When the average web surfer comes to a blog, the first thing they notice is whether or not the blog appears to look professional or not. If a blog appears to have an amateur look to it, then the first reaction is going to be that the content is amateurish as well. Most people have only so much time to surf the web and look for blogs to read and they are not going to want to waste their time on the most amateur looking blogs. So the first step in making your blog have credibility is by making sure its design and overall appearance are professional, crisp, and clean.

One of the key things that goes into making a blog a success is that it promotes a feeling of community. Blogs allow the authors to publish their content and then allow the readers to submit comments in reply to that content. Soon other readers can comment too and they can direct their comments to either the original author or the other commenters, forming a kind of ongoing dialog. Humans do exhibit some herding mentality at different times in their lives. When most readers come to a blog that has no comments on it, they assume the content isn’t that great otherwise other readers would’ve commented on it already before them. Blog owners can increase the amount of commenters they get, thus increasing their blog’s credibility, by encouraging comments like asking for others opinions or running blog contests where the winner must comment on a post to enter.

The final factor that impacts whether readers will do their part in making a blog successful is if the blog they are visiting has quality content that is well written. Readers will only come back to a blog time and time again if they are either learning something new or being entertained each time, and the only way they will assume the author is educated and knowledgable in what they are writing is if there are no grammatical or spelling errors. If the reader is not getting value by going to the blog they will not return. Also, if the reader thinks that the writer lacks basic writing skills, they are going to lose faith in how smart they think the writer is. Even if there is quality information posted on the blog, if it is not well written then it will not appear to be credible.

When it comes right down to it if a blog looks professional, if it contains well written quality content that people want or need, and if it looks like others are reading and commenting on the blog showing that they are finding value in what is being posted, then your blog will indeed have a truly credible look to it. Only with this credible appearance will your blog reach the heights and goals that you have for it.

A great writing strategy when you are writing for multiple blogs is to write ahead of time. While some people find it time consuming and difficult to switch from one topic to the next while writing for multiple blogs, a successful strategy might be to concentrate on just one blog each day. For example, start writing for blog number one on Monday. During the course of the day you can explore different aspects of the niche or subject you are writing about and hopefully come up with four or five good posts. When Tuesday comes, start writing for blog number two in virtually the same way. When Wednesday comes, follow the same process and do the same for Thursday and Friday depending on how many blogs you have.

While you are doing this, you are accumulating blog posts that can be published at future dates. Yours might be the type of blog that gets updated daily or maybe three or four days a week, if that is the case then you have your posts already written. Now you can either keep them saved in a file on your computer and copy and paste them in each day, or if you are using Wordpress there is another option. When using Wordpress, you can save the posts as you write them and change the post date and time so that it will just appear on the day and time you want it to. Using this method, you could write a months worth of posts, changing the posts dates so that they will come out naturally over the course of the next thirty days. You could essentially take a vacation and no one reading your blog would be any wiser.

Writing for multiple blogs is a sometimes daunting task. But using time delayed posts and pre-written content can make it a lot easier as well as more efficient. In doing so you can multiply the amount of money you make with each new blog you start and monetize. In the end whatever method works best for you will work best for your blogs.

This article will focus on the Amazon affiliate program, which is, for my money, the easiest one out there for new webmasters to use.  It covers all the basics, from deciding to become an affiliate to signing up to the most strategic placing for your affiliate links.

So who should become an affiliate?  Well, obviously, your site has to be in line with Amazon’s affiliate requirements.  If you’re an adult porn site, you needn’t bother applying.  But outside of that caveat, the appropriate sites for an Amazon affiliate program are pretty broad.  Is there any chance that visitors to your site might be interested in books, music, DVDs, clothing, jewelry, or anything else that Amazon provides?  If the answer is yes—and it probably will be, since Amazon sells a lot of stuff—then you may want to consider joining Amazon as an affiliate.

Amazon’s signup page is simplicity in digital form. Read the terms of service very carefully, so you don’t accidentally do anything illegal or get kicked off the program once you do get in.  But, ToS aside, signing up is as simple as filling out their online form, then waiting until they review your site and get back to you.

As you’re filling out the form, on a separate piece of paper, jot down the questions and your answers.  (If the screen shot function works on your computer, you can also use this feature.  Make sure you get the screen once you scroll down, as well.)  Keep this in a safe place, a filing cabinet or a safebox.  Especially keep track of the email and password you used to sign up.  Nothing is more embarrassing than forgetting how to get into your affiliate program.

Once your site has been approved and you can access your account, you’ll want to start building links (with Amazon’s program, this is easier than it sounds, trust me).  Take a few minutes to look around your project page.  Familiarize yourself with the location of your reports (scroll down), the links in the top left, and the general layout of the account.

At the top of the page on the left-hand side, you should see several links and sublinks, including one which says “Build Links”.  By following this link, you will find six different kinds of links, including a search box link.  You can “play around” a little bit and practice building links.  When you find a link you like, copy and paste the code they provide to your website.  From their end, it’s as easy as that.

Which brings us to another aspect of affiliate marketing: your website.  What sort of links should you choose?  Where should you place them?  Should you be specific, recommending one particular book per link, or general, linking to an entire section?

First, let’s talk about placement.  In the case of the image links (whether banner links, search box, or other), they need to be placed where people can see them.  The left-hand side of the page is going to be the most visible for most visitors.  Because we read left to right, our eyes are naturally drawn to the left.  More people will see your link if you place it on the left-hand side of your site than on the right.

Strive for a clean, uncluttered look; don’t load the page down with advertisements.

Text links work best in context.  For example, say you have an article on your page about car engines.  At the end of the article, you might include a text link to a specific Amazon book, such as John Muir’s How to Keep Your Volkswagon Alive.  These links may actually be your most effective; you know what your visitors are interested in, and you have a book that is relevant to your subject.

Use a combination of image links and text links, to achieve the best results.  You don’t, for example, have to use each of the six kinds of links, but you should use at least two or three.  Recommend a balance of specific products and general areas.  A variety of links is your best bet.

Webmasters with very small sites may say, “But I only get ten or twenty visitors a week.  Is it really worth it to become an affiliate?”  The answer is a resounding Yes.  It doesn’t cost anything to join Amazon, and you can start putting the building blocks in place so that as your site traffic grows, you’ll already be an affiliate.

Don’t expect to get rich off an affiliate program, no matter how many visitors your site gets.  This isn’t a way to buy a cruise twice a year.  But it’s the gift that keeps on giving.  For a little up-front effort, you can get your affiliate links in place…and then do nothing!  The links do all the work for you.

Finally, have fun!  You’re recommending products you love and actually making money for it.  What could be better than that?

Whenever you update or add posts to your blog, you can ping to let services (designed specifically for connecting blogs.) know your blog content have changed since last update. This is like telling others that you have changed. It is seen that pinging increases traffic to your blog.

With Wordpress, checking for updates in your blog is done automatically and the changes are reflected usually by moving you blog links on top of bloggers blogroll list. This way you get more clicks to your blog.

If you want to increase more traffic to your blog, you can install additional pinging services. Its seen that pinging frequently increase traffic to your blog. Most of the blogging software comes with at leas one ping updates which pings every time you add a new post; but if you want to ping even if you edit your post to update it, you need to install additional plug-ins.

Wordpress bloggers can add additional update ping services by simply login to there account and adding more update services in their list present at the bottom of the sub-sub menu Writing tab under Option menu. A long list if services to be added can be found here at http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2004/11/21/a-list-of-rpc-and-rpc2-to-ping/ .

Besides pinging services, you will also need to submit your Rss feeds to various directories and search engines to increase traffic to your blog. One advanced tip (often missed) while making your Rss feeds is to carefully select keywords which are high on traffic but low in competition and use them in the text of the feeds. Also update your feeds more often to increase your chance of being found in the SERPs.

Nothing else can beat the power of adding keyword rich contents to your blog frequently. This has the major impact in attracting quality traffic to your website as more and more posts from your blog find their way into the search results. Usually it is seen that blogging frequency is most when you have newly installed your blog and after 2-3 months of blogging the frequency of blogging tends to decrease. So, it is the continual efforts that will get your blog the much-deserved traffic.

Happy Blogging!!

By Rakesh Ojha. Rakesh Ojha is a SEO specialist and Online Marketing Consultant with over 5 Years in SEM Industry. Contact him at rakesh@searchengineoptimization4u.com or visit his website at http://www.searchengineoptimization4u.com. Read latest SEM and SEO articles on his blog at http://semblog.searchengineoptimization4u.com

Major players include Google, Msn, Yahoo, Exact Seek etc.

Any good marketer focuses specifically on how to succeed at internet marketing through website design, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, submission, analytics, email, and branding programs. A very small investment in web site promotion and SEO will produce major revenue and profits for you. Either you can do it yourself, or hire SEO experts to do it for you; specialists tweak your web site in order to deliver more traffic, although you should not let just any web site solutions provider tell you they can give you search engine optimization.

Here is an interesting tool: http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php all you have to do is enter your website URL and hit enter. This tool will show you the list of most frequently used phrases and words along with keyword density. You can also check how your website ranks for each term by creating a position report. The Google toolbar is another good tool which will help you keep track of your website ranking.

I do my own SEO identifying the market and making my websites earn more money for me. Its a whole process that includes web design, web site planning, traffic analysis, and a range of other internet marketing methods. I always recommend ethical and effective methods, link popularity services, traffic building and search engine submission services to avoid getting a ban.

Web site promotion is achieved with effective optimization of your website for top listings in search engines. Find out which search engine optimization service is right for your Website or learn the tricks yourself. Its fun, its good income and can be easily achieved; however website design and search engine optimization is a very specialized area and most website design companies don’t know how to build in search engine optimization apart from tall claims, its best to hire the right services or do SEO yourself. If you do hire the services of an SEO company, carefully review with them exactly what website design, graphics, database programming, search engine optimization and hosting you need.

Give importance to website design, program code of the website, its structure within all levels of Search Engine Optimization and website promotion as a whole package to achieve the desired results, invaluable as an online internet marketing strategy.

The combination of natural search engine optimization and website design brings your company successful online marketing results. Internet marketing and SEO go hand in hand and are inter-related. An online marketing strategy without a search engine optimization component is doomed to fail. Precise, robust, and accountable search engine optimization, marketing and promotion are the vital elements for any online website business to succeed. SEO brings in FREE organic search engine quality traffic and without a proper SEO strategy your website just cannot be complete.

By Rohan Davare. Rohan Davare - Online website promotion expert, SEO specialist and Ex Asst Marketing Director for a well known NWM company, working online for close to 5 years now. Most of his income comes from Online Affiliate marketing. http://forex4riches.com

Some of the things you could do to get returning visitors are shown as follows:

1. Make sure that your website gets new content displayed on it on a daily basis. This gives a reason for your visitors to return to your site.

2. Making your site very entertaining is important. This can be done by adding sticky content to your website, or a bit of humor here and there, just so that your visitor gets entertained and it is then more likely to make your visitors want to come back to your website. Although entertainment is good, it also needs to be updated on a daily basis. For example, the games at: http://games.simplysearch4it.com is being updated on a daily basis. This means that at least one new game is being added every day. This gives a reason for the visitors to return to the site.

The more times your individual visitors return back to your site the more they will start to get use to it and what it has to offer. This is very good. This will mean that they will more likely get to know your brand and also your websites image. The more they visit your site the more they most probably like it and the higher the chance of them telling their friends.

3. Adding a forums or a place where people can hang out to your website is another good way of giving people a reason to come back to your site. This is one of the reasons why sites like MySpace and a lot of forums get returning visitors. This is because people like to meet other people and have a place online to hang out and chat, plus share things with new people and existing friends, plus they also like to learn new things.

4. Making your site so people can easily navigate it is very important. If your visitors can easily find things on your site then they are more likely to return, as people dont want to be searching for something on the Web for hours. They want to go to a site and find what they are looking for in a few seconds. The quicker they can find something on your site the better.

5. The speed that your site loads up to the visitor is very important. Visitors are on the move all the time and dont want to wait for a site to load up if it takes rather long. So the quicker you can make your sites pages load up, the more chance your visitor will stay on your site and also return.

6. When designing your website, it is best to spend more time designing your websites homepage to what it is with the other pages of your site. This is because your homepage is where a lot of your visitors normally visit and is considered the most important page of a website.

7. Giving your Website a good name is very important. If you give your site a name that has nothing to do with your sites topic or is to long to remember, then there is less of a chance that your site will get passed on through word of mouth and also, it will be harder for people to remember your sites web address and will then result in less returning visitors to your website.

8. Giving away freebies is not important, but can actually bring returning visitors to your site. For example, if you offer game competitions on your website where your visitors can win prizes, for playing your games, where they then compete with other players, then there is more of a chance that a visitor will play your games, than what they would with other gaming sites where they dont offer prizes to their visitors.

By Jonathan White. Jonathan White has been doing online market research, advertising and other online activities for over 4 years now. He currently owns http://www.simplysearch4it.com , http://games.simplysearch4it.com , http://articles.simplysearch4it.com and http://products.simplysearch4it.com.

Online Storefronts

If you have a small business, you may want to consider a storefront or an online mall. For a fee, these services help you design an Ecommerce Web site. These services also host your ecommerce site. These “ecommerce Web site in a box” services generally have options that include everything you need to sell online.

Features and support vary by program and can include options such as search engine placement, credit card processing, and advertising. They tend to be template services, however, with less flexibility than a custom site. Familiarize yourself with the current offerings in this area before making a final decision.

Custom Sites

If you have an ecommerce business that is too large for or has outgrown the smaller storefront services, you may want to consider the more flexible custom site. For added cost you can have a unique site, receive greater support, and handle more traffic. You have the options of hiring the same company to design and host your site or using separate design and hosting services.

Hiring the same company to design and host your site.

This option involves the fewest logistics, but may come with trade-offs in design quality or host reliability. Be aware that designing and hosting require different sets of skills and expertise. When choosing a service, evaluate their experience and ask for references in both areas. Go to sites the company has designed and navigate them. Note how the sites look, how easy they are to understand, and how quickly they load into your browser.

To evaluate the companys ecommerce hosting capabilities, contact current customers and ask how pleased they are with the service. Find out how often the server is down and ask about help desk responsiveness. Find out what order related issues - if any - they have experienced. Also, consider how your site will be updated. Can you upload changes directly or do you have to wait for someone at the hosting company to get to it? If it is the latter, ask current customers about their experience with this process.

If you are still considering the design/hosting service after studying their design capabilities and talking to their current customers, you may also want to find out if there has been recent turnover in key personnel. An individual designer, coordinator, or account manager can make a large difference in support or design quality.

Using a separate design and hosting service.

By separating the design and hosting, you have more choices. Thus, you can have more control over both your budget and your site. Technical incompatibilities are a risk when taking this approach, however. Be sure your designer is familiar with your hosting service and it’s technical capabilities. To help facilitate information flow and minimize technical problems:

1. Choose a short list of hosts that offer the ecommerce capabilities you require and pass “reliability” tests. Read Don’t Make These Hosting Mistakes for questions to ask and other mistakes to avoid.
2. Find a Web designer experienced in ecommerce applications.
3. Together, decide on the hosting service and ecommerce systems you will use.

Making the Decision

Deciding upon the right combination will take some research. One way to gather a list of hosting options is to first find ecommerce sites that you like and/or have ecommerce abilities similar to your needs, then ask about the sites’ hosting and ecommerce providers.

Asking for referrals from business acquaintances is another. Many times, people are more than happy to share their positive experiences. For example, I use five different hosts and am generally pleased with all of them. When asked about hosting, however, I always recommend Lexiconn.com (my WebSiteMarketingPlan.com site host) because of the exceptional help desk service and support documents.

Another way to discover hosting options is to look for online advertisements. You can generally find these designated as “sponsored” listings in search engines and on informational Web sites. While there is no guarantee all of the companies you find will be high-quality, the willingness to pay for advertisements can be an indication of commitment.

Diligently decide upon your required ecommerce features, then choose a host with those features in mind. By doing so, you are creating a smoother path to ecommerce success.

By Bobette Kyle. Bobette Kyle draws upon 10+ years of Marketing/Executive experience, Marketing MBA, and online marketing research in her writing. Bobette offers a range of marketing plan tools to fit your business and budget. Find out more at http://www.HowMuchForSpider.com or visit the Web Site Marketing Plan Network, http://www.WebSiteMarketingPlan.com

1. Combating Internet spam spiders
Often, a bony, lanky black spider will crawl around your web site, wiggle its little feet in excitement, gather up your e-mail address and store it near its pinchers. Then, when it returns to its master, it will religiously add all gathered data to a huge nest of e-mail addresses, then used as bait to sell to marketing firms.

Those little black spiders are software utilities that slither underneath your page’s surface, at underlying HTML code, specifically for a standard formatted e-mail address (name@domain.com). This can be the most effective method for gathering e-mail addresses and needs to be thwarted. There are a number of techniques web designers can implement to protect against these creepy crawly little annoyances.

Of the many, here are three that can work quite well.

1. Use HTML symbols. To disable spiders from grabbing your e-mail address, some formatting modifications need to be made to fool the software. All e-mail addresses use the at symbol (@), and spiders are taught to look for them. HTML symbols are written directly into the HTML code, but are interpreted by the browser into their actual meaning. The HTML symbol for the @ sign is @. So, how do we implement something like this?

   <a href=”mailto:name&#64;domain.com”>

   All we do is replace the @ sign with the HTML symbol that represents it. We have a utility built that will automatically convert your entire email address to HTML symbols, here. This method, however, is sometimes caught by more sophisticated software. Although most are not quite as advanced, they do exist. How do we surpass this hurdle? Let’s try some Javascript.

2. Using Javascript, we will simply break up the e-mail address into four different sections, 1: name, 2: the @ sign, 3: domain, 4: extension. Here is a simple implementation of Javascript to perform this action.

   <script type=”text/javascript”>
   name =”you”
   domain =”domain”
   extension =”.net”
   document.write(’<a href=”mailto:’ + name + ‘@’ + domain + extension +’ ” ‘ +’ >e-mail link here ‘);
   </script>

   The above code is fairly self-explanatory. We define three variables, name, domain and extension, and simply concatenate those variables within a document.write statement to the browser. Notice we use HTML’s anchor tags within the write statement so your browser will interpret the e-mail link correctly.

   There is another problem with using this method…can you figure it out? Javascript is client-side, which means although spiders might not be able to interpret your e-mail address, browsers with Javascript capabilities turned off will not either, meaning your e-mail address will not be displayed to the user.

   How do we fix this problem? Can we get away with refusing to display any e-mail address? Yes, we can, but we still must provide a way for the user to contact us. The solution is a rather simple email form.

3. The third might be the only full proof method of protecting yourself against spam spiders, and that is simply refusing to display your e-mail address. Instead, if your server supports server-side processing, like Perl, ASP, Cold Fusion or PHP, simply design a feedback form, and call a server-side script to process the data behind the scenes. Sorry boys, spiders can’t dig quite that deep.

   I am a huge advocate of PHP, but choose whatever language that your host supports. Please note that if your server does not support any server-side programming language, you are out of luck in this regard. Chose between the two aforementioned methods, and stick with it.

2. Take the typography test
Our web sites are nothing without content, and most content is comprised of simple text. Many web designers neglect to pay attention to their topography, and it shows. Proper topography varies based on where the text is and what purpose it serves. Although there are no rules etched in stone, there are a few general techniques that should be followed. Although some of these tips may seem elementary, I find many of them are not followed.

• Headings

  Clearly, headings should be larger, by 1 or 2 font sizes, than your body text. You may consider bold, but be cognizant of the letter width. Arial Black, for example, may create letters too fat for your taste. When using colors, be sure the colors contrast well with the background color of your site. Black and dark gray do not contrast well, while black and white (or light gray) work quite well. Sometimes, even a simple color change can create useful headings.

  Also be sure to cascade your headings. A main heading, for example, would be larger than subheadings. This effect creates a sense of emphasis and flow to the information.

  Do not italicize your headings. Italics are meant to underscore particular content, but since the text is a heading and of larger size anyway, italics are redundant and often make the text difficult to read.

• Fonts

  The default is Times New Roman, which works fine, but many think it is boring. I have experimented with Arial, Georgia and Verdana, and have found Verdana the most readable font face available. This is a personal preference, but fonts should be restricted to the above four to ensure compatibility between all users of your web site. If your user’s browser does not support your font choice, their browser will revert to its default. Since browsers have increased support for CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, whenever possible, use CSS to define your fonts, rather than HTML’s <font> tag. Also, be sure to keep your font sizes large enough for visitors of all ages and eyesights.

• Stress Styles

  Avoid using all capital letters within your text, as it makes it difficult to read and implies you are shouting at the reader.

  To stress words within your body text, decide on a format and stick with it. Some choose bold, while others choose italics or underline. My personal favorite is italics, but any of these can work well. Be careful when using underline, however, as it can be mistaken for a link. In addition, do not overuse these stress styles.

  Entire body text should not be bold. Bold, like italics, is used to emphasis words, and usually an entire body of copy should speak for itself in regularly styled text. I like to use CSS to space my body text out a little to increase readability.

3. Metatags make your site search engine friendly
Metatags are what search engines use to display your site when a user searches for keywords within a search engine. Usually, web designers include at least three metatags, title, description and keywords.

A great thing about metatags is they are easy to implement, directly within the <head> and </head> tags. Let’s take a look at what the three aforementioned metatags look like.

<META NAME=”Title” CONTENT=”Title here”>
<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”Description here”>
<META NAME=”Keywords” CONTENT=”Keywords here”>

You can copy and paste the above three lines of code and place them within your HTML source code; simply type in your web site’s title, a description (or summary) of your web site, and keywords, usually separated by commas. Then, simply submit your web site to as many search engines as you can get your hands on, and watch your site’s hits improve.

I have created a little utility to automatically generate metatag code, including the above three and a few more. Click here.

4. Always provide a method of contact
Always, always provide some method of communication for your users. Many web developers will include e-mail links and feedback forms on their site. Doing this tells your users that you care about what they think of your site, and also suggests your encouragement for them to e-mail you are share.

Be sure, then, to check your e-mail often. There is nothing more frustrating then having to wait a week or more for someone to respond to your e-mail. Checking your e-mail ususally takes 2 minutes…do it as much as you can and keep your web visitors happy.

If your server supports a server-side language, like Perl, ASP, Cold Fusion or PHP, either design one or head off to a script repository and perform a simple search. Listed below are a few resources offering free scripts:

Hotscripts.com
Matt’s Script Archive
ResourceIndex (CGI)
ResourceIndex (PHP)
TotalScripts

5. Design with the little guy in mind
In this day and age, all we think about are the bells and whistles, especially when it comes to slick new web designs. Not only are these new technologies often misused, it dramatically slows the speed of your site down, especially large animated .gifs and complex Flash programs.

Although there are more broadband users than ever, never design specifically for them. There are still 28.8 users out there, and designing your site so waiting time exceeds 10 seconds will send those users to a competitor’s site.

Web designers need to keep their sites simple. Far too many, especially newer web designers, have fixated their eyes upon the gold when they have not yet mastered the silver. Only use graphics where you need them. Never use .gif animations unless absolutely, unavoidably necessary, which is rare. Additionally, do not use large, intricate backgrounds on your pages, as they hinder the readability of your text and increase load time.

Design with the end user in mind. Assume the user is connected through a 28.8 modem with a 15″ monitor at 800×600 resolution using Netscape. Trust me, those visitors will love you (and support you) for it.

Wrapping it up
We have looked at 5 tips every designer needs to keep in mind when doing the work they love. Although communication is essential, steps can be taken to decrease the amount of spam in your little brown mailbox.

Designers also must make sure their topography is easily readable and logically designed. Moreover, search engine friendly sites are often popular sites, and those who design for the little guy greatly improve compatibility with all potential users.

Using these tips will lift your site to another level and ensure every visitor gets the content they are looking for.

By Steve Adcock. From http://www.stevesdomain.net

Urchin visitor tracking is now renamed ‘Google Analytics’ and is available to everyone for free! For those of you lucky enough to have signed up in the early stages, Google Analytics will open up a world of information you probably never knew about visitors on your site. For those not so lucky, you’ll have to wait till Google gets their act together and reopens the doors for new sign-ups to the analytics system.

Why you need Google Analytics website visitor tracking

Google Analytics provides free information about the way visitors to your site interact with it. It is an invaluable tool that all webmasters should use if they don’t already have some form of visitor tracking solution in place. Here’s 10 reasons why you need Google Analytics on your site:

1. It is free. And it offers just as much if not more functionality than most expensive visitor tracking solutions!

2. You need Analytics to understand how visitors use your site

3. You can identify where visitors leave your check-out or sign-up process and modify it to prevent losing leads

4. You can identify which pages and links visitors click on most and spend most time on, and position these pages and links appropriately

5. Analytics also tells you which sites users came to your site from

6. You can find out the most popular keywords (http://www.accuracast.com/resources/seo/seo-keywords.php ) users type into a search engine to find your site, thereby helping your search engine optimisation efforts

7. Visitor segmentation by new vs returning users, geography and referral source will offer invaluable insight when planning future business

8. Analytics integrates seamlessly with Google AdWords (http://www.accuracast.com/services/ppc-management/google-adwords/ ) so that you can have almost end-to-end visibility in your search advertising results

9. Analytics allows tracking of other non-search-engine marketing media

10. Analytics will save you money and help you gain more customers

Pros and cons of Google Analytics

The benefits of using the Google Analytics solution are numerous. The fact that it’s free is mere icing on the cake.

The setup is very straightforward and takes hardly any time

It is a great solution providing a wide range of reports with a lot of flexibility

Multiple sites to be tracked under one login

Tracking campaigns from a wide variety of media is possible

A/B ad testing is easy

It integrates with all marketing media and can be used as a single portal to track multiple campaigns

In depth reports on site navigation and use are invaluable

Ecommerce tracking is included

Whilst the Google Analytics package provides a vast number of useful bits of information, it lacks two major features which most search engine marketers need - the ability to track individual user activity or trace activity back to an individual user level and the ability to track activity akin to click fraud (http://www.accuracast.com/resources/glossary/#C ). The eCommerce tracking features are not very straightforward to use.

Most irritatingly, though, just like any other Google product offering, the customer service associated with Google Analytics is abysmal, if not completely non-existant!

How Google Analytics might change search engine optimisation

By offering a free web site analytics solution, Google have made a very sneaky and superbly calculated move in the war for search engine supremacy. Now that they have visibility not only into how Google users search for your site and whether they convert into sales on it, but also into how all visitors, even from Yahoo and MSN reach your site, how they use your site and whether they leave your site without making a purchase. Armed with that sort of usability information, Google could not only undermine all your search engine optimisation (http://www.accuracast.com/services/search-engine-optimisation/ ) efforts, but also use the data they collect about MSN and Yahoo! search results with respect to your site and use it to strengthen their stronghold on the search landscape.

By Farhad Divecha. Farhad Divecha Before founding AccuraCast, Farhad worked for and provided consulting services to a number of large and medium sized enterprises in the UK and USA including 3Com, Proctor & Gamble and Household (HFC, HSBC). He has over 7 years of experience marketing products and services online and offline.

The most popular websites on the web today do load quickly. For example, yahoo.com and google.com which contain simple text and a few small images load on average in 1 second which is admirable. Amazon.com which has dynamic content and numerous images weighs in at a hefty 5 seconds on average. At the far end of the scale the popular online auction house, eBay.com, can take even longer to load.

The Internet giants dont meet the gold standard of page load response times; therefore, should you be worried that your website doesnt load in less than 1 second. Yes and no. The obvious bottom-line is to have your web pages load as quickly as possible, while taking into account business objectives for your website.

E-commerce websites, which have more images and use a database back-end, will take longer to render a web page. For websites that contain pages with more than 10 images shown on a web page, consider two suggestions:

First, host images on a separate web server than the main web server. This allows a web page to load quickly in the clients browser. To the user, the page will appear to load very quickly, even though the entire page has not completely loaded all of the images.

Second, dont run the database server for the website on the same machine as the web server. When push comes to shove for machine resources, both the web server and database server will slug it out and slow all operations down.

For all websites, consider server side caching your best friend. The .NET framework includes useful built-in caching to conserve server resources and offers a considerable boost in performance over standard ASP driven websites. Also recommended is Port 80 Softwares httpZip which can handle web pages, regardless of how they are created whether it is ASP, ASP.NET, php, or vanilla HTML.

In conclusion, set realistic goals for your websites page load times. Take into account all of the pieces of software needed to create the pages on your website and constantly work on different aspects to achieve performance gains.

By Tim Hodgson. Tim Hodgson manages software development for ExclamationSoft. He is an expert on website and server performance and availability monitoring and writes articles on a wide variety of computer related topics.