Finding Interesting Content For Your Website

A friend of mine recently announced he was going to create a website all about chocolate and yet he knows absolutely nothing about the subject...other than that he likes to eat it. So he told me he got some hershey chocolate recipes in the mail and was going to post those on the website along with affiliate links to chocolates for sale.He found information about the history of chocolate to put on there as well. So with very little forethought he was about to become a chocolate afficiando and well as chocolate merchantier.Of course he plans to put the appropriate color coordinated google banner on his site.I am looking forward to his foray into this new and exciting business enterprise in which he won't even get his fingers sticky. Who says you can't sell sticky sweets without knowing about them.I will keep you posted on how this new venture turns out.In the meantime if you are at a loss as to how to make money on the internet contact me as I and my friends are always choc full of great money making ideas.

How to Get more Traffic to your website

Another way I tell people to get more traffic to their website is to create a separate webpage that focuses on one keyword or a closely related set of keywords.
When you try to make your website cover too many subjects you don't do well on the search engines for any one subject. This is why you should focus single pages on one subject.For example let's say you are selling all kinds of motorcycle accessories...create one page devoted completely to motorcycle helmets-go into detail about the different brands of helmets,which helmets you recommend most or which ones you use yourself. I could site lots of examples for many different types of industries. For clothing-concentrate one page to be all about capri pants, who wears them, what they look good with, the type of weather to wear them in, where to wear them, etc.,. Try to stay positive in your writing-don't put down someone elses products-that is bad karma. If there is some product you don't like-just don't mention it.The more pages that the search engines have to index that are related to your site the better-so start building more webpages-one page for each keyword. It does take time for the search engines to index your site but it is better to have the pages ready ahead of time for when that time comes.

Making Money with your Website

Another way that you can make money with your website is to put Google Adsense banners on the bottom. If you visit my site http://www.a1aweb.com you can see where I put a banner on the very bottom. When someone clicks thru an ad on this banner I get a tiny percentage of whatever that advertiser offered to pay for impressions and click thrus. You can see how many impressions of a banner shows up on your site and how many people clicked thru it in your google adsense account. The google banner is able to tell what your site is about and provide ads that pertain to the subject of your site. Of course you may end up providing advertising for your competition that way but I feel that your site is more apt to get crawled more often and thus indexed by google more often when you have the adsense banners on it. The reason for this is that the banners are another way of providing fresh related content to your site-similar to a news feed. You can also make more money off your google banners if you place on the tops of your pages. If you do website design you could offer free or discounted hosting in return for your customer allowing you to put google banners at the top or bottom of their webpages.

Earning Money on your website

I had a customer as me how he could make more money off of his Racecar website. Well the first thing I would say to try to make money off your website would be to sell something.
If you are already signed up for paypal you can create a paypal button to put next to the item you have advertised in order to take credit cards for whatever you want to sell.
If you don't have anything of your own to sell then you can sell other peoples stuff by signing up for commission junction at cj.com after you are signed up you can then do a search for anything that has to do with racing and sell that.
Sign up is free...everthing is free as they pay you for selling their merchants products.You get an average of about 5-8% per sale.
You place the links on your website and when someone clicks thru and buys something they take their credit card, fill the order and then credit your cj.com w.a percentage of the sale.No keeping inventory, no taking credit cards, no filling orders and none of the expenses involved in doing that...they do everything.
To see an example of some sites I have with cj.com product links goto:
Florida Arabians and
Starfire Express then
click on catalog to see the products I got off of commission junction that I sell on those websites.
To see commission junction products you must sign up first at:
https://signup.cj.com/member/publisherSignUp.do

Can Prices be Too Low?

It always amazes me when I get emails from people saying my prices are too low for website design....are they the price police...or are they just upset that I am undercutting their prices...is that a crime?
One time I got an email from a lady saying I was selling my Boston Terriers for too much money that she didn't charge that much...I told her I was getting what I was asking and she was upset by this. How strange.You can charge whatever you want for whatever merchandise you sell on the internet...where do these people get off saying things like your prices are too low or too high for anything...do they think that saying that will change something for them?
I mean if they feel prices are too high-then just ask for a discount-or give, at the very least, some reason why they feel that way. If you feel my prices are too low on my emeralds website then let me know why you feel that way? You can't expect things to change for you if you don't give a reason why they should be changed.
If after trying everything you can on your website to make sales and you still can't make them then maybe your prices are too high...try cutting them at little at a time on a few items and see if that brings forth some action.Check your competition to see what they charge...you are competeing with everyone in the same industry online so you have to price competitively.

Selling Online

I had an interesting conversation with a doctor yesterday that wanted to sell his emeralds online.
He had seen my Fine Cut Emerald site and I advertise on there that I can add other gem dealers pages to the site to help them sell their own merchandise. I do this in trade for a gem or two....since they have to send me pictures of what they have I get to see their whole inventory and what they value the stones at so I can get a good pick of one that I like. I like helping people to make money and adding other peoples inventory to my site only helps to enhance the site from my point of view. The more inventory you give people to look at the better. I also plan on adding information about these new types of emeralds that will be from Brazil versus mine which are from Zambia Africa. If anyone out there would like to sell their loose stones either rough or cut look at my Emerald website and think about getting on there as I already get over 100 hits a day so the more I give my customers to look at the better.

Providing Quality Link Exchanges for your Website

My feelings are that to give your front page a better page rank you should place all your link exchanges on the bottom of the front page.

Reciprocal Linking

A Reciprocal link is where two website owners exchange links. I put a link from my site to you yours and you do the same for me in return.
That's why it is called a Link "Exchange.

When a savvy website owner finds your site and they see a that you are trading links
with other website owners, they are very likely to contact you immediately and
request an exchange.

Meaning, you are likely to see MANY more requests for a link exchange than you
are to see folks linking to your site because of a "Link to Us" page. Most
web masters will not even bother trying to exchange links with a site than
doesn't already have a quality links page.

It's all about the numbers. You can get more links faster if you have a quality
link exchange page.

But, if you can quickly acquire incoming links by trading links with other web
masters -by all means do it.

Are there any downsides to Trading Links?

Not really. But, it will take time. Meaning, every time you get a Link Exchange
Request, you need to actually publish the link to the Web Master's site that your
trading with to your Links Page.

If you decide to create a separate page just for links to make sure your links page receives some of your site's Google Page Rank get that page crawled and indexed. In fact, your main links page should have a link directly from the home page. Some Webmasters try to bury their links pages inside their site where people can't find it.

They think they're not "giving up" valuable PageRank that way, but what they're
really giving up is valuable link partners who won't trade links with them and
their cheesy tactics.

Finally, on your Link Exchange page, make sure that you are controlling how
the other web masters are linking to you. You can go so far as to provide the
HTML code of the link that you want them to use right on your Link Exchange Page.

Reciprocal Linking is the basis for the web. Such linking creates the structure
of the Internet. Not only can it provide a powerful tool for Search Engine
Optimization, it can also provide qualified traffic if the sites that link to you have a genuine interest in your site's industry.

Add New Content To your Website Each Week

What would happen if you got a newspaper delivered to your door step every day and it contained the same news, just with a different date? You'd stop getting that paper delivered, right?
So, if you think that a Search Engine Spider is going to crawl your site over and over again when the content remains the same - guess again. Now - let's be clear. A Search Engine Spider can find your site a variety of different ways. Often, it visits your site regularly once it has a copy of it in its own index, but it can also find your site by following links from other sites to you, that's why link exchanges are so important. Now, once you stop getting new links to your site, what is the incentive to have your site crawled? Fresh Content. You see, if Google visits your site over a period of time and sees that your site's content has changed, it makes a note to visit your site more often so that it can re-index that new content and make it available in its Search Engine. There's some speculation as to how much content has to change, but the popular consensus is that you need to have 1,000 bytes of information different on your page for Google to register it as a "Change of Content." This usually equates to a few hundred words. Why do we want Google to crawl out site often? Lots of reasons - let's look at them all.
1) When your site is new, when Google visits your site, it usually only crawls the first few pages and indexes only the home page. So, by causing Google to revisit your site often, it will crawl deeper each time. Before you know it, your entire site will be in the Search Engine Index. (Either way, Google will eventually get around to your entire site - if you followed the advice in Lesson#1 and made sure that every page of your site is spiderable. But if Google knows your site is updated often, our friend the Googlebot will return more often.
2) When you're experimenting with your On Page and Off Page Optimization Factors,you want to see the results of your changes quickly. If you have the Googlebot visiting your site more often, it's possible that you can see the results of your changes between the major updates faster.
3) Customers like new content! You want repeat customers? Give your customers an excuse to visit your site! Provide them with information that changes often enough so that they return just to see "what's up." Sometimes the "popular" Search engine optimization advice is ok too - the common advice to "write lots of good content" actually can make a positive difference - as long as you build all the additional content pages correctly. In many cases, if you're close to your industry, you'll be able to provide this fresh content easily enough. But if you're not, you can always utilize Syndicated Content to freshen the content on your own site. Here's what I mean. There are a lot of industry specific news sources on the internet that welcome the Syndication of their Content on other sites. Basically, they want you to put their content on your site! You can do this manually, or you can put an RSS News(Real Simple Syndication) feed on your site that will automatically update your site with new content from aspecific industry every time new content is available. How 'bout that?! Whatever you do to generate the new content, the fact of the matter is that changing the content on your site, especially when it's new to the search engines, can go a long way to getting your site indexed quickly and thoroughly.If you want me to put an RSS news feed on your site go to A1AWEB and email or call me about it.

Search Engine Optimization with Content

If you want to dominate a category that contains dozens or hundreds of profitable
keywords or products, you're going to need multiple pages on your site each
targeting a different keyword from your category.

I'm going to group these additional pages into one lump term - I will call them "Content Pages."

Now a content page can be a product page from your eCommerce Store, a Newsletter,
a Review of a Product, a Recommendation for an Affiliate Product, a Listing of
Related web sites or Directories of useful resources - whatever.

The point is each one of these pages is another opportunity for it to rank.

So, you need to take care about structuring these pages so that they target the
keywords that you've found to be in demand.

If you're an eCommerce store owner selling Truck Accessories, make sure you know
exactly how people are searching for those truck accessories in the Search
Engines. Then, take each one of your product pages that relates to those
keywords and optimize it for those search phrases.

If you're an Affiliate Marketer recommending Consumer Electronics, make sure that
you're recommending those products on separate review type pages. Meaning, if
you're recommending a Plasma Television, make sure that you have a few different
pages each recommending a different popular make and model number.

And make sure that those pages are optimized correctly for the most relevant and
in-demand search terms.
If you're selling an information product with a variety of uses in a single
industry, write as many article pages that you have search terms for. Each
article page should be optimized for one or two closely related search terms, and
they should all, in turn, lead to your sales page.

And don't forget, you can trade articles not just links with other web site
owners. While your competitors are slowly trading just one link at a time, you
can blow by them by getting multiple links at once by providing quality content
in the form of articles to other web sites.

Remember that Google and Yahoo! rank pages - not sites. That's why you need to
think about maximizing your content, whatever it may be, in order to maximize
your chances for ranking.

Case in point: For my eccommerce store at Fine Cut Emeralds, I made sure that
each one of my product pages was optimized for the list of keywords that I knew
people were searching for.

So, in addition to optimizing my home page for "loose emeralds," I also optimized
my internal pages for terms like "emerald rings," "emerald gemstones,"
"emerald jewelry," etc.

No, you don't need a lot of content if you don't need to rank for more than a few
keywords. But if you want to dominate an industry or category, you need to have
at least one page of content for every keyword you want ranking for.