Tips Guides Resources

In “Part One” we discussed some of the more basic Google search techniques. (If you missed it you can find it here: http://spyware.pcwash.com/articles_1.html
As promised, here’s the “juicier stuff”.

Google has some advanced search options which come in quite handy, depending on what items you may be searching.

TITLE SEARCH: Allows you to search for pages and sites that have specific words or phrases in their title. For example:

intitle: “spyware removal”

This search would only give you results of sites that have that particular phrase in their title.

SITE SEARCH: Gives you the opportunity to search pages ONLY within a specific site or domain (or using the “negative” results technique from Part One you can “exclude” results from a specific domain or site as well). For example:

“spyware remover” site:spyware.pcwash.com

This search would only provide results for the phrase “spyware remover” from the site: spyware.pcwash.com

URL SEARCHES: Allows you to search for pages or sites that have a specific word or phrase in their URL. For example:

inurl: “spyware removal”

This search would only give you a list of sites that have the exact phrase “spyware removal” in their URL.

To do a real power search, try combining a couple of the above techniques into one search like:

intitle: “spyware removal” -site: ebay.com

This search would give you results for your selected phrase, found in a tile, but not on ebay.com Neat, huh?

RELATED SEARCHES: Let’s say you want to search for sites (competitors ? ) to a specific site. Once again we’ll use our own site as an example: related: spyware.pcwash.com

This search will show sites that have related content and subject matter to the site which you typed into after “related:”

GOOGLE LIMITS: Google does have some limits and one of those is the actually number of keywords you can search on at the same time. That limit is (10). Type in anymore than (10) keywords and the subsequent words will not be included in your search and thus, are irrelevant.

Common words are ignored by Google such as: “a, about, an, and, are, as at, be, by, from, how, I, in, is, it, of, on, or, that, the this, to, we, what, when, where, which, with”.

You can override this limitation by putting a plus sign ( + ) in front of any of the above words when using them in a search phrase.

WILDCARDS: A wildcard search uses the asterisk sign ( * ) (the one above the #8 on your keyboard) to represent other non-specific characters or words. For example: “anti-spyware *” would turn up results for:

anti-spyware program
anti-spyware software
anti-spyware apps
(and a few more).

You can use the wildcard symbol ( * ) and override the Google keyword limit and actually search for MORE than (10) keywords at a time because the ( * ) is not counted as a word.

Now, go practice on Google using these advanced tips and meet us back here next time for Part Three when we offer tips about some MORE “advanced” and “juicier” features you can use to get the most out of your searches on the world’s most frequently used search engine: Google.com

When not on his soapbox, Andrew Wroblewski is doing battle with the thousands of spyware programs that can affect you via his anti-spyware and spyware removalwebsite: http://spyware.pcwash.com where you can get a FREE spyware scan of your computer system.

The popularity of your website can be directly correlated to the number of sites linking to you. In fact, search engines like Google have been built on the concept of link popularity. To win on the Internet, your website not only needs to be seen as popular, but also garner top search engine results for your identified search terms. In-bound links to your website tell the search engines what they will find when visiting your site.

So now that we’ve established the importance of inbound links, you should be asking yourself, “How do I get them?” and “Which links are valuable?”. Focus on acquiring in-bound links that are from sites offering related content to your own website and that have an established Google PR. Sites from unrelated sites without a Google Page Rank do not provide any benefit.

Inbound links can be acquired in a number of ways. Here are the 7 most popular link strategies you can start using today:

1. Directory Submission. The web has hundreds, if not thousands of link directories. Search for the most popular directories and submit your site. Beware, some directories charge for submitting your link but offer very little value in return. If you are going to pay for a link submission, make sure the site has a high Google PR and garners a lot of traffic.

2. Reciprocal Linking. Exchange links with other popular sites to increase the number of inbound links you receive. There is a good deal of debate in Internet circles today about the validity of reciprocal linking strategies. As long as the link you are receiving is of equal or greater quality to the link your giving, than the concept of reciprocal linking is still valid.

3. Article Submission. Create quality content and distribute it across the web. There are many article directories that offer content to webmasters and allow for mass distribution. The benefit of article submission is that when you submit your article you include and “About the Author” section. This area of your article is posted each time your article appears on a distributed website automatically building links back to your site. The more valuable the article, the more distribution you receive.

4. Social Posting Tools. We all know the power of social networks. Use tools like SocialPoster and others whereby you register and submit your site or article to social networks. The benefit of posting to these sites is that others may recognize and acknowledge your submission, resulting in higher placement. With higher placement comes more links and more link popularity.

5. Gadgets. Develop something worth linking to. Many websites offer free tools that are valuable because they solve a problem. A great example of this is a widget that allows you to find out the Google PR of any site. There are dozens or hundreds of websites that offer this type of tool and users provide links to those sites. Again, find something of value and let others know about it.

6. Press Releases. Have some news to share? A new product? A website launch or perhaps the results of your latest online survey. Visit sites like PRweb and find a distribution option for you. Press releases are pushed out to hundreds if not thousands of site that might run your release. Of course, make sure that you imbed a link back to your website.

7. Blogging. If you have your own blog or post comments on someone else’s blog, don’t be afraid to mention something of value relating to your site. Perhaps you can point to a Gadget your offer, free services, or an ebook you’re offering. Blogging is a powerful tool and easy to implement. If you don’t have a blog, start one. You can have your own blog in just a few minutes with today’s online providers like Blogger or WordPress.

No matter what strategy you use to improve your link popularity, one thing’s for sure. Developing in-bound links to your website is a critical step in achieving website popularity. As your popularity grows, so does your search engine result placement and traffic.

Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert with more than 12 years of marketing experience. He has appeared on major media including the TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and more. Visit the Marketing Blog for more marketing tips.

Here are some easy ways to communicate your message effectively.

Communicate Your Message with Words - Words communicate ideas. They are necessary to describe your products/services and their benefits. To be effective, your message must be focused and appropriate for your target audience. Don’t try to sell to everyone. If you target the wrong audience, they won’t buy. Tell your visitors what’s in it for them by telling them how they will benefit from your products or service. It’s also important to speak your audience’s language.

Keep your text readable. if your information is hard to read, or you take too long to express your points, your visitors will lose interest and go elsewhere.

Long sales copy is okay as long as it’s interesting and easy to read and provides benefits to your audience. Here’s how you keep your pages easy to read.

Today, companies providing services on the web need to cater for the whole spectrum of services available. The process of having a professional web site starts from designing your site to hosting, supporting and marketing it.

Many web companies still specialize in particular areas of web services. Some offer web design and development, others just hosting and others are purely concentrated on search engine optimization and internet marketing. Without doubt, a web company that can offer all these services without having to switch between different providers for different aspects of the whole process has an advantage.

But what are the main essentials of a web site package and what should it include? First, there need to be different web site packages which can tailor for various business needs. A web site for a sole trader or an artist will definitely require different specifications from that of a large organization.

Here are some processes which definitely need to form part of a web site package:

Feasibility Study
Before designing or even developing a web site, the client’s requirements need to be absorbed and understood. A plan needs to be written down on how the site is going to look, feel, and most importantly, what needs to be achieved. This study can serve as the basis for the design and development stage.

Design and Development
The web site needs to be designed based on the client’s requirements. Once this is done, the client needs to be satisfied with what the end result is going to look like before development commences. The actual development will depend on the nature of the site and the technology needed. The obvious characteristics that define the development stage depend on whether Flash technology is required and whether the site needs to hold static data or dynamic content.

Testing and Client Approval
Before going live, the client needs to be fully satisfied with the site and make sure it respects the business they are conducting. It also needs to clearly transmit the nature of the business or services provided, or in some cases, the information available, in other words, the scope of the site needs to be fully understood.

Implementation and Hosting
The site needs to reside on a hosting server to be available on the internet. The server needs to give access to the administrator of the site to modify it whenever necessary and needs to provide substantial bandwidth paired with maximum performance.

Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing
Hopefully, the site would have been developed in such a way to provide the right guidelines for search engines to understand what the site is all about when they index it. If paid advertising is not an option, search engine optimization is crucial for the success of a web site and this is a definite must for a web site package to have. Web marketing and exposure comes next. This is normally done through articles related to the site and links pointing to it from other web sites.

Support
Whatever happens after the site is online cannot be left to chance. A web site package needs to include a minimum time for maintenance and support. This time is used for the client to get accustomed to the site, make some changes, if necessary, and have the guarantee that if anything had to go wrong in the first few days or months, the supporting company is there to help and resolve issues straight away.

A web site package is the way forward, especially if one is new to the internet and is easily confused with all that is available online today. One person or company that can take care of all your web site requirements is definitely going to reduce the hassle and headache which normally people go through when several web services are required.

Sandro Azzopardi has over 20 years experience in IT. He specializes in Web Design, Development, Support, Hosting and Internet Marketing on http://www.cbswebpack.com/packages.html

It used to take me 10 minutes to design a web site. When I began designing web sites back in 1996, the process was very simple. I would ask the person who had requested the web site to put all of their content into a Microsoft Word file and email it to me. I would copy and paste that content into FrontPage or a text editor, insert some HTML tags to create the layout, add some graphics for style and I was finished.

Wireless technology put the kibosh on my plan to make a decent living working 30 minutes per day for the rest of my life. Beginning in 1998 or 1999, every wireless electronic gadget under the sun now came equipped with full access to the internet and email. Web browsers and email client software were installed on laptops, palm tops, cell phones, and computer screens in automobiles, to name a few.

The platforms and web browsers being used on wireless products are different from an ordinary desktop PC. These new systems are not fully compatible with many elements of the HTML programming language. As a result, websites created exclusively with HTML are often invisible or inaccessible to the wireless user.

The programming community responded by creating cross-platform compatible languages and specifications for creating web sites so that all sites could be viewed equally, or at least close to equally, on all web browsers. A language called XML was created to define data without telling the browser how to display it. HTML forced the browser to display data a certain way. XML defined data without telling the browser how to display it because XML was a simple text file. Thus, data created with XML could be viewed on any machine, computer, or browser. Then, specifications such as XHTML and XSL were developed in order to turn XML files into web pages that had style and structure, and more importantly, could be viewed and interpreted across all platforms, wireless or not.

Now that you understand how and why web design has changed, you are ready to learn about the main topic of this article, XML Schema. XML Schema is a specification that enables a programmer to describe the structure of an XML document. Programmers used to rely on Document Type Definition (DTD) to structure their XML documents, but XML Schema is now seen as the permanent replacement for DTD.

XML Schema was initially introduced by Microsoft, and was later endorsed and adopted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3). XML Schemas ensure that data can be communicated in a format that is universal. For example, different countries use different formats to display the date. Some countries put the month first, others put the day first, and some put the year first. The XML Schema for date requires that all dates be in YYYY-MM-DD format. Thus, everyone viewing XML data knows what the data is because they know it is written in XML Schema.

XML Schema has a lot of built-in data types for defining data. To define data, XML Schema uses attributes. XML Schema attributes are somewhat similar to HTML attributes in that they are included within a tag, and the attribute further defines the tag. With HTML, an image tag would have a source attribute to provide the name of the file that contains the image to be displayed. Another example of an HTML attribute would be an alignment attribute within a paragraph tag that stipulates whether the paragraph should be aligned to the left or right. Examples of XML Schema attributes for describing data are string, decimal, boolean, integer, date, and time.

One of the most important features of XML Schema is that it is replete with many different built-in restrictions that can be imposed on all data so that data is consistently displayed a certain way or presented in a certain format. Using XML Schema restrictions, a programmer can impose limits on upper or lower bounds for ranges of numbers, the length of numbers or the length of lists of items, and XML Schemas can even be used to define how white space is handled (tabs, line feeds, etc.).

XML Schema and XML programming are not easy to learn. You might want to start by searching for some basic online tutorials, but if web design is your full-time profession, you should instead enroll in some courses offline at a local college or computer programming institute. If you do not make use of versatile languages such as XML, XSL, and XHTML, your website might be invisible to those who surf the web on wireless devices, and you might be putting your career as a web designer in jeopardy.

Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make email forms.

In creating a website designed to sell a product or service, there exist two vitally important, and mutually dependent factors that will either serve to make, or break, your sales pitch. The first of these, as you probably know, is your copywriting skill. Without professional, persuasive copy, your project simply won’t get an inch off the ground.

But while copy is the number one ingredient to a successful sales website, the second factor: the aesthetic factor, runs a close second. Simply put, if you have compelling copy and an ugly or visually distracting website, your whole business is going to suffer, and suffer big time! It stands to reason that the best option for you and your online business, is to harmonize the copy into the visual design so one supports the other, and vice versa. Some key pointers are provided here to assist you in doing just that.

We are going to be looking at three essential visual features of web page design for your sales letters: 1. Use of color, 2. Choice of font, and 3. Layout.

1. Use of color

Be sure to take into account effective use of color while designing your website. This rates as highly important because people subconsciously relate different emotions to different colors. We don’t use phrases such as ‘to see red’ without good reason.

But the bottom line is this: you really can make your product or service more appealing by making a careful choice when it comes to color combinations on your sales site. Following you will find a basic guide:
Black and white looks very business like and exudes authority (however it can be hard to read if your site uses a lot of text, so do consider this factor too.)

Blue inspires trust and confidence.

Neutral shades such as browns and greens tend to put people at ease and make them feel more comfortable.

Reds can be highly effective for drawing attention to headings and other areas of your website you wish to make stand out and trigger action. However, they also can trigger subconscious warning messages, so be careful how you use them. Examine the most successful marketers websites, and see how and where they use red, as an example to follow.

A final point on the subject of color: Don’t make the pages hard or even impossible to read by using a dark coloured font on a dark background, or bright coloured font on light
background. You would be surprised how many designers do this, oblivious to the detriment it is having on their overall web-marketing success.

2. Choice of font

Resist the temptation to use that fancy new font you just downloaded because it will not necessarily be installed on everyone else’s computers. Putting-non standard fonts on your web page doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone will be able to see them. Their browsers will revert to a standard font, already installed, which can ruin your layout making your site, and consequently, your service or product, look instantly unprofessional and third-rate. Away clicks your potential customer, never to return!

The rule here is simple: Stick with the standard fonts that everybody already has such Arial, Courier or Times New Roman. Georgia has also become a popular choice on websites in recent months. However, if you want a fool-proof solution, use Verdana because it was specifically designed by Microsoft to be read via the computer screen comfortably. A final point on fonts: Remember to set the font size so it can be read easily on different monitors.

3. Layout

The final component we will look at here is a feature of layout - page width. In a nutshell, don’t make your visitor scroll left to right to read your page, because he or she will tire of it very quickly and leave! It smacks of amateurish design and probably worse, lack of sensitivity to the needs of the visitor. Avoid this by setting the page width to a maximum of 600 pixels, and you should have nothing to worry about.

Incorporate these features into your web design and you will be off to a good start, avoiding three of the basic errors that scream, ‘Amateur!’ on so many sites on the Web, and that drive visitors away before they even look at what you have to offer

Setting up a sales website can be a daunting task, especially for the beginner. For more information on how you can easily set up a highly professional and effective mini-site, visit www.minisitemadeeasy.com.