Create Your Own Customized 404 Error Page for Increased Traffic

By Ed Duvall in Webmasters

By design, the server that hosts’ your web site delivers a 404 Error / Page Not Found when a surfer clicks on a link that the server cannot find or something else unexpected happens. The most common error page is the HTTP 404 “Not found: The requested URL/whatever.html was not found on this server.”

This generally happens when a person clicks on a link for page that has been removed, renamed or otherwise changed.

If you were to enter the link below into your browser and hit the enter button you would see my own custom 404 Error page: cashway.com/aintnosuchpage.htm (This link is not active and will present you with my custom 404 Error page.) What happens to your web visitor who gets that error message on your site without a custom 404 Error page?

Generally speaking they’re off faster than a “speeding bullet” looking for the information they were seeking - probably to a different website. That’s something you really don’t want to have happen and it can be prevented with a custom 404 error page that gives them options on the error page that will tell them how to find what they were looking for.

So the answer is? Create your own custom 404 Error page that suggests other resources on your site and then helps redirects that person to them.

In essence you’re capturing traffic that you had, but lost and didn’t know it, and keeping that visitor by helping them find what they need and possible turn them into a buyer for your product or service later on.

But “I don’t have the time or know how to make a custom 404 page”, you say.

Well good news - it’s not as hard as you think. If you have about 30 minutes and your server is a Apache or Unix web server then it’s virtually a snap to do

** Your Custom 404 Page Design **

In my opinion your custom 404 error page should provide at least these components:

• A simple statement that the requested URL was not found on your site.
• A brief description of some of the most common mistakes that couldhave lead the visitor to the missing page.
• A “plug” for one of your Free products or services

You can of course add other components like simple java script code for date & time and IP address display, etc. if you really want to impress someone with your technical wizardry.

Your page also should carry the look and feel of your web site, so you should include your header or footer or both so it is clearly branded as yours. You may wish to include some other links for your site that lead visitors to other pages you may want them to visit.

Here are the basic steps:

1. The simplest method is to create your new custom page, then upload it to your site in the same folder where your home page is located. Servers vary in their requirements. For mine the page must have a specific name for it to function properly as my custom 404 error page.
2. If you don’t have an .htaccess file you need to create one in the same folder where your home page is stored, (in some cases, the file may already exist; on servers with Front Page extensions this file is automatically created). You’ll need to do a simple edit inthis file. Use your text editor or server editing features to add the following command: ErrorDocument 404 /filename.html (where “filename.html” is replaced by the name of the actual file you want to appear as your Custom 404 Error page.)

You could, if you prefer, to insert your home page when a 404 error occurs. In that case, the correct command to add to your .htaccess would be: ErrorDocument 404 /index.html

The above example assumes your home page is named index.html. If not, replace it with whatever name you are using for your home page instead.

If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer and the option to Show friendly HTTP error messages is enabled, the file size of your custom error page must be no less than 512 bytes to function properly. Otherwise, the program will show a generic message.

There you have it. Design your page, follow the two simple steps above and you’ll soon have your own custom 404 error page that will capture lost visitors and keep them on your site.

One final note - before you start on setting up your own custom error page check the FAQ or knowledge base for your website’s server for the specific requirements for making sure your new page works.

Ed Duvall - For more information on promoting your website and Free online business Resources visit http://www.cashway.com

Small Business Resistance to Search Ad Hype

By Mel Strocen in Mel Strocen's Blog

The Search Engine Watch blog had a post today citing figures from a Microsoft adCenter survey which revealed that 59% of small businesses don’t do paid search marketing and that 90% of that number hadn’t even tried. The survey was actually news on several blogs and news sites. Some simply related the survey results; others were surprised or tried to put their own spin on the facts.
See: alleyinsider.com and Search Engine Watch for more on this story.

One of the more amusing results from the survey was that “70% of small business owners said they would rather do their own taxes than start a search marketing campaign”.

Anyone running a small business would not be surprised by the survey’s results. Google may be the dominant player in the paid search arena but is really tapping into only those businesses that can afford exorbitant per click costs. The PPC concept works well if you have the money but it hardly provides a level playing field. To tap into that vast pool of small business money, some one has to launch an innovative, new and affordable search advertising model. That might be Microsoft or a new player. Time will tell.

Getting The Most Out of Your Followers on Twitter

By Matthew Brede in Web 2.0

Twitter doesn’t sound like much. It suggests that you tell the world what you’re doing in 140 characters or less. So what? How are people using this social marketing tool to make more money online?

What You Need To Know: Follow and Be Followed!

The key to twitter is to follow and be followed. If you’re on the site talking about what you’re doing to nobody and not finding what anyone else is doing, it’s sort of useless and rather boring. Once you get a few followers and start following a person, that’s when the buzz starts. You can update your status on the web, via instant messaging client or via a third party tool like Twhirl that lets you use twitter from your own desktop. You can follow and be followed on your cell phone as well and be plugged in to the Twitterverse on the go.

You have a profile page that lets you manage the tool and lets people look you up to see what you’re all about in a few lines and with a URL. It’s the “What are you doing” section that counts.

Your Twitter friends or peeps (a.k.a your Tweeps) all carry on conversations with or without you and when you pop in and chime into various conversations, it gets rather lively. People ask questions, answer questions and share URLS of what they’re doing, what they find interesting and what they want opinions on.

There’s also the public timeline that tells you what other people are doing and you can search on that for more followers or conversations to eavesdrop on. It’s like a virtual water cooler that you can stop into during the day and check in with your tweeps.

Use Twitter when you:

• Post an update to your blog
• Want answers to a technical question
• Want to vent
• Want to tell people what you’re having for lunch (seriously, that can sparks some very interesting questions)… and more.

You can also send direct private messages as well as respond to people both directly but also publicly. The more interesting of a Tweet you post, the more likely people will follow you and re-tweet. A re-tweet is when you post a URL and someone likes it so they share it by tweeting or re-tweeting it to their followers. Do you see how it can become a benefit to you in an area like affiliate marketing, product launches and technical challenges you need help with?

You can also post Twitter feeds on your website so that people can follow you, read your conversations, see who you’re following and visit their posts or URLS so it becomes a very viral way to share and communicate and even to collaborate.

The downside to Twitter

Not only is the tool currently growing at such a fast rate that it goes down regularly but there is another downside and that’s productivity. Sadly there’s almost always a downside to social networking and bookmarking tools and as with many others, Twitter can be a time waster if you’re not careful so it’s important to use it and have fun but also to set limits for yourself.

About the Author: By Matthew Bredel - To learn more about how social marketing tools can help you and your online money making efforts, visit TheWebReviewer; a resource for making money online, affiliate marketing and more.

The Ultimate Guide to Free Keyword Research Tools

By Mel Strocen in Mel Strocen's Blog

Ann Smarty posted a useful article over at the Search Engine Journal with a similar title to this blog post. The article is broken down into 8 sections with links to free resouces and tools in each section. So, if you were wondering where to start with your keyword research, you may want to begin by reading Ann’s article at:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/free-keyword-research-tools/8153

8 Reasons to start an online business in 2009

The economy is down, we’re in probably the worst financial crisis since the great depression, and unemployment is shooting through the roof. Sounds like the worst time to start an online business right? Wrong! 2009 could be the perfect time to start a business if you are smart about it. Here’s the reasons why:

It’s Easy to do

Starting an online business is simple to do. It’s not like starting a normal business. It doesn’t take as much money or time to create an online business. There are many different ways to make money online including retail stores, affiliate advertising, creating a successful blog, article writing, or website/graphic design etc. All those ideas are legitimate online businesses that have made a ton of money for a ton of people who are doing what they love. You can even create a successful online business in your spare time. You don’t have to quit your day job to be a success.

It’s Cheap

Creating a website is extremely cheap compared to starting up a store or office. Even if you don’t design your website yourself you can pay someone else to do it and you can get it done cheap by free lancers through sites like Guru.com. After you get your site designed you will need to pick a domain name. You’re going to want to pick a domain name that relates to what you are selling. After that you will need to pick a web host. Web hosting is a service that takes all the files that make up your website and stores them on a server that is connected up to the internet 24/7/365. From their users will be able to access your website all the time. You can find reliable web hosting for $10-$20 a month, (Learn How to Pick the Right Web Host). After initial start up costs, the cost of maintaining a website are very small which allows you to be very profitable. All the choices you have to make here are extremely important ones for your site, but they can all be very cheap.

Creating a Website is Easy Now!

You don’t have to know HTML to create a good looking website now. Using programs like Adobe Dreamweaver allows you to create the design of your website and it creates the HTML that goes along with the design. There are simple tutorials all over the internet that tell you how to create a website. You can use sites like Yahoo’s Site Builder to drag and drop pictures to design your website. If you wanted to create a blog you can use free blog hosting sites like Google’s Blogger and create a blog in minutes.

E-commerce is Succeeding even in a Down Economy

While regular brick & mortar stores are struggling to even stay in business, e-commerce business is growing. According to the Department of Commerce U.S. Retail E-commerce sales numbers are up all around. The 2^nd Quarter of 2008 saw $34.6 billion in sales which was a 2.9% increase from the 1^st quarter and a 9.5% increase from the second quarter of 2007. Just recently on “Cyber Monday” (the online world’s “black Friday”) the online world saw another positive sign, consumers spent $846 billion on cyber Monday which was an increase of 15% over 2007’s cyber Monday.

Marketing is better/faster/more measurable online

Marketing online is all around better online. There’s an estimated 1.5 billion people who use the internet worldwide. That’s 21.9% of the world’s population. It has grown 305% from 2000-2008 and that number will only continue to grow as the populations in emerging markets like China, the Middle East, and Africa continue to get modernized. The Internet is a force that you cannot ignore. There’s a lot of people that use the internet and the great news is they are easy to reach and easy to target. A survey by Hearst Electronics Group and Goldstein Group of business to business marketers showed that the “migration of communications budgets from traditional media to online has accelerated to the point where nearly half of all spending, 47 percent, is spent on online marketing techniques today.” The businesses are doing that for a reason, they can track their marketing methods online a lot easier so they can understand what their ROI is and decide where to put the money. Also it is easier to target people online than it is in the real world so it takes less money to make more sales. Some of the ways to advertise online include search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click ads, article marketing, blogging. All but the pay per click ads can be free. SEO is the technical term for optimizing your site and link building with the goal of getting to the top spot in search engines for a certain keyword. This is important for the success of your online business because the majority of online users use search engines like Google to find what they are looking for. Being at the top spot in Google gets you the most traffic for the cheapest amount….free! There are tons of easy and cheap ways to market your website online.

Tracking…Online Analytics

I touched on this in the previous paragraph but this deserves more attention. Tracking how your business is doing in all aspects is important, no matter what type of business you have. When I say tracking your business I mean figuring out if you are putting your dollars in the right place. If users are leaving your site right away (a term called “bouncing”) maybe it’s because your site is not user friendly so you must re-design your website, if users are reading the content of your site but then leaving during the check out process maybe it’s time for a new shopping cart, it’s also important to know where your users are coming from and where they are going. You can tell all of this by using analytics software that you can get online. Google Analytics is perhaps the best program that you can use to track your website and the best part is it’s completely free. All it involves is placing code that Google provides you on every page that you want the program to track. On a daily basis you can check to see how many people visited your site, what they looked at, how they came to your site, how long they stayed, where they exited from, and most importantly if they were a conversion and how they got there. That type of measurability is critical to any business and that and so much more is possible online.

Starting in a Bad Economy is a Good Thing!

Starting up a business in a bad economy can be a good thing if you are passionate about what you are doing. As Paul Graham pointed out in his essay the economy does not necessarily affect a startup it is the founders that make or break the company. Just ask Bill Gates of Microsoft or Steve Jobs of Apple both of which were started in the terrible economy of the 1970’s. A down economy is an opportunity if looked at in the right light, by opportunistic entrepreneurs. A down economy means less competition, more companies/people looking to make deals, people looking for ways to save. It has become a well known fact that online is the place to get deals on just about anything you need. Retailers offering aggressive online discounts this year were able to increase sales from last year because they were able to adjust to a down economy because of the flexibility of online business. Online businesses are cheap to start up and cheap to maintain, those saving get passed onto the customer in the form of great discounts. At the same time do not ignore the economy creating a website that shows people creative ways to save money would be a great site in a down economy, or a debt consolidation website, or shop and compare sites, or a community forum that lets people share the best deals. There are countless opportunities waiting to be filled in the online world.

It’s About Time You Start Doing What You Want to Do!

Who doesn’t want to own their own business? You get to be your own boss, make your own hours, and feel the joy of successfully having your own company. If you’re tired of your job or even just want to turn your hobby into a profitable venture an online business is the way to go. The best part is it does not have to take over your entire life. With an online business you can do a lot of the work in a short amount of time which means you do not necessarily have to quit your day job. Do you like writing? Become a blogger, blogging is the hot thing in the online world right now and it takes all of 5 minutes to create a blog on blogger and not too much more time to create your own site with a Wordpress themed blog. You can write what you feel like writing about and make money doing it. Do you like a certain topic and you know a bunch of other people do? Why not start an online forum about it, that’s a great way to do what you want and profit off of it. There are plenty of businesses out there and an online business is the easiest way to get started.

As you can see there are great reasons to start an online business in 2009. It’s the easiest, cheapest, fastest way to start your own business and it’s a growing market that basically anyone can be successful in, if your passionate about what you are doing. Make 2009 your year to start an online business, Get out there and Get Started.

Steve Quatrani is the founder and operations manager of RebateRabbit.com. A site which aims to help all those starting an online business choose the right web hosting company by being educated. Rebaterabbit.com Also provides hosting rebates to make all hosting Inexpensive web hosting

Google’s Adwords Top Tactics For Tough Times

By Titus-Hoskins in Titus Hoskin's Blog

Like anyone who’s using Google Adwords in their
online marketing, I received Google’s small booklet
in the mail entitled “Google’s Adwords Top
Tactics For Tough Times.”

In it Google lays out 6 Adwords Tactics for tough times…
helpful tips to help their Adwords users get
through these hard times and keep using Adwords
in the process.

These tactics include: (quoting directly from the
mail-out)

1. Focus your ads on low prices and savings.

2. Use Value-related keywords.

3. Ensure your ad groups are targeted and relevant.

4. Don’t waste money on irrelevant clicks.

5. Make it easy for customers to buy.

6. Focus your money on your high-performers.

These are all good tactics for the tough times ahead…
I especially like the emphasis on low-prices and savings.
Everyone will be looking for bargains in these rough times,
by focusing your marketing on fulfilling that need will
make your campaigns more profitable.

You can learn more here:

http://www.google.com/adwords/tactics2008

Now I am first to admit I am not a PPC expert, the majority
of my marketing is done thru SEO with first page listings
in organic search (mainly Google) for my keywords. So take
everything that follows with a large grain of salt.

My main beef with Google Adwords, they won’t send you
enough traffic. If you’re in a competitive niche market,
the big players will obviously outbid you… no matter
how good or bad your landing pages are. I know that
your quality score is supposed to lower your costs and
if your ads have high CTR click-thru-rates, your Adwords
costs should come down even more and you get more traffic.

Still, it’s difficult to make a profit especially for
an affiliate marketer who only gets a percentage of the
sale and not the full sale price. I counter this by picking
affiliate products that give you residual income, make one
sale and get paid for years or the life of that client.
Even with using this tactic, Google Adwords is very risky
for the online affiliate marketer - you better know what
you’re doing or you can waste a lot of money.

Slap Yourself Silly!

Actually, that statement is not really true because it
has been my experience that Google Adwords simply won’t
deliver the traffic you want. Unless you want to make
outrageous high bids on keywords and slap yourself silly;
Google won’t give you the traffic. Unlike Yahoo Marketing
which will supply you with traffic to meet at least 60% to 80%
of your daily PPC budget - no such luck with Google Adwords.

They simply won’t give me the impressions, let alone
the traffic! Again, I am speaking from my own experience
here, and it is wrong to make a general consensus just
based on one person’s findings. I believe the main
reason is because the competition is so stiff and
Google traffic is so highly prized. Get a high
conversion rate and throw in this quality traffic
from Google and you can print your own money.

In several proven profitable campaigns, I would like
to spend 3 or 4 hunderd dollars a day but Google simply
won’t deliver the traffic at my bid levels… you have
to raise your bids so high, you can’t make a profit.
These are not minimum bids and my ads are placed
in the second or third spot on the right hand side
in Google Search. Even if you have first page placement
in Google’s organic SERPs for the same site and keywords
you’re bidding on - it’s still difficult to get the traffic.

I know you have to pick niche markets and campaigns
that are not so competitive that you can make a profit.
But I am not so sure… I believe Google Adwords are
way too strict regarding who they do business with.
Maybe Google is used to handling clients with budgets of
3 or 4 thousand a day and can’t be bothered with the small
guys.

You Must Establish A Good Credit History

Google Adwords also uses something called a proven track
record or history… unless you can establish this good credit
history, forget about getting large amounts of traffic from
Google. It’s much like SERPs where you have to prove yourself
before they will consistently list your site. The old
SandBox issue.

To be fair, you really have to view this situation from Google’s
standing… they give out all this traffic on a “pay-later”
basis, they have to make sure any traffic delivered will
be paid for by the receiver. It could all boil down to
a simple business procedure. Again, I am no expert at
Adwords.

However, I am hoping in these harsh economic times, Google
will have to become more open and give more impressions
and traffic to the smaller fry. Obviously, by sending out
the booklet, Google must be concerned with a drop in business
in these uncertain times. Maybe their numbers have already
dropped, maybe not. Only Google knows.

Better yet, if times get very dire, competition just might go
down and this will open up new opportunities for the small
marketers out there, including in Google Adwords. Now that’s
one tactic I hope Google will adopt. There are probably thousands,
if not millions of other small marketers ready to take up the
slack, Google would just have to work harder dealing with many
more advertisers rather than centering all their efforts on
the large corporate clients with huge pockets who I am now
assuming get the majority of Adwords traffic.

In any case, it sure would be nice to have more PPC traffic
from Google. Give me the traffic first, and I’ll worry about
the other Adwords Tactics later, after I get the traffic
flowing.

That’s my response to this Google Adwords Mail-out.
http://www.google.com/adwords/tactics2008

Traffic To A New Website

7 Simple Ways To Build
Traffic To A New Website
By Mike Tekula (c) 2008
Got a brand new website? That's great, but nobody cares.

OK, maybe that's a little harsh. The truth, however, is that just having a website doesn't get you much.

Editor's Note: Publication of the SiteProNews newsletter will be intermittent during the next 2 weeks. Visit SiteProNews.com for the latest articles, webmaster news and blog posts. We wish all of our loyal readers a happy holiday season.

Many business owners I meet are surprised to find, once we look at the numbers, that the shiny new site they had built not too long ago gets little to no traffic on a daily basis.

Many newcomers to the web make the mistake of thinking that just by buying a domain name and putting up your site, visitors are going to happen by - something like when you buy property and build a storefront in a busy part of town.

It just doesn't work that way. The web is harsh. You can have the best looking site in the world with great resources and content and go entirely ignored or unnoticed. It happens. It's happening right now. Somewhere out there in the ether is a brand new gorgeous website loaded with great content, and nobody cares. Poor little lonely site.

But there is hope. Every website had its early days. Even sites that get hundreds of thousands of visitors a day started out with none.

Here are 7 simple things you can start doing right now to help drive traffic to your site.

1. Get Some Quick Links From Trusted Directories
Link building is a long-term process with long-term goals, but for brand new sites with no history you've got to start somewhere. There are a number of directories out there that offer free and paid listings (subject to editorial review, of course). Here are the ones I recommend:

• Yahoo!
• Business.com
• JoeAnt.com
• DMOZ.org
• BOTW.org
• Ah, what the heck - here's a great list of directories sorted by SEOmoz's Trifecta score - bookmark it and get started

2. Start Blogging
OK, blogging isn't for everybody (especially you boring people), but it's a great way to build relevant content at your site on a consistent basis. It also gives your visitors/ customers a way to engage with you. But please don't make the mistake of being too "corporate" on your blog - do yourself a favor and check your Public Relations cap at the door. Don't be afraid to discuss your mistakes, missteps you've made, and what you've learned from them as well as your triumphs. In short, be a human, not a brand.

3. Consider Paid Search
For new websites, the day when you receive all the traffic you need for free from search engines and other referrals is a long way off - if not just a pipe dream altogether. Often times paid search campaigns are a great way to get your site in front of your target market today. Be sure to keep your budget modest, though, until you're confident in your ROI. Be sure to do your keyword research to find lower-cost "long tail" keywords - going after the big traffic keywords might be tempting, but it gets expensive and the ROI is often not the best.

4. Use Article Marketing To Build Links
As with any tactic, I'd recommend using this one in moderation. Article marketing is, essentially, trading words for links. It can help with link building, but the quality of the links it garners is usually less than stellar.

Here's how it works:

• Write an informative article on your site topic (or something related)

• Include an "about the author" section as well as links in the article that point to your pages using relevant anchor text

• Submit the article through one of the many article syndication services (such as EZineArticles.com or GoArticles.com )

• The deal is, anybody can come along and publish your article on their website - provided they use the article in its original format including the "about the author" section. So when the article is published, any links you include back to your site are published as well.

5. Guest Post At Relevant Blogs
This certainly requires some up-front investment, mainly in terms of building relationships with bloggers in your topic (a little brown-nosing never hurt), but it can help get the flywheel turning for your site like nothing else can. Take the time to make your guest post remarkable and smart - your host blogger will appreciate it, and it'll improve the likelihood of attention coming back to your site (which you'll link to in your guest post, of course). Links from blogs are some of the most powerful editorial links you can get - don't underestimate them for a second.

6. Submit Your Site to Design Galleries
Is your website breathtaking to behold, beautiful enough to make angels weep? Yeah, sure it is. But seriously, if it looks pretty sharp there are plenty of web design galleries that accept submissions for new sites and link to the sites they feature. Particularly for CSS-driven design there are a number of galleries that will consider your site for listing (provided your site uses CSS for layout/styling - and God help you if it doesn't) - including CSSElite.com, CSSHeaven.com, CSSBeauty.com and many others. Just search in Google for "CSS design gallery." Unless your site is ugly - in that case, I can't help you, and stop asking me to look at it.

7. Sponsor a Local Event or Charity
OK, I admit this is kind of a tired tip - but it works! Especially for local small businesses. Is there a local event coming up in your community? A local charity that has a website? Not only will sponsoring such an event give you all of the normal PR benefits (and self-righteous bragging rights) that are the byproducts of charity, but any web announcement for the event will potentially include a mention of your website as well as a link to it. And you can feel good about yourself for a change.

Bonus Tip: Be Patient
Alright, this one is cheap, I admit it. Not much of a tip. But it's important to remember that you're not going to see your unique visitors count skyrocket immediately for your new website. Most "overnight successes" actually take a few years to get going.

And if you find yourself checking your traffic numbers on a daily basis, please do us all a favor - step away from the computer, go toss the ball around with your kid, maybe take your niece out for ice cream. Contrary to popular belief, staring at your site traffic data has no positive effect on it.

About The Author
Mike Tekula is the president of Unstuck Digital, a Long Island Web Design and Search Marketing agency based in Ronkonkoma, NY.

Tools for Twitter Users

Hands up if you're a Twitterholic. Yes, my hand's up too. If you love the micro-blogging platform Twitter as much as I do, then keep reading.

I've put together a list of the coolest plug-ins and apps designed for us Twitterholics and scored each out of five on the *must have* scale.

Twitter Specific Tools:

1) TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends' status on Twitter and lets you make posts from your browser status bar. It also allows you to switch between multiple Twitter accounts in one click. This is my #1 must-have, deal-breaker, cannot live without Twitter plug-in.

Must Have Scale (5): • • • • •

2) Retweet This is an application designed for use with the Greasemonkey Firefox plug-in. It allows you to append a retweet button to the end of each Twitter entry to encourage your followers to retweet your posts.

Must Have Scale (3): • • •

3) Classify Twitter Users is a script that allows you to classify Twitter users and decide whether they are worth following based on their friends, followers and post ratios. Another Greasemonkey app, it's a great tool to help you weed out the Twitter spammers and fan boys from the socially healthy.

You can set the script to use your own Twitter user scales (e.g. spammer, social climber, social rock star) or just gather more information about people you are following.

Must Have Scale (4): • • • •

4) TwittAd allows Twitter users to monetize their account by accepting advertising on the background image of their Twitter user profile. You decide the duration and price advertisers pay for exposure and get paid for every hour you serve the ad.

Must Have Scale (2): • •

5) TwitterCounter lets you add a daily updating TwitterCounter to your blog so everybody can see how popular you are by the number of persons following you.

Must Have Scale (3): • • •

6) TweetBeep is just like having Google Alerts for Twitter. It enables you to keep track of conversations that mention you, your products or your company via email. You can even keep track of who's tweeting your website or blog. It's a great tool for online reputation management and you don't even have to be a Twitter user to benefit from it. TweetBeep is another one of my personal *must haves*.

Must Have Scale (4): • • • •

7) Twitter Grader measures the reach and authority of a Twitter user, calculated by the pace of their updates, the completeness of their profile, their number of followers and the network power of those followers.

Twitter Grader displays as a score out of 100 and is consistently updating and adapting as your Twitter account grows. Based on those grades, Twitter Grader lists the Twitter Elite globally and in each country, just like Technorati does for bloggers.

Must Have Scale (3): • • •

8) TwitPic, as the name suggests, is a photo sharing tool for Twitter. When logged in, it allows you to upload photos and post them with comments as a Tweet. It works with a range of Twitter clients such as Twitterific, Twhirl and MobileTwitter and stores all your photos in a single location with updated viewing stats. As far as Twitter image sharing goes, this is king for reliability.

Must Have Scale (5): • • • • •

9) Twuffer is a Twitter buffer. It allows Twitter users to compose a list of future tweets, and schedule their release. Twuffer is ideal for making hourly, daily or monthly announcements or send post-dated birthday greetings or reminders to people about upcoming events. It's also perfect if you're the type of person who wants to give the impression that you never sleep.

Must Have Scale (3): • • •

10) Twistori I have a real soft spot for this one. One of the developers is Amy Hoy, one of my favorite speakers from Webstock 2008 and a goth geek to boot. Twistori is a social experiment that taps into the Twitter conversations revolving around life's central activities: Love, Hate, Think, Believe, Feel, Wish. You can click on any of these emotions and witness a live feed of Tweets that use them. It's voyeuristic and utterly compelling.

Must Have Scale (4): • • • •

11) iTweet is another interface for Twitter. It has built-in auto-refresh, search and hash tags and features full follow, block and notifications features. Users can view and post user bio, location and URLs inline with their tweets. Another cool feature of iTweet is the ability to Retweet a user post with a single click.

Must Have Scale (3): • • •

12) Twitturly is a service for tracking what URLs people are talking about as they talk about them on Twitter. Similar to Digg, on Twitturly, people "vote" for a URL. The more votes it gets the better it ranks. If it does well enough, it gets promoted to the home page and as the votes increase it gets displayed higher up the home page. Twitturly differs from Digg in that instead of voting on their site, you vote by participating on Twitter. Each time that you send a link to your followers on Twitter, Twitturly takes a note of it and applies your vote to that URL. It's a great way to follow the loudest global conversations.

Must Have Scale (4): • • • •

13) Mr Tweet is another big favorite of mine. Similar to LinkedIn , it looks through your extended network and makes suggestions to help you build effective relationships on Twitter. For example, which of your followers should you be following in return? Who are the most influential people you should be following? Who are your followers following?

Must Have Scale (5): • • • • •

14) Twitter Search is Twitter's own built-in and oft-overlooked search tool. You can use it to search for other Twitter users, keywords, hash tag topics and a range of cool shortcut items.

Must Have Scale (4): • • • •

Non Twitter Specific Tools:

15) FlipTitle is, not surprisingly, a tool that enables you to flip text upside down. It's great for Twitter because sometimes your tweets can get lost in the conversation. Using FlipTitle makes sure they get noticed.

Must Have Scale (2): • •

16) Bit.ly is a very cool URL shortener that also includes click-thru statistics. Why is it perfect for Twitter? Because the length of the converted URLs is generally much shorter than other URL converters like TinyURL. When you are tweeting, space is premium as your whole post can only consist of 140 characters including spacing.

The other neat thing aspect of Bit.ly is that it keeps a record of clicks that your URLs received and where they originated from. It even provides a share button so you can re-tweet your URLs on Twitter or send them to friends on Facebook, Gmail or another email client.

Must Have Scale (5): • • • • •

So there you have it, 16 cool tools to help you indulge your Twitter addiction.

Happy Tweeting!

Search Engines are

There is more to internet exposure for your business than search engines.

Editor's Note: The author wrote this article with law firms as his target audience, but his points are applicable to any business or web site.

To be sure, Google, MSN, Yahoo and the like are all excellent ways of getting your name out there. But it can take a long time to get your site to the top of most of the major categories, and since the number of categories is only limited by the imagination of the typical Google user, getting the results that you want can sometimes take awhile. So while you are waiting to move up the rankings, what else can you do to increase the web presence of your law firm? What can you do to get more clients? What can you do to get better cases?

For one thing, you might want to take a look at what your kids are doing on their computers.

Facebook and MySpace are the scourge of teachers and employers everywhere. In many schools, a student caught looking at one of these sites during class ends up in detention, and younger employees caught on these sites during working hours can get reprimanded or worse. Wikipedia, which is an encyclopedia site that gives brief or lengthy summaries of almost everything, is also the scourge of academics because, since it is updated by users, it can be inaccurate. Many are the lazy college students who have been caught cutting and pasting a Wikipedia entry on their term papers.

While these sites are ridiculously popular with teenagers, they aren't the only ones using them. Adults have caught on to the Facebook and MySpace craze, seeing them as a great way to stay in touch with friends and to find old ones. In terms of finding old friends, it has been said in some quarters that Facebook and MySpace may be the end of the high school reunion, simply because the internet makes it very easy to find and keep in touch with all of your old classmates.

YouTube, which is a site that allows people to post their own video content and others to view it free of charge, has enjoyed immense popularity, so much so that Google actually purchased YouTube in 2007 to the tune of about $2 Billion. So can you make these sites work for you? The answer is an emphatic yes, and the good news is that you can do it fairly simply.

Social Networking Sites

Signing up for Facebook and MySpace is absolutely free. What they allow you to do is to create a profile page, in which you can put whatever information you deem appropriate.

MySpace allows for more decoration and personal touch than Facebook, but as of right now Facebook is more popular. But considering that both are free, you should feel free to sign up for both. In the sections that you fill out to tell people about yourself, tell them that you are a personal injury attorney and tell them the practice areas that are your specialty. You are also given the opportunity to include links, so give them the link to your website.

In order to make the site truly work, it helps to have "friends," which is what happens when you link up to other members with their own pages. If your employees have accounts, become friends with them. If one of your clients has a MySpace or Facebook account, become friends with them. If your teenager can stand the utter embarrassment, be friends with him or her. All of this increases your profile and also gets picked up in Google and other search engines. MySpace offers you a blog to update, which is always good, and both sites allow you to post videos. This brings us to YouTube.

YouTube Video Sites

If you have already shelled out the money for a commercial to be aired, why not double up on the exposure by putting it on YouTube? And unlike paying for television air time, YouTube is completely free. If you don't have a commercial ready, you can certainly make one, or simply record the testimony of a satisfied client. You no longer need a high profile production team. These days, all you really need is a camera, some basic video editing software, and an imagination.

Wikipedia

Most people don't like the idea of writing about themselves in the third person, but Wikipedia gives you a great opportunity to post your professional biography and accomplishments online. Also, in the "references" section, you can link to your website, any articles that you might have written, or any newspaper articles describing cases that you have won. Also, due to its popularity, a Wikipedia page routinely pops up in the first page of Google for almost any subject that you can think of. These are only a few of the many ways that you can increase the web traffic of your law firm. It doesn't take much time, and the benefits greatly outweigh the effort that it takes to get started.

10 Vital Tips for Choosing the Right Web Hosting Company

10 Vital Tips for Choosing
the Right Web Hosting Company

The Web hosting firm you choose can make or break your small business. Good ones can run things smoothly, are easy to reach, and fix problems efficiently. But bad ones can have more problems than they are worth, be unreachable at critical times, and bring your business to a screeching halt. Finding a good one is crucial to your success.

Here are some tried and true ideas for how to select a host that will save you money, avoid technical snafus, and build your online platform for the future.

. Choose a Service that Primarily Does Hosting

Although it might be tempting to sign-up with a firm that provides an umbrella of services in addition to website hosting, a good rule of thumb is that if a company overly-diversifies its services, it won't deliver top quality in any of them (e.g. tech support, updates, maintenance, etc.)

2. Choose a Host with a Great Record for Online Security

Most secure hosts will provide SSL Certificates to guarantee your security. Without an SSL Certificate on your site, visitors may come and go without identifying themselves, and this could put your site at risk. Make sure your host implements best practices when it comes to maintaining security architecture, updating security software, and responding effectively to breaches if and when they do occur.

3.Excellent Technical and Customer Service Support via Phone

Does the host provide phone support around the clock? Or can you only email for help during non-business hours? You definitely want the option to call a staffer. Studies show that over-the-phone tech and customer support systems are vastly more efficient than e-mail support centers, on average.

4. Solid Add-On Services

A number of great web hosting companies provide little extras to make sites more effective and user-friendly. These can include image upload galleries, blogs, control panels, order forms, support scripts, databases, and embedded video features. When evaluating various firms, examine sample sites and note what value add-ons you like and what value add-ons you feel are missing in each sample.

5. Don't Rely on Numbers Alone to Make the Decision

Many hosts promise uptime approaching 100%. But there's no way of verifying that kind of claim. If your website goes down, for instance, the company can easily explain it away as a statistically insignificant outlier. Similarly, a potential host may brag about oodles of bandwidth and space on servers, but if your online small-business needs are modest, these numbers shouldn't be your incentive. Finally, be wary of online rating systems. These figures can be jiggered and rejiggered to make a web host look better (or worse) than it actually is.

6. The Right Price for Your Needs

Sure, you can find a service for practically nothing. But there is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to web hosting. If you're paying a dirt-cheap rate, chances are that the host is watering down services in some respect. Perhaps the host offers minimal security protections or charges clients "pay per play" for technical support. Or maybe the site charges a sky-high maintenance fee or other monthly fee. The point is, you need to read the fine print and to price-compare before making a decision.

7. Flexible Features and Enough Elbow-Room

You have no idea how your online platform might evolve. That's why you need a hosting company that boasts flexible features, supports many different languages, offers linux and Windows options, and supports an array of scripts (PHP, Pearl, Java, etc.) A good rule of thumb for determining space is to "buy big". In other words, even if you don't have tens of thousands of files to upload and store, leave yourself some wiggle room to anticipate future growth.

8. An Easy-To-Use and Safe Shopping Cart

According to numerous estimates, U.S. and U.K. consumers will be spending nearly $150 billion per year online by the year 2010. Your site's e-commerce options should be simple, safe, battle-tested, and easy-to-use.

9. Protection Against Spam, Viruses, Trojan Horses, and the Like

Most creditable web hosting sites provide solid e-mail protection. Make sure to check for compatibility, however. For instance, if you use Microsoft Outlook, make sure that the host has the tools and services to shield your Outlook e-mail effectively -- without blocking key notifications from clients or suppliers.

10.Important Questions to Consider:

• Does the host provide good references and testimonials?
• Does the company employ best-of-breed firewalls and routers?
• Has anyone filed complaints against the company through the Better Business Bureau or other organization?
• What services do small businesses similar to yours use for web hosting?
• Can the company provide any statistics to back up claims regarding reliability and technical support?
• Can you use the host for a trial period before paying full price?
• How expensive is it to upgrade or downgrade plans?
• How do blogs and customer forums rate your candidate hosting services?
• 
  

Light up your site

We all know how it feels to find the perfect gift. After scouring stores far and wide, suddenly your hunt is over: the stars have aligned to bring you just what you're looking for -- and not a moment too soon. It's a bit the same way when a search brings you to just the right site. But what if your site's just the right site, and users can't find it?

We're happy to let you know that you don't need divine forces to play a role in the findability of your site. Nope -- you can help make sure that your site turns up just when it should by taking advantage of these tips from our Search Quality Team.

1. Not sure if all your pages are being seen by Google? Search for your site's address after the command "site", like [site:example.com]. When you see your pages in the results, check your snippet content and page titles. Include information that matches the topic of a particular page. If anything is missing or you want more details, you can also use the Content Analysis tool in Webmaster Tools.
   
   
2. If you upload new pages or topics faster than Google crawls your site, make sure to submit a Google Sitemap and include a refresh rate.
   
   
3. Label your images appropriately. Users searching in Google Image Search will more easily find the image on your site. Don't miss out on potential traffic because of [001.jpg] instead of [NintendoWii.jpg]. Image Search is one of the largest search properties out there, so you should take advantage of it.
   
   
4. Manage your SiteLinks. Your most valuable links may not be the ones that Google chooses as SiteLinks, so remember you can remove any that you don't think users will find useful.
   
   
5. Check for errors and keyword traffic in Webmaster Tools. See our diagnostics checklist.
   
   
6. Serve accurate HTTP status codes. If you've retired a page permanently, serve a 404. If you've simply relocated it, serve a 301. The more we know about your old pages, the faster we will find the next best page on your site for a given query.
   
   
7. Users and search engines like organic content. Make some of your own!
   
   
8. Read our recently released SEO Starter Guide.
   
   
9. Watch our Tutorials for Webmasters.
   
   
10. Find out what information Google has about your website in Webmaster Tools.
    
    
11. Get the latest updates from the Webmaster Central Blog.
    
    
12. Find answers to your questions in our Webmaster Help Center, or ask your questions in the Webmaster Help Group.
    

Whether it be the perfect gift, the perfect site, or the perfect cup of cocoa on a cold winter's night, we hope all your searches are fruitful this holiday season.

Posted by Julie Beckmann - AdSense Publisher Support