What’s more important? Creating sites for users or the engines? The answer is both.

Your favorite thing about having a blog may soon be this – they naturally attract search engine traffic. Blogs already have optimized site architecture. Most are set up with a clear navigation, where every page is set up to link back to the other main pages. They also have the inherent potential to be well-linked.

Primarily a site should be designed for the user, with search engines in mind. Google tends to talk out both sides of their mouth when they say, “Don’t do anything special for the engines”. Yet, they create a webmaster tool center where you can submit a sitemap, and get information about how the engines see your site, errors and what key phrases your site ranks for. That gives new site owners a little bit of confusion.

I like sites that are easy to navigate, pleasing to the eye and that help sell whatever it is you need to. Pages should be set up as landing pages. The great thing about your blog is that it can get so well-indexed that you have the potential to show up for any number of four word phrases that are relevant to your industry. This way you can give the visitor everything they need to make a purchase or fill out a form. At the same time you can optimize these pages for the engines and use the pages for your PPC campaigns. I believe in doing sites this way. It brings the visitor a much better experience.

The perfect site is not only user friendly, but optimized for the engines. You need to target where people go to in order to provide them with the information or product they need. There is nothing worse than having people landing on a page that is optimized for a phrase but offers no information about it… It brings the user a bad experience and you a missed sale or lead. You have a choice. You can target a general high traffic keyword you have little chance of ranking well for and get barely any traffic. Once you have a page optimized, you can streamline the transition from viewing what you have to offer to facilitate a purchase. You can also provide related content and links. This, in turn, will help with you PPC because Google is now checking to see how relevant your landing pages are to the keywords you buy.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Sometimes a site’s structure (the relationships between its content) must be altered too. Because of this it is, from a client’s perspective, always better to incorporate Search Engine Optimization when a website is being developed than to try and retroactively apply it.Make a good quality site that will attract natural links to it in order to obtain any form of long term presence within the search engine results page.Make a good quality site that will attract natural links to it in order to obtain any form of long term presence within the search engine results page.

Whatever your business is on the web, you’re going to need advertising if you want the big bucks. First though, we must recognize that the meaning of the world ‘advertising’ has changed since the days of the TV, Radio, Magazine and News Paper monopoly. Advertising was simple to define and easy to recognize back before the internet, but web based advertising techniques are a different ball game altogether. Let’s take a look at these new alternative advertising methods in order of their cost to your business.

Word of Mouth: The internet’s impact on ‘word of mouth’ advertising has been huge. The invention of social networks and media sharing facilities has put thousands of likeminded people in touch with each other in ways that were impossible before the web. If you have a great product that a particular group of people will really like, you can be sure that it’ll be talked about on the web.

PPC/PPI Advertising: Pay per Click advertising and Pay Per Impression advertising will both cost you a little bit of cash, but you can build a campaign relatively cheaply and reach many thousands of people for extremely low cost. PPI is best for generating brand recognition on the whole, while PPC is ideal for deployment to key demographics who might want to read more about your product or service.

Affiliate Systems: Affiliate systems are a great way to sell medium to high cost services. Using an affiliate system allows you to put your affiliates in charge of your advertising. They are rewarded only for sales converted from their links, and so the burden of advertising, and the large rewards, rest firmly upon your selected affiliates. Be prepared to give away a significant percentage of your profits though, as good affiliates work hard to promote your product and expect payment in kind.

Mail / Software use: Last but certainly not least is the use of bulk e-mailing and software advertising. These are generally considered to be distasteful and annoying advertising methods but are certainly effective. Consider your business relationship with its customers very carefully before you undertake such a project. While these are ideal for one shot small purchases, they can alienate more picky customers.

The internet is the most democratic arena available for new business, intellect and service providers to show what they have got. If you’ve got something good to share with the world, the internet is the only place that will do it justice. The challenge is getting that good or service onto the web in the first place. The beauty if the internet is that you hardly need a single penny to get your product in front of millions of people. But you’ve got to know how to do it!

The first rule of making a free business is, open source software: The open source community has been around for as long as closed source development and open source products are comparable, if not better quality in some cases. Name a bit of software your business needs and it’s very likely that an open source version is available, in some cases making a choice to use open source software can save you thousands of dollars in licensing for single programs.

The second rule to free business on the net is: Cheap web hosting! There is simply no need to maintain or buy dedicated or virtual hosting if no one knows your website is there. Open a cheap account with a high quality service provider like godaddy and they will be very glad to quickly and painlessly upgrade your hosting as and when you need additional power, storage and bandwidth. There is simply no need to pay for a vastly overpowered service before it’s needed. A few adverts will bring in enough revenue to pay for your website hosting, making it free!

The final step to free business on the net is: Free promotion! Google the term ‘SEO’ and check our SEO blog category on the left. There is a wealth of free information available on this topic, which will teach you exactly how to configure and write your website to be search engine optimized. Custom SEO services are expensive because they usually come with guaranteed results, but these results are within your reach given enough time and understanding of the topic.

If you follow these three simple rules, you’ll get your business online for almost zero cost. Website builders and promotions agencies might try to sell your expensive packages and hosting services, but remember these basic rules and you’ll be fine.

There are two kinds of traffic on the net, quality and… Well, not such high quality. Quality traffic represents a target demographic who may actually be interested in the product or service you are providing. These people are likely to return to your site if they like what they find, and there’s a distinct possibility that they will generate you significant revenue over time. Low quality traffic will usually make up the majority of your visitors; these are people who landed from search engine links, from reciprocal linking programs and random news sources. These people are unlikely to tour your website, and will have little interest in anything other than the exact reason they landed on your website.

What’s so bad about low quality traffic? Well, there is nothing inherently bad about low quality traffic if you are prepared for it, but there are a few things that it might represent:

1. Search engines don’t understand your website very well and are sending the wrong people

2. You are over extending your marketing programs. Untargeted marketing is next to useless.

3. Quality traffic might not be able to find your website as a result of the first two points!

In addition to all these, low quality traffic costs you money! Though you might expect to offset your bandwidth and hosting charges with advertising revenues, low quality surfers are unlikely to pay for themselves, leaving your high quality traffic to pick up the bill.

Low quality traffic might look good on your monthly statistics, but a low quality surfer isn’t a tenth as valuable to you as a high quality one. Retarget your advertising campaigns, cut down on low quality referrals and slim down that hit count statistic. If you can remove ten low quality surfers, and replace them with just one new high quality surfer then you’ll improve the profitability and overall popularity of your website considerably.

There’s arguably no finer way to reach people on the web, than with a well written blog. Whether your objective is business promotion, search engine optimization or good old fashioned journal keeping, the blog is still where it’s at. That’s all very well if you’ve already got a captive audience through a personal website or business, but how do you find new readers, and most importantly; keep the old ones?

Firstly, you’ve got to embrace one principle which applies to all blogs, even if their main function is to act as search engine optimizers: Your blog content must be original and information rich. Search engines and normal readers’ alike share a desire for new information and experience. If we want our blogs to be widely read and popular we must please humans and computers in equal measure, so lots of rich new information in each blog is a great place to start!

If you are writing a personal blog, then don’t write about everyday experiences unless you are prepared to discuss your associated feelings in an unusually open manner. Think about what really drives great plots in TV shows: They are all about emotion! You don’t have to be cynical and calculating about your blog writing, but be aware that using the odd literary technique to generate suspense and emotion where you might feel it in your everyday life is a fantastic way to keep readers.

If you are writing for search engines, don’t forget the readers. Search engine bots are becoming increasingly advanced and are now capable of recognizing poorly written content. The penalty is that a poorly written blog with a similar number of keywords will fall well below a well written entry on search results. Keep things legible and don’t overdo those blogging keywords!

Finally: Keep it regular! There’s nothing readers and bots like more than a good regular dose of the thing they visit the site for. Regular updating will work over time to generate long term blog readers, and it’ll keep bots happy because they can figure out a schedule to visit your site and know that they will always find new content. Get out there and get blogging!

If you are serious about doing business over the Internet, you will eventually have to have a web site and you will need a place to host it. There are tons of available web hosts. Some are free, but most of the good ones will cost you money. It is important that you use a paid web hosting company. This is because free web hosts usually require you to use their domain name, and they will simply add on your website. This tends to look unprofessional to your visitors.

Make sure that you choose a good, quality web host. Web hosting companies are not all created equal neither do they all offer you the same benefits. When considering web hosting companies, you will want to take a close look at the following things: Affordability, their billing schedule, whether or not it is Wordpress friendly, control panel ease-of-use, customer service and available bonuses.

Affordability is very important. You don’t want to have a lot of overhead costs. One of the advantages of doing business online is that you tend to have far less costs then you would, if you attempted start a brick and mortar business. You can generally find a good web host for between $4-$9 a month. Unless you are getting a great deal of traffic or you need a lot of space, you will not need to pay more than that.

Also, be sure to consider how many domain names a hosting company will allow you to have. Some web hosting companies will allow you to host unlimited domain names. This means that you can purchase a domain name somewhere else and point it to your webhost. This allows you to host a large number of web sites, all with different domain names, for one low-price. Typically, web hosting companies that allow this, charge more for domain names. Therefore, you may want to go somewhere else to purchase your domain names.

Consider the payment terms. If you don’t have an unlimited budget, you may want to choose a wet host that allows you to pay monthly. You will end up paying a little bit more over the long haul, however, it will allow you to host your website quicker because you won’t have to save up the money for an annual fee. .If money is not an issue, you may want to pay for your hosting annually. However, if you have cash flow issues, you may want to go with a web hosting company that allows you to pay monthly.

For individuals that use Wordpress a great deal, they will want to choose a host that makes working with Wordpress easy. Several hosts offer this.

You will be required to use a control panel. Most web hosting companies will allow you to look at their control panel before you join them. Make sure that you take advantage of this because you want to make sure that you are comfortable with the control panel.

Next, consider what bonuses are offered. Some web hosting companies will offer you things like a free press release from PR web or free Google and Yahoo advertisement credits. Make sure that you compare these because they can offer you a lot of value.

Lastly, make sure that any company that you do business with has excellent customer service. You should be able to contact them either by phone, e-mail or instant message and get a response in an appropriate amount of time. Before you agree to work with a company, try the customer service out. Call them on the phone, IM them or email them and see how fast their response is.

If you are interested in optimizing your web site or blog so that it does well in the search engines, one of the most important factors will be how many incoming links you can get pointing to your site. While other things are important, such as on-page optimization and filling out the various tags with the keywords that you are targeting, without receiving ample links to your web site, you won’t do well in the search engines.

There is a lot a competition for high rankings. This is because high rankings provides individuals and businesses with free advertising. Therefore, you will need to be prepared to play the game. In order to win, you must have a good number of quality, incoming links. We will be discussing various places where you can pick up good links for your web site. Some of the common and most effective ways include using articles, social networking and bookmarking sites, related blogs, forums, press releases and even Google and Yahoo groups.

Articles continue to be a great way to get incoming links and also to pick up some extra traffic. If you write a good article (one that is not a sales pitch), on a popular topic you can expect to get hundreds of page views just from one very good article directory, such as Ezine Articles. To ramp up the amount of traffic that you get from article directories, it is best to submit them to more than one article directory. You can attempt to go big and submit your articles to hundreds of article directories or you can simply submit to the top 20 to 25. It is important to note that if you’re using articles for building links, then you will want to submit different versions of your articles at the various article directories. You can spin the article yourself or you can use a service such as submityourarticle.com, which will spin the article for you and then send them out to a number of article directories.

Social networking and bookmarking sites are also a very good  way to create incoming links. You simply need to write a short, news blurb about your website and add the link. If you use social bookmarking sites, you can simply add your link.

Blogs on related topics are also a very good to use for back links. However, don’t comment spam. Leave a comment that shows that you have actually read the blog and have gotten something out of it and want to give something back through your comment.

Forums are another excellent way to build links. Simply create a hyper link that includes the keyword that you are targeting. Press releases work similarly to articles. Some of the very top press release sites will likely get you included in Google News. Other webmasters may pick up your release, place it on their site, resulting in incoming links and hopefully an influx of traffic.

Google and Yahoo groups are another way to get links. Again, you don’t want to spam. If you find a topic that you are interested in, post something of value to the group and then leave your link.

These are all various ways to build links to your web site or blog. They have all proven to be very effective in building links and should also help you pick up some extra traffic along the way.

For individuals who are not capable of designing their own web site, they will be glad to know that there are many web site templates available, many of which are free of charge. You may also purchase web templates but unless you find a really great one, there’s really no need to because there are many very good, free template web sites. When looking for web site templates, if your web design skills are minimal, choose an HTML and perhaps even a CSS style template. These are a lot easier to make changes to. Next, you will need to download some website editing software online. You can find this free as well. You will only need to change or add text and some links. The web design software will walk you through the changes that you need to make. Just use the help function.

You also may find website template and then pay someone to add the text for you. You will need to write the articles and have all the text prepared. Then simply pay someone to make the changes for you. This will be a lot cheaper than having them build it from scratch.

You want to make sure that any web site template that you purchase or design is very clean looking. You don’t want it cluttered with tons of advertisements, texts and links. People will simply leave. They have a lot of other options. While it’s great to advertise, make sure that you do so strategically and in a way that doesn’t come across like you are simply trying to sell products. People want value. They don’t want to be bombarded with advertising and sales pitches.

Also insure that your site is easy to navigate and that your page links are clearly marked and hyperlinked. It is important that your website design is interesting visually. Use splashes of color, add videos, pictures and a nice header. You want it to look attractive and appealing, but again, not crowded.

Do not use automated content. I know some people create websites that consist solely of auto-generated content in hopes that someone will click on their Adsense links or purchase an affiliate product. This may have worked 3 years ago but not any longer. Consumers are much more savvy now. They are not going to spend time at a page with information that doesn’t make sense. They will simply press the back button. Therefore, take some time to either write articles yourself, pay someone to write them for you or use articles from article directories. However, do note that there is a chance that you could be penalized for duplicate content. You also run the risk people leaving your web site and going to the web site listed in the resource box of article that you use. This is because you are required to keep the resource box intact. Keep this in mind when you are considering what type of content to use.

New internet marketers may buy into the myth that people who work from home only work for 30 minutes each day and then spend the rest of their time doing whatever they want. This may be true for a small minority of individuals. However, for most people online, work requires just as many hours or even more, than someone who works outside the home. If individuals are not careful, their life can get really out of balance. Their home life and family relationships can begin to suffer if they are not nurtured due to too much time working, even from home. This is why it is very important to create some sort of balance between working at home and one’s family life.

To make this work well for all parties involved, it’s important that the individual who works from home gets organized. They need to have all of the supplies that they need in one place where it can be easily found. This will help save time.

Creating a schedule is also vitally important. You need to create a schedule of your upcoming jobs or tasks. Make sure that you schedule in time for family and friends and household chores. If you do not, these parts of your life will get out of control. There may also be some hurt feelings and strained relationships. This may require you to get up early to do some work or stay up late even after everyone else has gone to bed. This may put a little bit more stress on you physically However, this might be a sacrifice that you need to make to be sure that everyone is happy and tended to.

When you are busy and have to get work done, make sure that you come up with activities for your kids to do. Create a schedule for them as a well so they don’t feel like they’re being ignored not being paid attention to. If you have young kids, you may want to purchase coloring books, or come up with fun activities that you can do with them. Once a week, take a field trip. If you have older kids, find something that is age appropriate for them.

Striking a balance between working at home and spending time with your family, especially if you have young kids at-home, can be very difficult. However, it can be done. It will require some really tight scheduling from you and great organizational skills. You many need to get up a couple hours earlier in the mornings or stay up a little bit later at night after everyone else has gone to bed so that you can finish your work. It is fine to do work during the day while your kids or at home, just make sure that you take breaks to spend time with them.