Web hosting and ecommerce websites

I was just browsing ebay the other day (I guess I had too much time on my hands). But really it is amazing to see the number of sellers providing cheap web hosting for under $10. So the first thing that comes to my mind (as any buyer browsing ebay), WHATS THE CATCH?

Well, here it is. These web hosting providers give you a "virtual" IP address. This means that you are sharing the same IP address with multiple users.

So what does it mean for you as a website owner?

If one of the other sites that you are sharing your IP with, does spamming or any black hat SEO, there is a possibility that the search engines ban that IP address. So many of the innocent ones also get caught in this vicious cycle. As we all know, getting out of the "bad neighbourhood" or being banned by one of the world's most popular search engine Google, is not a good thing.

So ask questions and try to choose the right web hosting provider. This is an important selection as you may have to enter into contracts and there will be a fine if you break the contract with your web hosting provider.

Choose your web host provider wisely.

How to drive traffic to you Squidoo Lens

Here are some Squidoo Lenses I created in the past one week:

The SEO Firm

Womens Clothing Stores

Magic Store

Squidoo lenses are great for driving traffic to your site. You need to provide information-rich content and this helps you rank higher up.

Joining some groups helps bring visibility to the Squidoo lens.

Tag it in delicious.com and other social networking sites.

Blog about it.

Write an article on it.

That should give you a start.

Directory Web Site Submission

What is the online substitute of Yellow Pages?

Yes, you got it. Web directories.

There are thousands of web directories online and some of them cater to specific topics while others have every topic under the sun. Some are free and others have monthly / annual subscriptions. Surprisingly, I find that some directories in Australia charge anywhere between $200 - $300 for a one-time inclusion. When compared to US where the competition is high, the subscription fees can be anywhere between $1 - $19.99. Many of them are free. Some ask for reciprocal links which may or may not be mandatory.

Some tips when doing directory web site submission:

• Before submission, ensure you have your keyword, title, short description (100 words), long description (1000 words) kept handy. Type it in a Word doc and do a copy and paste when necessary instead of typing it all over again. This will save you time.Here is what a submission will look like:

URL: www.yourwebsitename.com
Title: This is the title on the blue bar of your browser
Description: Use keyword rich description of your business
Email address: Use a generic one (info@websiteaddress.com) as you will get a lot of mails from these sites. You can unsubsribe them later.

• Ensure your site is fully operational and there are no broken links. Here is a free tool to check for broken links on your site.
• The best ones to go for when getting started are the free ones
• Get one way links and avoid reciprocal links if you are not going to be able to show them prominently on your website.
• There are tools which do the job. If you are a website owner who needs to use this service once or twice a year, it may be adviseable for you to get an external agency to do it for you. It will work out cheaper.
• Some directories require a human to validate and type in the security code. In these cases, manual submission is the best.
  

This may be a time consuming task but you will get rewarded in the long run. You not only have links to sites which have a high page rank but you will get a fair amount of traffic from them.

You can submit your site or add your url to as many as 200+ directories on the internet which do not charge anything.

Flash Vs SEO

This topic has been written about ad nauseam but….

Many website owners want Flash on their website (many that I know, at least).

Designers are willing to do it for them. When the time comes to do online advertising, the Search Engine Consultant tells them that search engines cannot read flash files.

Now the website owner is confused. Why didn’t the designer tell him? Does this mean that all the money and time spent on having Flash files has gone down the drain?

I will attempt to answer some of the questions here.

Many designers do not know about this. Their job is to code/design and many of them do not know about the search engine marketing aspect of it. Would you ask your IT department to do your marketing for you? No. One group is logical and the other is creative. Two different worlds.

SEO must go hand in hand when designing the site. This saves time, money and frustration for both the designers and the website owners.

Whenever I see website owners going in for Flash, I caution them. Search engines look for certain things in a website:

• The website must load fast
• The back button must work especially if you are going to do Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.
• No redirects to another page – This is considered as spam by search engines.

When you use Flash files:

• It often takes a long time for a website with Flash to load.
• Many flash files disable the "Back" button on the website
• Flash files often redirect to another page

Look at it from a user's perspective, if I come to a website with extensive flash in it and I have a dial up connection, I am not going to wait for the site to load. I just press the "Back" button and move on, as do many users. (Ouch, that hurt, didn’t it?).

The reason why search engines do not read Flash files?

Optimizing a Flash file includes creating text which has to be hidden so it cannot be seen by the human eye. This is easy to abuse and manipulate to hide spam, porn or other redirected sites.

Google has started indexing Flash files (at least the latest version of Flash) but it should be designed to have text in them. It is still a mess when it comes to getting ranking and generally advisable to avoid Flash files.

Separating each page of the Flash movie into separately crawlable pages is the advise of one consultant. More about the pains of optimizing a flash site is here.

If you still have not got the message, here's a flow chart that might convince you.

If you are still not convinced, here's something you can use…

Google expanding in Australia?

The latest blog on Google's Australian blog site is interesting. The line which caught my attention was the "growing Sydney office". Google is expanding its offices in Australia which is fantastic news!

The recruitment of professionals at the Sydney office was a little slow some months ago. One of my friend applied for a job and was told that someone in US will contact him, which never happened.

They have also conducted a roadshow for their product Adsense in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Auckland. Adsense are the advertisements which show on top, right and left side of any web page you vist these days. It is titled "Ads by Google". Many website owners use it to generate additional revenue. You provide space on your website to run the ads and Google sends you a cheque. These ads can be text or video.

Here is a useful tip when using Google Adsense on your site:

Make sure the colors on your site blend with those of the Adwords advertisement.

SEO war for keyword Andrew Kontra

The other day a close friend of mine was challenged. The interesting thing that caught my attention was that it was SEO related. The challenge was to rank for a keyword "Andrew Kontra" who is an employee at Pacific Brands. Mr. Kontra is going to be getting a lot of publicity thanks to this challenge.

So taking this as an example, how exactly do you make someone famous (in the eyes of search engines)?

Blogs for Andrew Kontra
Links to similar sites

Now wait, if I reveal all, I might spoil the fun! Watch Andrew Kontra's space in the coming months, years.....

And while you are at it, buy Mr. Kontra a coffee!! ;)

Advertising and Marketing – The New & Old

Some years back, advertising and marketing were in the form of –

Media

• Television
• Radio

Print

• Newspapers (average cost of a classified AUD1,500)
• Magazines (average cost for half page AUD 15,000)

Outdoor

• Billboards (AUD 50,000 and above depending on the size, fabric etc)
• Ads on trams (especially in Melbourne)

Direct Mail (Mailing lists cost around AUD 14 - 50)

These methods cost a lot of money and a lot of time and effort went into creating them. Big corporations still do all of the above with a combination of some of the below forms of advertising.

New mediums of marketing which are cheaper or even better FREE!

With the advent of the internet, information is available and free. There is freedom to share knowledge and information. You do not have to pay for it. Better still, it allows small businesses to get publicity and traffic by paying very small amounts or nothing. It is no longer possible to
approach anyone with an aggressive sales pitch and hope to convert them. People are becoming blind to blatant forms of marketing and something new always interests them. The below methods are more subtle but the result is more effective.

Some of the newer and popular forms of advertising and marketing are given below:

Viral Marketing

Blogs (Blogger.com, Xanga.com)

Social Bookmarking sites (Digg, delicious)

Social Networking sites (Ecademy, Linkedin, Xing)

Online Press Releases (PRLog.com, PRLeap.com) - I provide services in this field

Article writing – I provide services in this field

Email Newsletter

Other paid forms of online advertising gaining popularity are:

Banners

Websites

Newer Marketing Technologies

Pay Per Click (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing) – I provide services in this field

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Electronic Brochures

Streaming Video

Direct Response questionnaires

HTML presentations

Analytics – I provide services in this field

A combination of all of the above based on the industry you are in and the type of visitors you want to attract, all the methods mixed and matched form a great campaign.