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Working from home is a great thing, no doubt about it.  You can wear what you want.  Keep you own hours.  Eat and drink when you want.  Surf the net without feeling like your boss is going to bust you.  You don’t have to worry about commuting and all of the stress associated with bumper to bumper traffic.  No annoying bosses to deal with anymore and you can take breaks when it suits you.  In short, you control your own destiny.

All of those things are fantastic pros to owning your own business and working from home.  However, there is a dark side.  There is the tendency to get sidetracked from the work that generates a profit and puts food on your table to the work you would maybe rather do at the moment like build that deck in your back yard, work on your car, or ugh…do the laundry.

There is also the tendency to lose track of time researching for your business or taking care of tasks that may be better suited for a different time or even handled by a different person.  All of these sidetracks, and many more, will take away from your daily productivity and essentially end up affecting your bottom line.

Here are 10 tips to help you stay on track and heading toward the profits you desire and deserve.

1. Organize everything.  Having a system in place for your business, your home office, and your work time is essential to remain focused and productive.  Develop a system of organizing your office files and your computer files.  Make sure there is a place for everything including the stuff you got in the mail today.  Some common file categories are:

• Expenses
• Bank accounts
• Receipts
• Customer files
• Contracts
• Payables
• Receivables
• Taxes
• Business entity documentation
• Marketing
• Copywriting ideas

On your computer it is often helpful to have a folder for every major aspect of your business with separate smaller folders contained inside if necessary.  For example you could have a taxes folder on your computer with separate tax information stored in sub folders by date.  Al l the tax information and documentation for each year would be stored in that year’s folder.  The important thing to remember when developing a system of organization is to make sure that it is a system that will work for you, your business, lifestyle and needs.  If it doesn’t you wont use it and it won’t do you any good.

2. Plan.  Some people are planners and others are doers.  To be a successful business owner, you have to be both.  You have to plan it and then you have to do it.  Plan your business, plan your year, plan your month, plan your week, plan your day.  Task lists and project management systems are great tools for the day to day, month to month type planning.  For longer range annual planning you will want to go back to your business plan and review, revise, and reassess it annually.

Goals are much easier achieved if you set out a plan to achieve them.  This includes the small daily goals like calling that contact about that new joint venture idea you have.  I’m sure you have already heard this, but good goals are measurable, relevant, timely, and attainable.

3. To do lists.  To do lists or task lists as we talked about in #2 are essential to keep you on task and focused on your goal. Task lists also help keep you organized and they help you prioritize your day.  If you’re like me, then they help to motivate you too.  There’s something satisfying about crossing an item off of your task list, and conversely something terrifying about watching that task list grow and grow while doing nothing to shorten it and keep it under control.

4. Automate what you can.  One of the fantastic things about working from home and owning an online business is that there are so many wonderful tools available to help make our lives easier.  There are autoresponders and electronic shopping carts.  Web tracking statistics and article Submission Software programs.  Heck, there are even task list programs that will email you your task list for the day!  Automating certain tasks will help take the burden off of your shoulders and free up your time to spend on more important tasks.

5. Keep real hours.  One of the pitfalls of working from home is the tendency to work 12 hours a day.  I know you’re thinking no way, I wouldn’t do that, but it happens and your friends, family, and even your pets suffer the consequences.  You do too.  All work and no play makes ….well you know the rest.  Even if you LOVE your job, it is important to step away from it.  Keep real hours. 9-5, 8-4, 10-6 it doesn’t matter. Do whatever works best for you and your business but when it comes time to clock out and eat dinner with your family – do it.  Work isn’t going anywhere but your family is.

6. Let it go.  This goes back to #5.  When the horn blows and it’s time to turn off the computer and go to your child’s choir concert, be there with them in the moment.  If your mind is at home thinking about the task you didn’t quite finish or the project you’re starting tomorrow, you’re not truly with your child.

7. Track your hours.  Tracking the hours you work and the time it takes to accomplish certain tasks can be an eye opening experience.  You may find that the copywriting you think is only taking you an hour a day is actually taking you two.  You may also find that your administrative tasks are taking significantly less time than you thought they were or that answering emails consumes half of your day.  Tracking your time is essential if you want to later determine the value of it.

8. Plan your admin time.  Use the time of day that you are most productive for the tasks that are important to your business.  You can easily handle your administrative tasks during the time of the day when you’re unable to focus as well or are likely to have more interruptions.

9. Outsource what you can.  Since there are only 24 hours in a day and 5 days in a working week, it may not be possible to get everything done.  If you can fit it into your budget to outsource some of the more time consuming, and less appealing tasks, it may be worth your while to do so.  Particularly if your time would be better spent on tasks that generate revenue.

10. Identify your time stealers.  Everyone has time stealers.  Some get easily distracted by email.  Others find themselves spending too much time networking online or researching.  You likely know what your time stealers are.  If you don’t track what you do during the workday and how much time you spend doing it.  The results will be interesting.

Once you know where you’re losing time, you can take measures to eliminate it.  For example, if email is stealing your time, schedule checking your email into your task list in the morning, at lunch and near the end of the day.  That way you’re not responding to every new email in your inbox. 

Working from home is a joy but it takes a bit of structure and discipline if you want to be productive.  Using these ten tips as guidelines, you’ll be well on your way to a productive, and profitable future.
 
6 Business Management Tips You Can Live With

1. Set goals.  The number one business management tool you can use to better your business is goals.  Long term goals, short term goals and mid range goals too.  In fact, when you started your busies, you wrote a business plan right?  Did your business plan include your goals?  Business goals can include anything from how much you want to gross this year to how many hours you want to work.  In fact, it’s a common business management goal to work as few hours as possible and make a substantial income.  It’s one of the reasons many people start an online business in the first place.

So what are your goals?  As you write down your goals, take the time to make sure they meet the following criteria.  Are your goals measurable?  It isn’t enough to make a goal that you want to make more money or you want to work less.  How will you know when you’ve achieved your goal?  Quantify your goals so they’re measurable and you know when you’ve achieved success.

Make your goals timely.  What is your deadline for your goal?  If you don’t have a deadline for your goal, they’ll slip away and never get accomplished.  A deadline makes you accountable for your goals.  Along with timely is the ability to make your goals attainable.  There’s nothing worse than setting a goal that is so beyond your reach you end up feeling defeated.  Create your goals wisely, establish a plan to achieve them and you’ll create a pattern of success that will expand beyond your business and into your personal life too.

 
2. Set your business up the right way.  By setting your business up, we’re talking about both as an entity, LLC, sole proprietor, s corp. etc.., as well as setting it up separate from your personal life.  Get a separate business account.  Obtain a business address and phone number.  Separate and set up your business as an individual entity. This not only protects you legally it covers you with the government and tax system.  Take the time to meet with an accountant to get a best practices system established for accounting, this means all of your payables, receivables and taxes.  If you take these measures in the beginning, you’ll make your business life easier both day to day and in the long run.

3. Automate what you can.  The wonder of doing business online is that there are so many features and tasks you can automate.  Invoicing can be automated, shipping and fulfillment can be automated.  Email marketing can be automated, tracking your web statistics, advertising and even content distribution can all be automated.  Automate everything you can to enable yourself more free time to spend on tasks that generate profits or simply to give you more free time to enjoy your life.

4. Outsource well.  Speaking of saving yourself time.  Outsourcing is a fantastic tool to give your business a step up and to give you a little less stress.  Many self-employed business owners, work somewhere between 40 and 80 hours a week.  It can be a lot of stress to own a business and handle every single task and responsibility.  That is just one reason to consider outsourcing – save your sanity and spend more time focusing on you and your family.

There are a number of tasks you may be considering outsourcing.  They generally fall into a few categories:

• Administrative tasks.  These are often time consuming tasks that do not have a high hourly value, yet they need to be accomplished to make your business run effectively and efficiently.

• Professional tasks.  These tasks often fall under the realm of copywriting, scripting, managing an affiliate program, marketing tasks and the like.  They are important to your bottom line, however they can be effectively handled by an outside professional at a nominal hourly value.

• Technical tasks.  These are tasks that may take you some time to learn how to do.  They often fall under the realm of creating software, databases, special web languages, and so on.  These are time stealers simply because of the time it would take for you to learn how to do these particular tasks.  Their hourly value can be quite high.  The impact on your bottom line varies from task to task.  If you’re creating a new web element, it may contribute directly to profits.

Take a look at your job description. What can you outsource to make your business run more efficiently?

5.  Tell people what you want, not how to do it – create systems and accountability.  Delegating responsibilities is good business.  Here are a few ideas on how to work with others for maximum results.

• Establish a system of communication that works for both you and your employee.  Use the system to include what you want accomplished and by when. Use the rules for goal setting; make the task measurable, timely, and attainable.

• Communicate the task clearly.  Make sure that all deadlines, resources, and task responsibilities are thoroughly communicated.  Ask your employee questions to make sure task is understood.  Once you assign the task, let it go.  When you let go, you can focus on tasks required to grow your business and improve profits.

• Upon completion of the task provide feedback to your employee.  If constructive criticism is required, sandwich it between positive feedback for best results and to ensure a quality working relationship.
 
6.  Business plans and budgets.  It is a good business practice to have a business budget built right into your business plan. This is particularly important if you plan on seeking financing for your business.   Having an accurate and realistic budget will enable you to make educated spending decisions.

When creating a business budget your first step is often to determine your expenses.  Your expenses include operating costs, taxes, the costs of outsourcing, marketing, publicity and so on.  Make a list of all categories you anticipate having costs and all areas where you already know your expenses.

A budget is not a money diet, it is a spending plan and this is particularly important when it comes to your business.  You want to make sure you have enough money to pay your bills and grow your business.  Track your expenses and income and review your budget often.  If you find you’re spending more in one category, make the adjustments in your budget.

When it comes to owning and operating a business, a few good business management practices can go a long way.  Take the time to organize your life, outsource and automate what you can, establish processes to communicate your needs clearly, and structure your planning and spending in a way that makes sense for you.

Jeremy Gislason
http://www.articlesbase.com/home-business-articles/10-tips-to-make-working-from-home-more-productive-700195.html

You have permission to publish this article in its entirety,
electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as Robert
Leggett’s byline is included. A courtesy copy of your
publication would be appreciated.

ARTICLE WORD COUNT: [686]

KEY WORDS: submit,articles,Jason Potash,Article
Announcer,dynamic balance,equilibrium,new
authors,articles,Google,Yahoo,MSN,always intelligently automate
whenever possible,strong headlines,valuable content,Submission
Guidelines,become a better writer,Article Submission
Directories,submission sites

SUMMARY: I anticipated a reaction to the introduction of this
new software [Jason Potash's "Article Announcer"]. I was right.
I chose to submit last month’s article, “Penury Perpetuates
Poverty” the “hard way,” one by one to various submission sites
on the Internet. Out of about 80 submissions, I discovered about
25% have temporarily (I hope) ceased accepting new
authors/articles. Some submission pages came up with a 404 Error
upon clicking the “submit” button.

Copyright 2005 – by Robert Leggett – All rights reserved

* * * * * * *

Last month, I began promoting Jason Potash’s “Article
Announcer.” I always take time to research new products on the
market. I don’t believe in “magic bullets.” There is a principle
taught in physics, chemistry, biology and even Algebra 101.
Nature seeks dynamic balance, equilibrium. If you add something
to the left side of the = sign, the right side moves to balance
it.

I anticipated a reaction to the introduction of this new
software. I was right. I chose to submit last month’s article,
“Penury Perpetuates Poverty” the “hard way,” one by one to
various submission sites on the Internet. Out of about 80
submissions, I discovered about 25% have temporarily (I hope)
ceased accepting new authors/articles. Some submission pages
came up with a 404 Error upon clicking the “submit” button.

One came up with the following: “Wére being plagued by so
many automated submissions, duplicate article submissions, etc.
that we spend too much time in selecting the real articles that
matter. For this reason we are temporary not accepting new
submissions until we have implemented some security measures to
block bad submissions. We hope you understand. Please come back
in about 1 month to submit your articles.”

Some have extremely obtuse instructions. Some simply don’t work.
Some are very specialized. Some are email submissions only
(which opens the door to being spam’d). Some of these bounced.
One may have had his ISP overloaded, shut down, and later began
accepting articles again.

Right now I’m checking each site if my article was accepted. I
know it is “loading the dice” when I access Google, Yahoo, MSN
and search on ["Robert Leggett" Penury]. I was getting over 600
listings and dominated the first few pages of these search
engines. I’m even listed on sites where I never submitted.

Of course just after doing my first “submission run” I
periodically checked Google. Wow! Exposure just kept growing!
Then, one day, I got no listing at all on Google. Yahoo still
liked me a little. The following day I was baaaaaack. I need to
research why Google didn’t like me that one day. Now my search
engine hits have settled down to a more realistic number.

Shortly after going to press, I continued checking latest
submission and submitted my next article, “Discover your
Creativity.” I am “paying my dues.” I must know how this all
works. It is new to me. Once I see everything has settled down
and a more stable balance has been achieved, I will seriously
consider purchasing Jason Potash’s “Article Announcer” – if it
saves me time. Always intelligently automate whenever possible!

“Doing it the hard way” I have discovered my articles must have
strong headlines. They must contain words search engine spiders
like. They must have valuable content. Don’t take my word on
this. Check out a lot of “Submission Guidelines” at different
directories. Through necessity, I must become a better writer.

This exercise was time intensive. I have profited more not
taking a “magic bullet” approach. Other benefits include
“sharpening up” our webZine “Cyberspace Marketeer,” offering
greater content and more user-friendly design. I have just added
a new page which includes 37 user-friendly Article Submission
Directories.

Recently I received the following [edited] message from one of
these Directories: “You can now save your default RESOURCE BOX
and up to 2 additional RESOURCE BOXES for your default author
and alternate author accounts – SAVING YOU THE TIME from having
to copy and paste it each time you send in a new article. .
Think of the additional time you can save with this new feature?
Perhaps you might want to head to the gym earlier or better yet,
send in another article now that you can do it in less time!
*hint hint*”

They want you! Write and rewrite your articles you plan to
submit. Research different submission sites. If you publish your
own eZine or webZine, some sites accept these listings, too.
Some sites also accept News Releases. Get a feel for these
submission sites. Work with them. When you eventually decide to
put much of this on automatic, you will have a much better
overview of the process.

Robert Leggett
http://www.articlesbase.com/viral-marketing-articles/quotare-you-submitting-your-articlesquot-2804.html

Article marketing has become very powerful over the last several years and the popularity is increasing constantly. Due to the success that many have with submitting to article directories, new technologies have been created. These technologies and new tools have been designed to help make it easier for many to transition over into article marketing.

Article directories have started to upgrade their service to include many new tools and some even with brand new technologies that are created to help the authors and marketers take full advantage of article marketing. Many of these tools and new technologies have been created to make article marketing more automotive.

Taking advantage of automation will make your article marketing efforts easier and your life easier. Submitting your recent articles that you have written to thousands of article directories is now easier than ever. Creating interesting content filled articles has now become possible because of new technologies. Short articles can even be submitted to your blogs on pure auto-pilot.

Advancements That Will Change the History of Article Marketing

Article Submission — The popularity of auto submission for articles have been increasing and some developers have taken note of this popularity. There are many submission services online and software that can be run from your desktop. Not all auto submission is created the same though and this is where technology is starting to step in. Many auto submission services use generic categories to submit your articles, for more details visit to www.ezines-success.com which can be more harmful to your marketing efforts. Handfuls of submission services have decided enough was enough and have created powerful auto submission tools that will submit to each article directories exact categories. Think of how much more exposure your article could get by being submitted to the proper category.

Drip-Feed Submission — Blogs have been increasing in popularity and with that increase comes the need for automation of posting to your blog. Many marketers have 20 or more blogs and it is very time consuming trying to keep those blogs updated. Drip-Feed submission will take articles that you have written and post them to your blog on auto-pilot at the times your specify. You could drip-feed your blog with 1 or 2 articles per day or per hour. Only a handful of sites currently offer this technology but those sites are producing more powerful tools to make your life easier.

Content Creator — Until recently only a few article directories have been allowing a limited about of html in articles. There are a handful of sites though that are allowing full html that will actually allow the creation of article sales pages. With this brand new technology writers and authors have the capabilities to insert images, for more details visit to www.newbies-copywriting.com videos, flash, html templates and many other elements into articles. Using proper content creation can transform your article into a true work of art.

Though many of these tools and technologies are only available at a handful of sites currently, technology is increasing everyday and more powerful tools are being created. Think of how much greater of a response you can get from your recent articles that you have written by using these interesting article tools.

ruchika
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/taking-advantage-of-automation-will-make-your-article-marketing-efforts-easier-738913.html

No matter where you go online, you are likely to hear the same thing. “Before you can get started with your online business, you must find a niche.” You will do well to pay heed to this advice, especially if you are new to Internet Marketing.

Each day, thousands of people go online in search of, you guessed it, WEALTH. So many, tend to jump right into those markets that are already so completely saturated with competition and then wonder why it is that they are failing to make any money.

If a person has unlimited money, time and patience, they may have a chance at succeeding. But what about those who do not have unlimited supplies of these resources, it would then be much wiser to start your online business having a smaller niche market.

So what is a niche anyway?

You could purchase anyone of the hundreds of e-books telling you all about niche markets and get the longer answer. Or you could find the definition of a niche from the dictionary. But to give you the shorter version, niche simply means individual or distinct.

Seems everyone and their mother wants to start an Internet Marketing business. The big guns are making their money in this niche market, so it must be the way to go, right. Wrong, that’s the problem. So many people have years of experience in this area, that they have totally saturated the market. So, when someone new tries to compete in this broader market, they will likely not have any chance of success.

Susan Ward on About.com, defines Internet Marketing as “the strategies that are used to market a product or service online, marketing strategies that include search engine optimization and search engine submission, copywriting that encourages site visitors to take action, web site design strategies, online promotions, reciprocal linking, and email marketing”. Anyone who is new to starting an online business will not know enough about all of the areas above to be able to compete in this fast pace market.

So can a new person have a chance at becoming successful? Yes.

But you must think smaller – think niche!

You could possibly come up with any one of the following niches just from the definition above:

Copywriting

Linking

Marketing

Email Marketing

Web Site Design

Search Engine Optimization

Even if you are already extremely experienced or lucky in any one of the above niches, there is still a lot of competition out there in these broader niches. You may decide to do this anyway in the end, but spend some time exploring smaller niches within the more broad areas. This may lead you to finding a niche that you are better suited to anyway.

Finding just the right niche market can be time consuming, for this reason using a resource such as Wordtracker can be helpful. Even though you can find similar software programs on any number of sites, Wordtracker will help break a broad site concept down into many smaller niches.

What you will end up with by using software such as Wordtracker is a list of keywords relevant to your niche that your can focus your business on. Choose a smaller niche so that you will have a better shot at being successful with your business, rather than a broader topic such as Internet Marketing.

Keep in mind, that in order to be successful in any business, it all comes down to supplying a product or service that the public has a demand for and the market has room for. Discover the right niche and you will discover that you are on the right path.

Connie McKenzie
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-business-articles/what-is-a-niche-and-why-do-you-need-one-113318.html

Recently, the concept of marketing your website with articles has gained popularity. Many site owners are having articles written and published on various article directories. The reason is simple, traffic.

Why Article Marketing?

The demand for quality content online never ceases. Smart webmasters realize that by providing this quality content and giving permission for other webmasters to republish their articles results in an excellent opportunity to expose their website to their target audience.

Each article that you write and distribute gives you the chance to plug your site or newsletter in the about the author section. You can typically link directly to your site, for more details visit to www.ezines-success.com and sometimes even can use HTML and link your primary keywords in the anchor text. This gives you some nice, relevant backlinks. Its not uncommon to receive thousands of unique backlinks for each article submitted, as over time your article will continue to be picked up for redistribution by other webmasters.

That’s why article marketing is so popular, its a winning situation all around. Other webmasters can add your quality articles to their sites for free, for more details visit to www.perfect-ghostwriter.com and you get exposure and links. Everybody is happy.

But I cant Write!

Writing a good article is actually surprisingly easy, especially if you are already an expert on your topic. Articles only need to be about 300 – 500 words, and be well written and without spelling and grammatical errors. Even if you are trying to write about a topic that you are not as familiar with, you have options.

Many webmasters outsource the creation of articles. If you visit any web freelance site, such as elance.com, you can usually find someone to write articles for you on any topic for between $10 to $40 per article. As with anything, buyer beware. Its best to give a prospective writer a small assignment first of only a few article to get a feel for the quality of their writing. Remember, the articles that you submit are representing you and your website. Quality matters.

How and Where to Submit Articles?

So, you have written your article, checked it for spelling and grammar and its ready to go…now what? You need to distribute your article to Article Directories, Article Announcement Lists and you can even submit your article directly to industry specific sites.

Many article marketers find that using an article submission software can speed up the time it takes to submit your articles. Article submission software also can help with the “where do I submit to?” question as well. The article submission sites and announcement lists come pre loaded with directories and other sites that accept submissions. You can also add your own sites to the list.

I highly recommend using an article submission software package to submit your articles. The time savings alone is substantial. Personally, I use the article Submission Software to submit to the “basic” directories & portals. Then, I go to Google and type in my topic and “submit article”. Usually, I will have tens or even hundreds more sites that cater specifically to the niche I am promoting. I then submit to those niche sites as well. This technique is not something I see being widely done, however, so there’s a good tip for you!

The traffic from articles submitted to niche sites as well as the directories is substantially higher than the traffic from articles submitted to directories alone.

There you have it. Marketing your website with articles is a great way to get traffic, links and expose your website to new visitors. Its easier than it sounds, even for those that think they cant write. Just try it! Chances are you will be adding Article marketing to your standard internet marketing box of tricks.

sahil
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/you-will-be-adding-article-marketing-to-your-standard-internet-marketing-727880.html

Organizing a Cost Effective Small Business WebSite Promotion And how to promote your website without costing you a nickel.!

Small Business Web Site Promotion

The most important thing to remember when you want to encourage visitors to visit your web site is to make sure they will want to return again. ‘Visitors’ means not just human web surfers, but also the search engines and directories. Small business website promotion, no matter how much you promote your site, will be the look of the site that will keep visitors there and hopefully buy your products or services.

Optimize your Site for Search Engines; Check your links

Small business website promotion starts with a search engine spider indexing or cataloging your site by following the links from one page to another. Just as human visitors dislike a broken link, so do the spiders. If a link doesn’t
work they’ll simply move onto the next page. No matter how sophisticated the search engine software is, it can’t index what it can’t find. Also remember that a spider will not be able to follow a link that requires a form submission or Java Script so small business website promotion is very important.

While considering the subject of links, if you are using HTML and CSS on your site, make sure that both work properly. A certain minimum level of requirements must be met so that your pages will display correctly. It is only if these are met that a spider can do its work. There are free facilities online that can check both of these for you.

* Make sure your links work.
* Do not use forms or Javascript if you want a search engine spider to find your pages
* Check that HTML and CSS work properly.

Do not make your Pages too big!

Most of us have heard the expression ‘size isn’t everything’. While this may not be true of many things, it does matter when it comes to web pages. People do not like having to wait an eternity for a web page to load. Search engine spiders may not fully index a page bigger than 150k in size. Remember that the size of a page does not simply depend on the actual HTML file itself, but includes everything on the page such as images, banners etc.

If you have a lot of images on your pages, then either reduce the number of them, or use a program such as Macromedia Fireworks to optimize them for the web. If the page has a big file size because there is a massive amount of text in it, then you should consider splitting the text into smaller, more manageable pieces and putting them on several pages and linking one to another. SEO Chat has a tool called "Page Size Lookup" which can tell you the size of your web page; you can check it out at:

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/page-size/

* Keep the file size to below 150k
* Optimize images for the web
* Use a free page size checker to find out the actual size of the page.

Search Engines and Directories; What is the difference between a search engine and a directory?People frequently use the term ‘search engine’ as a catch-all expression for anything they use to search the Web. They are different things though, and an understanding of the differences will enable you get use both effectively to promote your site more successfully.

How does a search engine work?

Search engines use highly sophisticated software to search the web for new pages. It then automatically creates and updates their indexes. Whenever they find an active hyperlink, they will follow it and add that to the index and so on. These ‘crawling’ programs are generally referred to as ‘spiders’.

Normally, all this is totally automatic, but sometimes human intervention is involved. The spider will return periodically to the pages and check for updated content. Often there will be a delay between you uploading your page, and the spider finding it, unless you submit your URL directly to the search engine itself. You can submit a
web URL to Google ™ free of charge.

* Search engines are usually automatic
* They will revisit your pages.
* Spiders will find all the pages on your site as long as there are active hyperlinks for them to follow.
* You can submit a site to most search engines free of charge.

How Directories Work.

The primary difference between a search engine and a search directory is that a directory is compiled by a real person. Frequently the site owner will submit a short description of the site together with its URL to the directory compiler to be considered for inclusion. Directories are arranged into categories to make it easier to find what you are looking for.

When you submit your site to a directory, you choose the category you want your site to be featured in. A reviewer then checks to ensure that your site is in the most suitable category.Another difference between a search engine and a directory is that whereas a search engine could list every individual page in your web site, a directory will generally only contain a single entry covering your entire site.

* Directories are compiled by real people.
* They are categorized.
* A reviewer checks to ensure your site is in the best category.
* A directory will usually only contain one entry for your entire site.

Shared Indexes and Hybrids

Things are never so straightforward though. Some search portals are a hybrid, combing a search engine and a directory. The search engine part returns automated results, while the directory gives human found results.Normally, a hybrid will supply hits from the directory as the primary source, with the search engine results of
individual pages as the secondary source.

Getting your Site Ready

It cannot be stressed too strongly that search engines and/or directories are by far the most important way of getting your site noticed. To do this, you have to properly prepare the site and submit your URL to them. Keywords are important: Choose the right keywords

Think what your web site is all about. If you had to describe your site in one word, then that word is your first keyword. Then think about other words to describe your site. Make a list of them, with the most important at the top of the list and so on. You want a list of between ten and fifteen words. Since these keywords will be used in a variety of ways, it is important that you take some time selecting them.

Keywords are important because they are possibly the most important thing that a search engine uses to determine whether a page is included in the search results. Even although different search engines use keywords in different ways, most experts agree that the frequency and position of your keywords is an important factor.

* Select keywords to describe your site.
* Choose 10 – 15 keywords.
* Take your time picking keywords – they are extremely important.

Pick a Good Title for your Web Page

When you write a web page, there is always a tag. This goes into the section of your web page.
The tag is what is shown at the top of your web page when it is displayed in a web browser. Search
engines, however, often use the tag as the title of the listing in the results.
The tag looks like this
The name of my Web Page

Not only is it good practice to make your tag have a good description of the content of the page, but if you can manage to work into it some of your keywords, so much the better.

Why you should use Meta Tags? What are meta tags?

Meta tags are a special type of HTML code that goes into the section of a web page. Site visitors do not normally see them, but search engine spiders do. Just as some HTML tags have an attribute with a value, so too do meta tags.

As far as optimizing your web page for search engines is concerned, the most important meta tags are keywords and description. The syntax for the keyword tag is as follows:

<meta name="keywords" content="">

The description tag is as follows:

<meta name="description" content="">
 
Unlike some HTML tags, it is not strictly necessary to have the meta tag closed, but if you want to have valid

XHTML, then you do need to close all your tags.
Consider your URL

Since we are discussing matters that will influence how a page appears, it is worth considering the actual URL of the page itself. Since the URL that appears in your browser reflects the file path for the page, it makes good sense to have the file name reflect the navigation of the site.

You can see at a glance that this page refers to the Lower Square, which is part of the Castle, which in turn is part of Stirling. Not only does this meaningful URL impart information to the visitor, but for the web designer it makes sense to have the separate files arranged in a logical manner. This will only apply to pages that have not been dynamically created by a database program, of course.

* Choose a meaningful title for your page.
* Put your keywords into the /www.dmoz.org/). This is the largest human-maintained directory of the Web. Because it allows virtually anyone to access its resources, many search portals such as AOL, Netscape and HotBot take advantage of this and include their data into their own systems. This means that once you are included on the ODP database, you are also included in many others.

* There are places you can submit your site free of charge
* Google is probably the most important place to submit to.
* Yahoo is a good second choice if you don’t mind registering with them.
* Do not forget the Open Directory Project.

Paid Listings

Although Google and Yahoo do not charge you anything for submitting your site to them, they do not guarantee where or when your site will appear in their listings. However, they do have sponsored links that appear either above or beside the listing of search engine hits. These are useful for promoting your small business web site since they are targeted links. If, for instance, someone searches for “bagpipes”, then not only will they get a list of bagpipe related sites returned, but they will also see the ‘sponsored links”.

Free Promotional Techniques: Ad Swapping

This is one of the easier ways of getting your web site promoted. What it involves basically is that you display an advertising banner, button or text link on your web site, and other sites do the same for your ads.The simplest way of swapping banner ads is to join an existing banner swapping network Banner Advertising

Banner networks work because you are provided with a few lines of HTML code to include on your web pages, usually near the top. The HTML creates banners from other sites on your pages. When a visitor clicks on them, they are re-directed to their web site. At the same time, you provide the network organizer with your own banner to display elsewhere.

There are many banner ad networks available, so choose with caution. Try to find one that will direct traffic to your site, by displaying your ad on related sites. In order for the network to make money, they will perhaps ask you to display 2 banners in return for displaying yours once.

No network will promise a 1:1 ratio, so avoid those that do. Do not consider paying for extra banners until you have proved to yourself that the free ad is generating enough visitors to your site. Although most networks will promise not to display ads for pornographic or other unsuitable sites, in reality you have no control over them.

* Banner ads are free
* Try to choose a network that is related in some way to your business.
* Avoid those that make extravagant claims about the ratio of ads.
* Be aware that you have virtually no control over what ads appear on your site.
* You might get buttons or text links instead of banners.

Peer to Peer Swaps

Although banner swapping can yield increased exposure of your site, sometimes a more targeted approach is required. The object of the exercise is to get your ad seen by as many possible visitors as possible, therefore if you can arrange a deal with the webmaster of a busier site than yours it could be advantageous.

You may have to compromise. In return for prominently displaying an advertisement for a busier or better known web site than yours, you might have to agree to less prominence on the other site.Web RingsThese are networks of similarly themed sites which creates links from one to another to form a chain. You will display a web link icon and a list of at least some of the other sites in the ring. If you are just launching your web site it is probably best to try to join an established ring.

There are possible flaws in joining a web ring. You will need to allow space on your pages to display the ring logo. Visitors might think that you are part of an organization, and if some of the sites are badly built, you might be associated with the rest of them. You will have no control over which sites join the ring, and link to you and vice
versa.

* Web rings are free.
* They are normally similar web sites to your own.
* You have no control over the quality of the other sites in the ring.

Article Submission Sites : What is an Article Submission site?

An article submission site, and there are roughly 250 of them, are an effective way of promoting your own goods and services as well as generating traffic to your web site. Their purpose is to provide webmasters, e-book editors and e-zine publishers with free content for their own publications. The articles are usually arranged into different categories, and the site is normally searchable.

How they workYou write an article or series of articles about what you have to offer on your web site. The purpose of the article is not to directly sell your goods. Let us suppose that your web site sells a wide range of possible gifts for all members of the family. Your article might be about, for example, birthday gift ideas for teenage boys.

The purpose is to make your article interesting enough and informative enough for it to be used somewhere else. Since you have included some biographical details about yourself, including your own URL, and your article is published exactly as it appears on the article site, your URL appears in the end-user’s web site. Thus you are getting free publicity, and the publisher is getting free content.

* Article submission sites get you free publicity.
* Publishers get free page content.
* Your URL appears wherever your article is used, and so generates traffic to your site.

Paid or free submissions

All article submission sites will allow you to submit your article for nothing. You register with the site, and you can select what category you want your article to appear in. When you write your article you will include the same keywords as you did when you wrote the HTML for your web site. Thus a search engine will find your site, as well as the article you wrote about it.

Some article sites will allow you to bid for better placement within their pages. Basically, the more you bid, the higher prominence you will get on the article site’s home page. Thus you are the first thing a publisher notices. Even if you are outbid for top spot, chances are you will still be on the home page. Since a lot of the sites also have separate front pages for each of the categories, even if you don’t achieve prime position on the site’s home page, you likely will in the category pages.

* Use the same keywords you used on your web pages.
* You can bid for increased placement on the article site’s pages.

Summary

As you can see, there are many ways that you can promote your small business web site. By far the simplest way is to ensure that your web site has carefully chosen key words for search engines to find. You can also submit your web site to search engines, ad exchange networks, web rings and article submission sites free.

Rajesh
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/organizing-a-cost-effective-small-business-website-promotion-and-how-to-promote-your-website-without-costing-you-a-nickel-101704.html

Article submission tool enjoys a celebrity status with internet marketers especially among those who market with articles. It basically makes it easier for an online author to submit articles that would have otherwise been tedious when done manually. Article marketing has been an old workhorse of internet marketing and is still very effective in today’s internet marketing arena. Online entrepreneurs and website owners are missing out a huge chunk of targeted traffic if they do not make article submission a good part of their website promotion strategy. It is even worse if they are marketing with articles manually without the help of an article submission tool.

Article submission is an important step of article marketing with or without article submission tool. Even if you have written an excellent article, without sufficient exposure, it is worthless to you. No traffic means no sales and sign ups. Period! So submitting your articles cannot be overlooked. There are reasons why article submission to many article directories is useful and a must for maximum exposure. Article marketing is a numbers game. Whether you like it or not, for more details visit to www.newbies-copywriting.com the truth is the more article directories you submit to, you effectively increase the chance of your articles getting picked up by webmasters.

Webmasters are constantly looking for fresh and informational content for their websites. And article directories are a good source that continually supplies good content. So webmasters would always hang around the top article directories and even smaller niche directories, to search for articles packed with quality content. If you plan to submit to only a few article directories, for more details visit to www.perfect-ghostwriter.com your articles do not get noticed. So, spreading your net wider is the way to go! The result would be more webmasters publish your article and this is the sneaky part – they include your resource box link pointing to your website. So their website visitors also become yours.

Do you begin to see the power of submitting to a large number of article directories for instant, targeted and buying traffic? But wait, there is a problem with doing that without using an article submission tool. It can take hours and even days to submit one article to hundreds of article directories. And this means that we can only submit at the very most, one article in a week or within a few days at best. The time spent is one issue you have to grapple with. Another issue is it can be very tedious and the whole process can really be monotonous to the point that you wonder what you are doing for the whole day!

In the internet marketing world, there are often smart solutions to every problem. In this case, there are article submission tools available to take the load of article submission. One is to pay for article submission service such as using iSnare or Article Marketer to do the job. It sounds good that you can finally shake the submission process of articles off your back. But you now have to end up paying these services every month to submit articles. The more affordable option is to use an article submission tool or software to do the job. Article submission tools can really help you to speed up the submission process so that you can focus your time on writing more quality articles. And the best part is most article submission tools in the software format only carry a one-time price tag. You can submit unlimited number of articles once you buy it.

Submitting articles with article submission tool makes it a breeze. The versatility and affordability of article submission tools are reasons why online marketers use them everyday in their internet marketing efforts. In fact, most would agree that they feel handicapped without this tool in their toolkits. With so many different article submission tools in the market, it can be challenging to decide which suits you best. Find out more about the top and most popular article submission tools marketing gurus use to make explosive sales each day.

ruchika
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/article-marketing-article-submission-tools-available-to-take-the-load-of-article-submission-738917.html

Despite the existence of a whole array of online marketing strategies, article submission can still yield great results for online businesses. Many people who write and submit articles to a handful of directories on topics relevant to their online businesses may be initially disappointed with their page ranks. Here’s some news: marketing on the internet is a marathon and not a sprint. As with a website that is never truly finished, online marketing should be considered an ongoing process. Perseverance and flexibility are key.

New competitors for any online business are either setting up online or using effective marketing strategies every day, to stay ahead of the game, attract new traffic and do more business.

Article marketing is one of a range of relatively inexpensive methods that these competitors may be using to achieve permanently high organic rankings for search engine enquiries. However, as with other online marketing strategies, for more details visit to www.writing-fast-cash.com it has to be done properly to generate traffic to your website. There are few things that have to be borne in mind for effective article submission.

How to craft your Articles

The internet is the world’s largest library, growing at a vast rate every second of every day. While ‘large’ means that millions of people are using it, it can also mean that it’s very easy to get lost and be lost. If nobody can find your website, this is obviously bad for your business. Articles that are distributed via the internet will be found only if an appropriate and catchy title is attached to it. Very few people are likely to read an article if the title is boring. It’s good to have relevant keywords in the title, for more details visit to www.article-submitters.com but you should make sure that the title does not lose meaning by including them. Titles should be always written for humans and not for search engine robots.

The body of the article is the area which should be made search engine friendly. Select an appropriate list and number of keywords that should be used in the body of the article. A 2% – 4% ratio of keywords is a rough guideline to consider. This means that in a 500-word article, there would be up to 20 keywords in the article. This also means that readers are less likely to be irritated by repetition in the content. Online marketing wisdom suggests that search engines crawl articles based on the freshness of the content. Hence it’s always good to write articles with new and unique information.

Factors to be considered in Article Submission:

In the world of online promotion, writing articles and submitting them to popular directories is very important. A good article directory actively promotes its content to search engines and is normally linked to by dozens of websites, thus would have a lot of traffic. To maximize your online visibility, it’s important to ensure that your articles are distributed by hand and in the right categories of highly-ranked, popular article directories. This is a time-consuming process, and with hundreds of article directories, this could literally take days to complete. You could be tempted by article Submission Software, but this may well be counterproductive and because your well-written article to be placed in the wrong category, where they will never be found by the readers who could have become potential visitors to your website. Manual article submission is always the best choice.

Why Article Submission should be done by humans

Improper article submission with the use of automated software, badly-written content and submission in irrelevant categories may seriously affect the success of your article marketing campaign. The truth is that article submission, when done properly, and with the input of a human being, has the capability to drive huge traffic to your website.

maddy.dec2008
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/you-can-article-submission-delivers-results-for-online-businesses-677581.html

Will your site be penalized for automatic directory submissions? On the surface, it’s almost an absurd question. The search engines only see a backlink from a directory, they have no way to determine that the link was obtained with an automatic submitter. Even if they could identify automatic submissions, why would they care?

While it seems like an obvious answer, there is a lot of misinformation floating around the SEO community regarding automatic submissions. “You should always submit manually” is repeated in some forums like a mantra, without any actual evidence that it is true.

Again, why would the search engines even care how you submitted your site? It’s up to the directory owner to either approve or reject your submission. If the directory chooses to list your site, it’s unlikely that a search engine would somehow penalize you for that link.

So it’s the directory owners themselves who may take issue with your automatic submissions, if they’re done the wrong way. Automatic submission can be very quick and effective, but it does require some common sense. Obviously, one thing you don’t want to do is keep submitting to the same directory over and over again. Your IP will probably be banned after a while and the directory owner may add image verification or other measures to defeat future automatic submissions.

A good automatic submission program should not leave any identifying footprints. Be careful when using free tools as sometimes they add a “submitted by” tag somewhere in the description. This problem is more common with article submitters because it’s easy to stick a tagline in the author’s bio box, but it still deserves a mention here.

Improper category selection is another quick tip-off that your submission came from an automatic submission program. The problem is that most of these programs try to read the category on the fly, many subjects can be listed in different categories or subcategories. For example, an automotive site could fit into Blogs/Automotive, Recreation/Automotive, or Shopping/Automotive. In this case, the software may find the “Blogs/Automotive” label first and submit every car-related site into that category, whether it is a blog or not.

Another thing not to do is submitting tons of subdomains or inner pages from the same site. This is a common tactic for spammers and most directories prohibit it. If you must submit subdomains or subpages, there are many directories that will allow this for a small fee. Submitting them without permission will only irritate the directory owner and probably get you banned.

Automatic Submission Software can actually improve the quality of your directory submissions, along with saving lots of time. A good program can help avoid common reasons for automatic rejections like typos and incorrect description length. Once you enter your site information in the submission software, it will submit correctly to all of the directories, eliminating all those extra chances to make a mistake.

Overall, automatic directory submission by itself cannot hurt your ranking in the search engines. You will almost always gain ranking and Pagerank anytime you submit to web directories, unless you are submitting to low-quality sites. Don’t abuse the automatic submission tools and you won’t have any problems with search engines or ticked off directory owners.

Katherine Keleher
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-promotion-articles/can-automatic-directory-submissions-hurt-your-sites-ranking-54058.html