that a person like that is buying advertising to get traffic to their blog, that their content is uninteresting, and that their blog will be down in a years time.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned is that a good website is like fine wine or cheese. The longer you blog ages and is allowed to develop, the more valuable your blog will be.

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Making money on the internet is fun ancd exciting. Learn more at WildCashFlow.com

Source:
5 Steps to a Popular Blog

Are there any negative SEO implications to including a social bookmarking and sharing button to the more popular pages on your website to leverage some of the popularity of social networking?

Originally posted here:
Search Marketing Q&A: Social bookmarking implications on SEO

Using RSS helps to streamline the communication between publishers and their readers. RSS has had a surge in popularity, so webmasters have started to experiment using RSS to deliver their content in new and creative ways.

RSS feeds usually contain a headline and a summary of the content. The summary of the content contains enough information get the attention and interest of the reader without overwhelming them. If the reader wants more information, they can simply click a link in the feed and access the website that has all the details.

RSS readers combine the information from multiple feeds. This makes it easy and convenient for individuals to quickly browse the information from many sources. Feeds are generally themed, which allows readers to subscribe to feeds that interest them.

One of the biggest benefits of RSS, is the ability of individuals to opt-in only to feeds of interest. This gives total control of what information is received to the user. If the quality of a feed goes down, or they simply are no longer interested, a user could just remove the feed from the RSS reader. There is no subscribing or un-subscribing to deal with, when the feed is removed no further information is received from that feed. An RSS reader also compiles all the information from multiple sources to one area. this allows the user to quickly view many content streams without having to go to multiple locations or emails.

RSS is a great tool for publishers as well. It frees the publisher from maintaining lists, worrying about privacy rules, spam or age guidelines. At the same time it provides the publisher a vehicle for communication to a highly targeted audience.

Publishers can use RSS to deliver keyword rich, themed content. This will help establish trust and build the publishers reputation with new and established customers.

Here is a sample of what can be delivered with RSS:

Blogs, many blogs utilize a RSS feed. Each blog post is summarized and broadcast as a feed item. This makes it easier for interested readers to scan blog posts for specific items of interest.

Articles, many articles are placed into RSS feeds and sent to readers informing them of new content. Generally, the feed consists of the article title and a brief summary or introduction of the article. RSS users can then decide to follow the link to the complete article.

Forum Feed, some forums are now allowing users to get new posts through RSS feed. The feed will usually show the latest topic of discussion. If users are interested in posting replies, or reading more, they can simply click to go directly to the forum discussion. As the forum discussion continues the RSS feed is updated and readers see the latest updates on the topic.

Organizations Schedules, many clubs, schools and groups use RSS to communicate everything from meetings to events that are coming up. The feed used to publicize these events also notify the community.

Retail Sale or Special Feed. Both online and traditional stores have started using RSS feeds to deliver news of special offers and sales to customers. Some online marketers have stepped this up by allowing users to customize a feed with keywords or phrases that they choose.

RSS feeds have been adapted to many industries and the usefulness of RSS is growing every day. RSS is now being used to market, promote and communicate to a variety of audiences. The ease of use and user friendly make up of RSS has helped many organizations to expand their reach to new audiences and customers. RSS is fast becoming the communication vehicle for many businesses and with the increase of popularity will come ever more creative uses for this communication vehicle.

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Rob Emmerson is a leading expert in SEO and has written extensivly on the subject in articles and eBooks. He offers a free SEO Course for individuals interested in improving their websites. in addition he writes a daily Blog on SEO where he shares tips and tricks.

More:
Increase Website Visibility Using RSS

I the first part of this article I looked at the basic necessities of getting your self started on the internet. In this second part I shall look at what you need to get your own site set up.

Hosting

If you want to develop your own site you will need to get a domain name, which is unique to you, the name you choose should ideally have a relationship with the key words that you use for the search engines to home in on, for example 2 of the key words that I use with this site are “Tips” and “Internet tips” so you can see that http ://tips4-u.com is tailored to the market that I want to attract. I have used several companies to host my sites in the past, but the best service for a paid host that I have found is Midphase they offer many different plans, and are full service hosting providers meaning you get all the facilities that you will need including cpanel,php,mysql and many others.

The best value that I have found, is doteasy, they give free 100 mb hosting for each name that is registered with them, but they are only basic accounts, for the facilities that I just listed they do charge.

Http: //doteasy.com

Editing software

The easiest type of editing software for creating your own site is often know as WYSIWYG or What you See is What you Get, with this type of editor you just type in what youwant and the sofeware converts it to the requires HTML language that browsers understand. I use one called Coffeecup they have a free version at www .coffeecup.com/free-editor

Ftp Software

Once you have your hosting account you will want to be able to upload your website, for this you will want a FTP client, the initials stand for File Transfer Protocol and while ther are 100’s to choose from one of the easiest that I have used is Filezilla, http: //filezilla-project.org a free download.

Payment Proccessors

Having reached this stage, you are going to need to organize a way to pay and receive money on line, there are many ways to do this and I will give you my recommendations and explain why I would net use some companies. Paypal http: //paypal.com This is the largest online payment proccessor and it is owned by E-bay, It is a must have account and very secure. Paypal has very strict rules, and if you are selling using paypal make sure that you follow there tems and conditions to the letter to avoid having your account put on hold.

Alertpay http: //www.alertpay.com/?6thoqN0Bnkgy8lks1hOJ%2bA%3d%3d

Alertpay has a good reputation and is growing quickly,

Safepaysolutions http: //safepaysolutions.com

Another high reputation newcomer, well worth opening an account.

E-gold http: //e-gold.com

A slightly riskier payment processor, e-gold has had some problems with being used for money laundering, because of the way the company works once a payment has been made it is not possible to recall it so when buying on the internet make sure you know what you are getting when you pay with e-gold. It is worth having an account, as many paid to click sites use e-gold for instant payments.

In the next and final part of this article I shall look at traffic generation.

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By Graham Andrew Taylor For more Internet Tips Articles and Reviews visit tips4-u.com

More here:
A Beginers Guide to Getting started on the Web (part 2)