Free SEO Reporting Tools for the Business Owner with a Plan..

Most company owners know that SEO is a long and slow process. You’re constantly waiting to see your name at the top of that search engine results page, but it’s tough to know when it’s going to happen. For this reason, many companies use SEO reporting tools to help ease a little bit of the suspense.
SEO reporting helps keep you in the loop when it comes to your SEO efforts. In general, SEO reporting software will give you the ranking of a keyword you are targeting and then show you the jump in rankings that keyword has over time. Other reporting tools offer information about your web pages for further optimization, the Google PageRank or Alexa ranking of your site, and/or the competition for a specific keyword. Unfortunately, many of these software cost money that many companies just don’t have. In such an up-and-down economy, things like SEO reporting tools usually get the boot when it comes to budget cuts.


However, there are several SEO reporting tools that are completely free. Although they may not have quite as many of those “fancy” features you would get with some software, they get the job done. The tools will give you an idea about the success (or failure) of your SEO efforts so you can improve. Below is a list of my top five favorite free reporting tools.

Top 5 SEO Reporting Tools That Work Break Your Pocketbook

1. Google Analytics – This tool allows you to see not only the traffic to your website, but where that traffic is coming from. This will let you know if people are finding you through links or directly. You can also see how you are doing in terms of ranking by taking a quick look at a graph.
2. SEO Quake – This works great for Mozilla Firefox and Chrome and works as a browser plugin. It will show you your PageRank and Alexa ranking and can be installed as a toolbar right at the top of your screen. This makes the tool convenient to use. It also has the ability to highlight the number of times a keyword shows up on a specific webpage.
3. SEO for Firefox – This tool also generates rankings (obviously) and is easy to use. It also allows you to find the source of all the data that is pulled for you, which is a nice feature for someone who likes to have a full understanding of all analytics. Read the SEO Book article for a complete list of features.
4. Rank Checker – This is another Firefox extension that allows you to check rankings while surfing the Internet. All you need to do is enter your website’s domain name and then paste in the keywords you’re hoping to track.
5. Quarkbase – What makes this tool somewhat unique is the fact that it can tell you detailed information about a domain. It will tell you the owner, the sites date history, and the social media accounts of a specific site. This is a great tool for those who like to dig a little bit deeper into SEO reporting and competition.

Read more at http://technicallyeasy.net/2012/02/free-seo-reporting-tools-for-the-business-owner-with-a-plan/#RzU5ueaqeMEGsRbu.99

Tips for Making Money Online with Coupons....

Every day, thousands of people are going to the internet to find a way of making money. As a result, online business has become increasingly competitive, thus making it difficult for anyone to stand out. However, one of the best ways of earning an income online, which is relatively untapped, is through using coupons.
So, how exactly can you make money using coupons?

1. Create Your Own Products and Offer Coupons to Motivate People to Buy

If you want to earn an income using coupons, you should first find a way of branding yourself as an authority in your field. When your prospects begin to trust you and recognize you as an authority in your niche, you can then work towards coming up with your own product.
The best kinds of products are those which can be easily downloaded such as audio or video clips, eBooks, software or electronic courses. Once you have the product, you should then create unique coupons, discounts and promo codes to promote your products on a regular basis.
Coupon offers usually produce in readers a specific sense of urgency. Therefore, if properly used, coupons can significantly multiply the sales of your products.

2. Getting Coupons From Other Product Creators/retailers

If you are not in a position to create your own product, you can also use coupons to market other people’s products. This is referred to as affiliate marketing. Though some product creators run their own affiliate programs, most of them use third part affiliate schemes such as Commission Junction, Affiliate Window, TradeDoubler and Share A Sale to promote their products. Once you join one of these affiliate schemes, you will then need to choose which products you want to promote. Each product has an affiliate link which you can place in your site or blog. When a visitor to your site clicks on the link, they are directed to the merchant’s website.
If they make a purchase, you will then be paid a commission for the sale. An example of an affiliate site is YouLoveCoupons, a coupon blog which promotes london pass promo codes and world soccer discounts.
A very effective way of getting visitors to your site to click on your affiliate links is the ‘click to reveal’ strategy. This is where the visitor is required to click on a button to so as to access some exclusive information.

3. Offer Coupons in Return for Subscription

This is a very subtle and powerful strategy that is rarely used. It simply involves offering people who subscribe to your list discounts and coupons. Let them know that they will be receiving more coupons in future. This will motivate them to open your emails every time you send a message. By building your list, you will be able to increase your sales in the long run.

Read more at http://technicallyeasy.net/2012/04/tips-for-making-money-online-with-coupons/#9dagYMrd5cREQ8tt.99

Making money...online

Making money on the Internet is a hot topic, and something many of us would like to do. It’s a nice thought to stay at home and make money 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without actually working those hours. One of the most common means of making money is through advertising on your Web site, where a visitor will click on an advertising banner, and you get a percentage of the cost of that click.
Last year I was looking into ways to make money off the Internet. I didn’t have a Web site at the time, so the advertising idea was not applicable. Another solution would be the more time consuming method: open an ecommerce site. I have done Web programming before, but have never created an ecommerce site. After looking into what is required, such as a Web host, merchant account, inventory management, shipping, to name few, I decided to look for an easier way.
This easier way presented itself in the form of Shopster. I decided to take the chance and signed up with them to see what they had to offer.
Here is what they have to offer:

1. World-class storefront solution.
2. Choice from over 700,000 wholesale products to add to your store.
3. Easy management of their store. (You’ll be able to make changes and customize literally anything).
4. Use of any domain name for your store.
5. Full Hosting of your store.
6. Coupon creation functionality.
7. Automatic cross-sells.
8. Automatic bestsellers.
9. Optimization of their store for the search engines.
10. Logo creation software.
11. Unlimited categories, custom pages, and feature pages.
12. Complete order history of their customers. Plus your customer’s contact details for cross-selling/up-selling.
13. Free Updates.
14. Complete search statistics of their store. (You’ll be able to see what your customers are searching for).
15. Choice of up to 1000 products. (You can add more at any time for only $9.95 a month per 1000 additional products).
16. Customer Reviews on your products.
17. Full customer service on all of your customer’s orders.
18. Product delivery on all your orders.
19. Dispute resolution included.
20. Payment System included.
21. Monthly payouts on your sales.
22. Secure checkout/SSL included.
23. Branded emails to send to your consumers included.
24. Fraud detection on all orders included.
25. Access to Shopster’s excellent community forums.
26. Free marketing guide and assistance.
27. $50 in free keyword marketing with Yahoo! Search.
28. Store hosted on best servers available in the world – fast, secure, 99.8% server uptime.

Read more at http://technicallyeasy.net/2007/06/making-money-with-ecommerce-store/#a6QhWppyFHVPZuo6.99

How to Make More Money Techniques.

There are many techniques that you can use to make more money from your blog. If your only means of monetizing your blog is CPM advertising — such as Google AdSense — chances are you’re selling yourself short. A select few blogs, typically high-traffic blogs in particular niches, can earn a comfortable living from CPM advertising, most cannot. There’s a reason why it has earned the moniker “webmaster welfare.” It might pay the hosting bills, but chances are it doesn’t go much further than that. If you want to boost your blog’s income, you’ll need to try something different.

How to Make More Money Techniques

There are a few ways to go about earning more money from your blog. Each comes with its own sets of ups and downs. Additionally, not all options make sense for all blogs. Depending on what type of blog you run, you’ll get by best with a different combination of monetization techniques.

Direct Sales

Works best for: Any kind of blog can create a product and sell it on-site. Information products, such as ebooks, work the best, since they require the least amount of overhead. Selling physical products is possible, too, thanks to expanding means of manufacturing and shipping.
Why it works: It’s the most profitable method of website monetization. A single sale can reward the seller with profits that equal days upon days of CPM advertising rates. Even better, direct sales can be combined with CPM advertising to bring in even more money.
Why it doesn’t: Plenty of effort goes into researching and creating a product, whether information or physical. Selling a product also takes focused time and effort — your product isn’t going to sell itself, in other words. It requires great investment and a fair amount of risk, which simply won’t appeal to some people.
Best implementation: Creating a well-organize and thoroughly researched ebook is the best way for a blogger to enter the marketplace. While there are thousands of ebooks already on the market, a quality product, properly marketed, will still sell well. While other products might sell for more money, they typically involve more on the back end. That is, they might not generate the same level of profits, since they include additional costs such as manufacturing and shipping. A well-crafted ebook, though, can provide a greater level of income than CPM advertising alone.

Affiliate Sales

Works best for: New blogs that lack focus can seamlessly implement affiliate sales (though they might have trouble finding lucrative programs). Blogs that exist to provide information can also implement affiliate sales.
Why it works: If your blog already provides reviews and other information about certain products and services, adding a link so that readers can buy them is a simple process. Affiliate sales also have far more potential than CPM advertising. In order to make a dollar through CPM, a blog needs at least a thousand page views — and in instances of lower traffic blogs, it can require many more than that. With a decent conversion rate, affiliate sales stand to earn a blogger more per visitor on average.
Why it doesn’t: Not all blogs are equipped to handle affiliate sales. One of my blogs exists for entertainment purposes, and it’s no surprise that we don’t convert well on affiliate links. That’s because affiliate sales still require a degree of salesmanship. It’s tough to sell and entertain at the same time. Any blogs with an aim to entertain likely won’t do well by placing affiliate links throughout their site.
Best implementation: Affiliate sales can be highly complex, but the payoff can be astronomical. It’s best, then, to study what others in similar niches are doing. Web research can provide some information on this, but any serious affiliate needs to find some cheap tickets and fly out to one of the many annual conventions such as Affiliate Summit or PubCon. That requires some more overhead, but these conferences wouldn’t exist if people didn’t find a good return on investment from them.

Ad Sponsorships

Works best for: Entertainment blogs will do well to find an exclusive sponsor. Essentially, any blog not equipped for affiliate sales will likely do well to search out a corporate advertising sponsor.
Why it works: Look at your average blog. It’s probably littered with ads. Maybe it refreshes constantly, in order to pump up the page views. It’s no wonder that many advertisers find these blogs unattractive places to advertise their services. By seeking out one sponsor for your blog, you’re offering them exclusive placement. Combined with a clean blog layout, it can be a much more agreeable place for them to spend their advertising dollars.
Why it doesn’t: Many companies are still reluctant to advertise on the web. If your blog doesn’t meet a certain traffic threshold, it might be impossible to find a company to pay a reasonable rate for exclusive sponsorship. Also, sponsorships typically require the site place a logo in its banner. Site owners might not be keen on this arrangement.
Best implementation: Hunt around for blogs that have similar traffic levels to yours. Note what types of companies advertise on them (and, of course, which ones advertise on your blogs). Then it’s time to hit the phone lines. Research these companies a little and find out where you can call for advertising inquiries. It will take a little convincing, but it should be clear that a clean sponsorship on a single niche blog can work better than willy nilly ad spots on multiple websites of varying natures.
If you’re not happy with the payouts you’re getting from Google AdSense and other CPM advertising programs, it’s time to change the game. There are many ways you can earn money with your blog that don’t require you to go on webmaster welfare. Some of these programs can even combine with CPM advertising, so you might be able to pay your bills with one and reap the full benefits of the others. Whichever method you choose, make sure to do something. If you’re only using CPM advertising, you are leaving money on the table.

Read more at http://technicallyeasy.net/2012/02/make-more-money-from-your-blog/#RjrzdHDcM7OpswPz.99

How To Generate Web Site Traffic. Tips...

There is much discussion on how to generate traffic to your Web site, but I decided to list a few points on the methods I like to use.

1. It’s All About Content You may have heard that "content is king." What does this mean? Visitors to your site like to read updated and unique content. This means you must update your Web site on a regulary basis to keep your visitors coming back for more. Search engines also love unique content. The more content you have the more you will get listed in search engines. When you first start a site search engines may be your main traffic generator so it’s best to get listed in them. Also remember to check your spelling and grammar.
   
2. Write Content For Your Visitors When writing your content, write it for your visitors and not search engines. This means don’t load up the content with keywords that is hard to read and understand. You need your visitors to keep coming back and not the search engines. If you write unique content the search engines will list you…don’t worry.
   
3. Linking to Your Web Site This is a big part of getting listed in search engines, and thus getting more traffic. The more quality Web sites that link to yours, the better search engine rank you will receive. You should have sites that share the same niche as your site link back to you. When a search engine indexes the other site, it will find the link to yours and then index your site.
   
4. Get Listed in Directories Besides search engines, there is another type of site you should get listed in: a directory. A directory is a list of Web sites that are organized into various categories. Many of these Web sites are very popular so getting listed in one of them can help you generate traffic. A bonus to getting listed in a directory is that they usually have a high page rank, which will help increase yours. Do a search for directories that contain your Web site niche and get added.
See also Open Directory Project.

5. Forums and Blogs I put these two into the same point because they essentially do the same thing: you leave comments and a link to your Web site. Let me explain. Do a search for a forum that is related to your niche, and sign up. Add your Web site name and URL in your signature to your profile. Now leave comments to some of the posts in the forum. Search engines will index forums, and at the same time will find the link in your signature which will once again act as a link back to your site. Leaving comments in blogs acts the same way as comments in forums.
   See also Website Babble.
   
6. Write Ezine Articles Ezine articles are similar to magazine articles except they appear online. There are several free Web sites that allow you to write your own article. These are great as you can become a well-known leader in your niche. You should then put a link at the end of your article to your Web site, so anyone reading it can click the link and go to your site. Search engines will also index any article you have written. Other sites that also enjoy your article may print your article with the link to your Web site included. You can’t get any better than that for something that cost you nothing but time.
   See also Ezine Articles.
   
7. Good Site layout This one is important to get your visitors to return. Make sure your site is easy to read and navigate. Having light grey text on a white background may be hard for some to easily read, so use black instead. A visitor to your site should be able to understand how to navigate within the first few seconds of loading the page. Keep the navigation simple, such as a menu on one side of the page or across the top.
   
8. Submit Your Feed If you have a blog make sure you submit your feed to various Web sites. A feed is the content that you have created in a specific format. You can also create feeds for a regular Web site as well.
   See also Feedburner or Ping-o-matic.
   
9. Advertising This point is not one to generate traffic as much as revenue, but I felt it important to list, as it can reduce your traffic. Placing advertising on your site is a debatable issue. The issue that is up for debate is when should you place advertisment: when you first start your Web site, or when you get a large number of visitors? My take on the issue is that it is your choice, just don’t load your site with advertisment. I hate sites that display advertisement at almost all possible locations on a Web page: top, bottom, left and right. I prefer that the advertisement be in one location and blend into the site and not stand out.
   

Read more at http://technicallyeasy.net/2007/07/how-to-generate-web-site-traffic/#a8gBy6jVLIqKomzQ.99

How to View Your Web Site as Search Engines See It.

For many who start out in web site management, they learn quickly from the experienced webmasters about search engine optimization. Such things as layout and keywords are usually discussed with many tips and tricks offered to improved a web site’s earch engine ranking. There are many web sites that are made up mainly of flash or images which can cause problems with search engines since they have difficulty reading either format.
One of the biggest tips is good unique content with lots of text. The text is what search engines use to rank a web site. In this post I will show you a quick method of viewing your web site as search engines may see it. This will allow you to determine if what the search engines see is how you expect them to see your web site.

View You Web Site’s Text

As mentioned above, many search engines have difficulty reading flash and image only web sites. The reason for this is because there is no text that they can use to rank a web site. Search engines will use the text to rank your site among various keywords in their results.
For someone managing a web site, you may want to view your web site with no images, or even CSS styles to see how a search engine will read your site.
There are web sites online that will display your web site as straight text with no CSS styles or images displayed. Many places may charge a small fee for this option, while others offer it for free. You could also install a text-only web browser and then open your site in that browser.
The easiest method that I found was to view the text-only version of your web site directly in Google, provided that it is ranked. To your web site’s text only version, use the following steps:

1. Enter a search term in Google to display your web site in it’s results. For Technically Easy, I searched for “Technically Easy”.
2. In the results, click the Cached link (see the figure below).

Click to view full size (24KB).
Google will now retrieve a version of your web site it has cached. Keep in mind that since this is a cached version, it may not be up-to-date as to what is currently displayed on your web site.

3. At the top of the cached page, click the cached text link. The figure below shows where this link is located.

Click to view full size (32KB).

4. A cached text-only version of your web site will now appear. This is roughly how a search engine will view your web site. You will also notice the alternate tags for any images that you have included on your web site.

There are a few downsides to using this method:

1. Your web site needs to be included in Google’s index.
2. Only provides a text version of the cached page you are viewing. You will need to click the cached version of additional web pages from Google’s search results to view other pages.
3. The cached text-only version may not be the most recent copy of your web site.

For a quick, easy, and free method of viewing a text-only copy of your web site, you may not care about some of the above points.

Summary

Search engines rank a site in specific keywords they find in the text on a web page. It may at times be beneficial to you to view a text-only version of your web page to see how a search engine may see it. Google’s cache provides a quick and easy method of viewing your web site without images and CSS styles loaded.
Although there are a few downsides to the method, you can easily ensure that the search engines are reading your web site as you would like them to read it.

Read more at http://technicallyeasy.net/2008/07/how-to-view-your-web-site-as-search/#o8LXxZapHCQ5OfQo.99

Submit Sitemap in Google..Webmaster(Blogger)

Adding a sitemap to Google’s Webmaster tools is one of the first tips you will be told to do when you first manage a web site or blog. It is an easy process to do, and you can get many benefits from it, such as monitoring how Google is indexing your pages, the external and internal links it finds, and any problems Google may find with indexing your site.
For Blogger users, the sitemap to your blog may not be easy to find. Blogger does have a built-in tool that can help you add your sitemap, but if other services can use a sitemap, you may want to know where the sitemap is located. The good news, is that it is easy to find.

Blogger Tells You Your Sitemap Name

When I was using Blogger I had to look up in the Blogger help and forums on where I could find a sitemap. I eventually found out that the atom feed produced by Blogger can be used as a sitemap. The trouble was trying to remember the feed URL each time I needed to use the sitemap.
For many web sites, the robots.txt file may contain the location of a sitemap for their site. Usually, a webmaster would need to create the entry into the robots.txt file for it to be included. For Blogger users, this is done automatically for you.
To find the location of your sitemap, use the following steps:

1. Open up your web browser, and type in your Blogger blog’s URL.
2. At the end of the URL add robots.txt. For example, if the URL of your blog is http://myblog.blogspot.com, then enter http://myblog.blogspot.com/robots.txt
   
3. Some text should now be displayed in your browser. Look for a line that starts with Sitemap:. The URL after that label is the location of your sitemap. Using the example above, the line would look like:
   Sitemap: http://myblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated
   
4. Back in Google’s Webmaster Tools, the domain name part of the URL would already be included, so you would just need to specify the feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated portion of the sitemap URL. If other sites are able to accept a sitemap, then you may need to include the entire URL

If in the future you are having problems with your sitemap, you can always pull up the robots.txt file to make sure your sitemap file hasn’t changed.

Read more at http://technicallyeasy.net/2009/02/finding-your-blogger-blogs-sitemap/#uuxkFu0Z9rt1XeuW.99