International Dial Up

Sometimes, your business takes you on different trips to various states around the United States. You may be based in New York - however, your business could also take you to Miami, or anywhere in the world for that matter. The great thing is that even if you are far away, you can still access your files, information and basically your entire office - through the Internet. Instantly access any information that you might need for your overseas business trip by using any computer, a modem and a telephone line through international dial up access.

There are different companies that offer international dial up. With this type of access to the Internet, you can easily access any information in your home office computer wherever you are. You have access to all your important files from your office to you wherever you may be.

International dial up usually comes as part of standard dial up packages. You can ‘dial in’ from wherever you are using your ISP’s international access numbers. Now, you can keep tabs on your work, even when you’re on business trips abroad, check you email as often as you want, and update your website.

With international dial up access, you can confidently travel to any place in the world. You will always have instant and easy access to your files. The drawback is, like any dial up Internet connection, you may have to wait a while to log on, because this method of connecting is usually very slow.

How To Create A Homepage That Works

Want to know what the worst thing to say on a homepage is?

“Welcome to our homepage.”

And yet, time after time, we all come across such homepages on the Internet. The reason that this is such a poor opening gambit is the fact that the visitor already knows he / she is looking at your homepage, what’s the point in teaching them to suck eggs?

Your website’s homepage needs to contain much more important messages than a simple welcome statement or brief history to your company. Why has someone landed on your website in the first place? What problem are they looking to solve?

What type of information do they seek? If your homepage doesn’t convey that your website has the answers to these questions in the visitors’ minds then it’s game over - they will leave, never to return.

3 Seconds To Make The Right Impression

So how you can retain visitors and grab them as soon as they view the homepage of your website? Well, try condensing the key selling points of your business. Why are you different? Why should they do business with you as opposed to anyone else?

A lot of businesses also lose sight of the fact that their homepage should not only convey what the business is about but also what the website is about. What can visitors do on the website? What types of information can they find here?

What are the best things about the website? If you don’t convey all these vital messages quickly via the homepage people will not stick around trying to find the answers themselves deeper within the site.

Put Yourself In The Shoes Of Your Customer

As with many marketing approaches the key here is to take a step back and imagine yourself as a customer viewing the homepage for the first time. What would you want to see? Perhaps client comments to instil a sense of trust. Or maybe press clippings that illustrate the profile and respectability of the company?

Whatever you decide to place on the homepage keep it snappy. Less is more. It’s a cliché but it holds 100% true as far as your website’s homepage is concerned.

Michael Cheney is Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM. Take the Free 7-Part Course “Internet Marketing Made Easy” and get your free sampler of ‘The Bible’ here: http://www.websitemarketingbible.com/marketing/

The Secret Psychology Behind Internet Marketing

Television may have been the greatest invention that rocked
planet earth in the 1900s (although many things which
contributed to television’s birth were discovered and invented
as early as the 1800s). However, it’s the internet boom of the
20th century that is causing the hullabaloo in today’s world.

With the Internet, what was impossible before has become
possible now. What was impossible to know then has become
possible now, with just a click of your fingertip. This is the
new era of knowledge and of information explosion. This is the
era of the internet revolution.

One thing significantly brought about by the internet craze is
the possibility of buying and selling almost anything through
the use of computers. You just need a computer set, a good
internet connection and voila! Before the internet, the
catchphrase was “let you fingers do the walking.” Today, you
sure can use your fingers to do the walking for you, but not
through the telephone system. The internet has revolutionized
the way people buy and sell their products.

Imagine this: A digital camera, its model, and all its
specifications right before you eyes. And you just need to click
your mouse to get all other information you want before deciding
on the purchase. So, you want to buy a tent dress but you do not
have the time to go to the department store? Shop right in the
privacy of you home. Surf the internet, look for the dress style
you want, indicate your size and color preference, make
arrangements as to how it is to be purchased, whether cash on
delivery or through credit cards and there you are. Did it take
you longer than 20 minutes?

The revolutionary method of buying and selling things through
the internet has given rise to internet marketing. Internet
marketing is just like your ordinary advertisement copies
published by your local newspapers. But this time, it takes more
than the ordinary way of advertising. Internet marketing is more
technology-savvy, more persuasive and more strategic. In
marketing products or ideas through the internet, the seller
does not sell the products pointblank. Instead, the seller makes
you feel like he is offering you an opportunity that you should
not miss. He is not offering you the product, but a lifestyle
that goes with the product.

While marketing has moved on from the newspapers, to the radios
and to the boob tubes, and now to the computer through the
internet, its basics have not changed much. The basics or the
psychology behind marketing remains the same, whatever media is
involved. The strategy has only been improved as it can now
reach a greater number of people from all walks of life.

After you read this, you will find out that there is no secret
to the psychology of marketing after all. So what are the
basics, and the psychology of internet marketing?

1. First and most important is the existence of a good product.
While it is true that good marketing can sell a not-so-good
product, it is better to start off with a good product or a good
idea. Make sure that the product or the idea is novel. Something
that is not commonly heard or found or it may be common but you
have reinvented the product or you have found a new way of doing
something.

2. With a good product or idea in your hand, then you can
proceed into concocting a story that would sell your product or
idea. Your clients or buyers will not be able to physically see
the product so you have to exert an extra effort to make them
understand, feel your product and understand its value.

The lack of physical communication between the buyer and the
seller makes internet marketing doubly hard. You have to create
a mystery behind your products; something that will catch the
buyer’s attention at first glance. Remember, you are competing
with thousands of other products and ideas that are reachable
just with the click of the computer mouse.

You have to input dreams in your story excite your buyers and
make them feel you are offering them an opportunity they
wouldn’t get elsewhere.

3. You have to present your buyers with an offer they could not
resist. Box in your offer and make the presentation complete,
leaving the buyer and his questions, answered and satisfied.
Provide everything that your prospective buyer would need before
deciding on you product.

The benefit of internet marketing goes beyond the imagination.
You can buy and sell whatever you want, the fastest possible
time and the easiest possible way. Use it to your advantage.

7 Benefits of HTML Validation

You may not bother with html validation or writing simple and
clean code when designing your web site. Later you may find your
site is slow loading, appears incorrectly in the main browsers
and does not rank well for the major search engines.

Now there are sites that still do rank well even though the html
code has many errors. This is because most of the current major
browsers are still very forgiving of html mistakes, however
future browsers will become more html compliant as the Internet
advances. Sites that have not bothered with html code validation
will then fall by the wayside or take time and money to be
corrected.

That’s why you should take the necessary steps NOW to make sure
that the code on your web site is validated.

What is HTML validation?

This is the process that analyzes an HTML document in comparison
to standard HTML rules, identifying errors and non-standard
codes. Web pages are rendered using HTML (Hyper Text Markup
Language). As with any language there are rules and standards
that should be followed. For example the HTML 4.01 Specification
(rules and standards) are available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/. You can check the html validation
of your web page by entering your url at:
http://validator.w3.org/

7 Benefits of HTML validation

1. Web Site Accessibility - validating your html code helps to
pinpoint areas of potential blockage that could prevent search
engine spiders or visitors from accessing your website. When you
run your site through a code validator it may produce many
errors that need to be corrected so your pages will render well.
ie include text with your “alt” tags for every < img > tag.

Why should you do this?

-Allows your site to be accessible to a larger audience (vision
impaired, motor skill impaired, cognitive impaired)

-Allows your site to be accessed by wider range of devices (hand
helds, screen readers, text browsers, search engines)

-Is a requirement for Federal and State Government sites

2. Search engine friendly pages - clean and simple code enables
search engines to spider your pages more quickly and completely.

Here’s an example:

What’s wrong with this code?

< p keyword1 sentence, well written copy, etc.

< p > keyword2 paragraph with more choice content.

This code is missing a “>” The issue is not that the page will
necessarily get skipped altogether but that the “keyword1″
sentence looks like part of the tag - like a tag attribute. So
the words in the “keyword1″ sentence probably won’t be included
in the search engines computations, even though the page itself
will be indexed.

Once a spider sees a correct tag further along in the page, then
it’s back on course. So, the keyword2 paragraph would make it.

3. Faster Loading - if your web page contains html errors it
will take a longer time for the search engines to spider it,
therefore slowing the loading time. If your page doesn’t load in
under 10 seconds your visitors may click away to your
competitors’ sites.

4. Less load on servers - clean and simple code won’t tax your
server as much as a site which has complicated code or contain
many nested tables. Cascading style sheets (CSS) will greatly
reduce the amount of code within your web pages. This will also
cut down on the amount of web space and bandwidth used thus
saving you money for hosting your site.

5. Easier to update and maintain web site - with no mistakes in
your html code it is easier and faster to make changes to your
web pages. For web site designers, this means you will save time
and money when maintaining clients’ sites.

6. Browser compatibility - validated code ensures your site is
compatible with the current browsers and future browsers. You
might say “well, it looks fine in Internet Explorer, so why
bother with any other browsers?” Current browsers will continue
to update their rules and future browsers will make sure they
are html compliant.

7. Access more visitors - if you ensure your web pages appear
correctly in all the major browsers you will be able to reach a
larger audience which then increases the potential of your site
to make more sales.

Part 2 of this article will discuss:

What documents to validate The validation process Validation
tools Common validation errors

Understanding Inbound Links and their Benefits

Link building has arguably been the most important factor and
one of the core focus areas for most companies and webmasters
wanting to improve their rankings within search engines. It’s no
secret that every major search engine heavily weighs inbound
links for their search results, including natural occurrences of
those links, anchor text being used within their search results,
and quantity or quality of those links.

Within this article, I’ll explain exactly what you need to do to
successfully market a page or pages within your web site and
achieve a good balance of quality inbound links. For simplicity,
I will discuss anchor text variations, most effective text to
use within links, and where links should be acquired, i.e.
directories, blogs, or other niche sites.

The first concept to grasp is that there are many types of links
that can be targeted, not just an anchor text link with two or
three words to a particular page of your site. Let’s start with
the following three types:

1) URL or Web Page Links - these links are directed to a URL of
a web site. This type of link to a specific page does increase
the general authority of that particular page and is beneficial
to use to increase the natural occurrences of inbound links to a
web site.

2) Name Links - these links include the anchor text of the
particular page or perhaps even the title of the page’s context.
An example might be a page with the anchor text of “SEO
Position” where the URL used points to our own company home
page. Another example might be the words “link building
benefits,” where the URL points to a particular page of our site
that explains that topic. In this example the URL does not
necessarily have to have “link building benefits” in the URL to
be effective as long as page context is targeted for those
keywords.

The later of the two above is one of the most used types of
links from directories or resource-type sites who simply
describe the “landing page” with more intuitive text for the
user to understand the page’s contents.

3) Exact Anchor Text - this type of inbound link points to and
describes exactly what a page is about using specific targeted
keywords. An example of this linking method would be the anchor
text “content writing” which points to a specific page about
content writing and targets specific search terms. These types
of text links can be confused with name links mentioned above,
although they are more targeted and commonly used by webmasters
wanting to build ranking for particular terms and pages. Name
links happen more randomly, making them seem more natural to
search engines.

The second are of inbound links include the locations in which
links are acquired. There are many types of locations for links
to be effective, but I’ll keep the list to just a few of the
more common areas.

1) Contextual Linking - links in this category are simply links
within any body of context or paragraph/sentence where the link
appears. This type of link is perhaps the most beneficial since
search engines have the ability to understand context wrapping
around the text link, thus weighing it more heavily as a
resource or authority.

2) Directory Links - simply achieved by the “title” field that
almost every directory asks for when submitting your URL, these
types of links appear on categorized pages and often include a
simple anchor text with a description after it. Directory links
can be beneficial for your web site if understood and used
properly. Often, search engines do not give much emphasis on
directory submissions alone and some directory submissions
within certain directories can be ignored almost completely by
the big three - Google, MSN, and Yahoo.

3) Site Wide Links or Run of Site (ROS) - These links were used
by many webmasters and companies a year or two ago and are still
used today. The effectiveness of these links are less weighted
because search engines now understand that, let’s say, link to
site “widgetmaker.com” appears on every page on the right-hand
side in the navigation area, thus saturating its effectiveness.
Many of these types of links can be beneficial for direct
traffic if placed well, but will often only be counted once or
twice rather than dozens or hundreds of times no matter how many
times they occur on a web site.

For a successful link marketing campaign, the more natural
looking means better results in the search engines.
Understanding the differences between the different types listed
above can be a real advantage since almost every site that ranks
well, and ranks well for long-term, includes a mixture of all of
the above mentioned linking methods.

This means directory submissions using varying anchor text to
different pages of your web site, links within the context of
other related pages, like articles or blog entries, and using a
variety of anchor text to give more weight for particular pages
in the search engines.

We find that the most successful link building campaigns include
targeting main keywords first, for example, “Internet marketing”
first then more concise keyword related to that term like North
Carolina Internet marketing.” This is more like a funnel effect,
giving weight to lesser searched terms related to the main
phrase targeted.

User Interface Design: Key to Achieve Best Web Development

From early days of www, the Internet sites that are added day by day are increasing tremendously. When you will consider this pool of web, may be they are about computers, industry, entertainment, search engines, fashion, organizational or even individual, all of these sites are concerned about one major part of web development apart from the logic or programming efforts behind it is ‘User Interface Design’.

Any web site will gain your interest by its appearance in front of you as well as ease of using and understanding the contents in that particular page. Therefore many of the web developers out there are always trying to go for the best user interface design which must also be affordable, can be either done by the developer firm or by web developer individual himself or he have to outsource the site for user interface creation.

The main stages in the creation of the user interface can be roughly listed as follows:

1. Note down all the aspects of your web site,

2. Try to list items as per their priority on the web page as well as consider their categorization.

3. From this list highlight points that are required to be catchy (e.g. in most of the general web site the Chat / Mail / News are considered to be the most catchy points whereas on the online shopping site the special offers and hot selling items may be the most catchy points).

4. Then decide the color combination of your interface (As per my point of view this is the most crucial part which many of them out there do not take into consideration which results in to a web site which is nothing but a site full of color in fact site looking like a circus! (You can understand what I want to say). So if you are rally very careful about the richness of the user interface then you should not fail to consider this point.

5. Once you have decided the color combination you have already won half the battle. Now you have to draw a picture of how your web page will look like finally, where on the web page I will place the catchy points I have listed previously, what will be common between the web pages (A date and time may be there from home page to the last page of your web site).

6. Finalize placing of all the remaining points in the list prepared by you.

7. If required repeat the steps for all the succeeding pages in your web site.

8. Then and only then go for designing of the web pages using various tools.

You may take help of various image-editing softwares like Adobe Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, even normal paintbrush for giving effect to the various images, backgrounds used in the page design. You can also embody various animations in your web page to give it a nice touch. You can try Macromedia Flash, GIF Animator or Animationshop for the same.

Some important tips-n-tricks of making your web page look catchier than ever will be discussed in my next articles.

Remember more effective and easier user interface - more the number of visitor (or even customer) who will specially halt at your site to check it out.

Nikhil R. Salvi
B.E.Computer Engg.
India

How to Promote Your Law Firm Website On the Internet for Maximum Profit

Making maximum profit from your law firm website is important, but as a lawyer you might not have any clue about search engine optimization and Internet marketing for your legal site. However, it is not so difficult to poise your website to be successful online even if you are not experienced with Internet marketing and driving website traffic. All you have to do is review the following tips and include them in your website marketing plan. Before you know it you will notice that your website counter is recording more hits per day and telling you that your directories, keywords, and links are working.

Tip #1 - Submitting to Law Directories

Take some time online to orient yourself with the myriad of law directories available. Register your domain name and the type of law you practice with as many law directories as you possibly can. By doing this, people searching through law directories for a lawyer will have your website as a choice when making their decision on which attorney to hire. As a result, your website should be as comprehensive as possible with every bit of information related to your niche available to visitors. Many people use directories now instead of the yellow pages so when you list your site with these directories, you’ll get targeted traffic to your website and ultimately more clients.

Tip #2 - Optimizing for Specific Keywords

Nobody knows what the search engines will be looking for in the future, but right now keywords play a critical role in the ultimate ranking your site receives. When individuals search for specific words online, search engines give them pages that are optimized for those keywords. Because of this fact, you should be sure to include your industry specific keywords as well as location and the specific type of law you practice. By doing so, you will get more targeted traffic because your web pages will rank well for the keyword phrases your potential clients are using to search the internet.

Tip #3 - Incoming Links

Like keywords, incoming links are the other major consideration search engines use when ranking your site. Regardless of whether you get other websites to link to you or use auction sites like eBay to auction off your services and include links in the text, when you have more links you will have a better result with clickthrough traffic and also the search engines. Better search engine results means you will have more traffic and more sales. It is certainly worthwhile to put some effort into building links.

Include these three tactics into your law firm’s Internet marketing strategy and you’ll be surprised at how quickly they will work for you in generating more traffic and more clients. It is also important to keep in mind that you should regularly update your website, check your links, monitor your keyword positioning, and build your directory listings.

Michael Turner reveals his foolproof way to increase website traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it free right now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

Know this before you start a business web design!

Web design for an online business is serious business. No matter how important and unique your product or service is, what keeps a customer on a website is the web design, what makes customers buy is the ease of the process.

Probably you already know that designing a business website is not like designing a personal website that only your friends and family will see. Since your target from a business website is customers who are going to pay you money, your web design for an online business must be appealing and convincing that you are worth paying.

Web design for an online business says a lot about the business and its owners. It’s important to present a professional image; otherwise you will end up handing customers to your competitors even if you have better products and services.

Amateurish web design shines a bad light on a professional business. If your web design looks amateurish, people will think you’re an amateur. Of course, that may be an inaccurate assumption, but it is the reality of the way things are. A professional image makes people more comfortable, and more likely to use your product or service.

Good web design includes pages that are easy to navigate, and that are pleasing to the eye. Think of a few of your favorite websites, visit them and browse them thoroughly. Take notes of why you like them. Keep the list handy when you’re ready to design your own business website. Also keep in mind why visitors will be visiting your site.

In designing a business web site you will have to think like a customer. If this does not make sense to you, browse similar business websites and consider the things that are keeping you on the website for a longer time. Also take notes about the things that are encouraging you to leave the website you are visiting and to look for your required service or product elsewhere. Your target should be to keep your customer at your website the longest time for a simple reason, if this visit to your site did not translate into a sale, his comfortable stay will introduce him to other products that will be in the back of his mind and will come back to get it when he needs it.

A handy peace of information to keep in mind is that websites attract visitors because they’re seeking information. Maybe they want to purchase an item or service that you offer, so do not spare any effort to give a detailed, nicely arranged and easy accessible information about every product or service that you offer. Good web design insures that visitors will have an easy time finding the information they need. You only have a split of a second to retain visitors, so make the most of that time.

The main page should get to the point. Flash intro pages look nice, and show that you’re current on technology. But Flash intro pages annoy many people, and cause them to click away from your site without going further. If you must have a Flash intro, at least include the option to skip it. Other than that, when you are in the phase of search engine optimization, you are going to have a hard time optimizing flash websites.

Furthermore, good web design also takes into account some people use dial-up services. Successful web design means the page is available to everyone, not just those with broadband or cable connections. If possible, keep graphics and special effects to a minimum. Overloading a page with too many extras looks amateurish, and makes the page load slowly.

Successful web design can make or break your business. Create a site that is appealing and easy to navigate, and your visitors will be glad they found it, happy to revisit and recommend.

Hassan Sayed
Webmaster at http://www.zeronese.net a place for web masters to find everything needed for a website. Web design, web templates, web hosting, articles directory and more…

Hassan Sayed
Webmaster at www.zeronese.net Web design, web templates, web hosting, articles directory and more…