Copyright © 2005–2006 Mozilla Corporation
The award-winning, free Web browser is better than ever. Browse the Web with confidence - Firefox protects you from viruses, spyware and pop-ups. Enjoy improvements to performance, ease of use and privacy. It's easy to import your favorites and settings and get started. Download Firefox now and get the most out of the Web.
Better Web Experience
Firefox 1.5 has an intuitive interface and blocks viruses, spyware, and popup ads. It delivers Web pages faster than ever. And it’s easy to install and import your favorites. Packed with useful features like tabbed browsing, Live Bookmarks, and an integrated Search bar, Firefox will change the way you experience the Web, for the better.

© Herman Drost

A search engine optimization maintenance service plan will ensure that your site will continue to increase in its rankings, attract more visitors and make more sales. It's
not enough to simply design your web site, have it optimized for the search engines and expect it to continually rank well. If left alone, you may soon lose the business your web site initially generated.

What should be included in a SEO maintenance service plan?
READ MORE..

1. Monitor search engine rankings - there will be many fluctuations in your search engine rankings. This may be
due to search engines changing their ranking formulas, or competitors trying to get ahead of you. More sites are
added to the web each day so you need to monitor your search engine rankings to be competitive. I create monthly
ranking reports on where your site is currently ranked for each of the major search engines.

2. Traffic Tracking - it's essential to know where most of your traffic is coming from so you can make adjustments to
your marketing strategies. For example if most of your traffic is coming from one particular page, you may want to
place your best products on that page to get more sales. analyze your site statistics (if they are available form
your web host) to check how much traffic you are receiving, where is it coming from and what keywords are being used to
find your site.

3. Keyword research - web sites are being added to the web every day, therefore keywords that once got high rankings
may no longer work. You may have high search engine positions for your most important keyword phrases but if
you are not receiving any traffic from those phrases, you will need to evaluate the keywords that you have used.
Attaining a #1 ranking for keywords that no one will search for, will not increase your traffic.

Researching new keywords is essential to maintain good rankings. I analyze the current keywords used on your site
and research and add new ones. Once the keywords have been chosen, the content should be updated to reflect them. This
may include subtle changes to the meta tags, page titles and text headings; or it could involve adding additional
sections to the site, rewriting content and reorganizing the web site's structure. It all depends on the specific
requirements of the site and market.

4. Competitive analysis - an integral part of search engine optimization is determining what keywords your competitors
are using. I analyze where your competitors are currently ranked for the same keywords you are using for your web
pages. I also check how many competitors you have for each of the major search engines. If there are too many
competitors for a particular keyword it may be better to use less competitive keywords for your web pages or use
them in conjunction with the most popular ones.

I will also analyze the link popularity of your competitors to determine how many incoming links they have and what the
quality of those links are. You should not link to unrelated sites and ideally link to sites that already
attract a lot of traffic.

5. Add fresh content - web sites that continuously update and/or expand their content, usually experience
higher rankings than stagnant web sites. New keywords should first be researched before adding new content. This
will help boost your traffic and rankings because visitors will have more ways to land on your site based on the
keywords they entered in the search engines. One great way to achieve this is to add new articles to your site on a
regular basis.

6. Web copy analysis - getting a lot of traffic to your site does not guarantee sales. It primarily depends on how
effective your web copy is. Read my article: " How to Write Effective Web Copy "

You want to convert visitors into sales. I analyze how your web copy is structured on the page, what words you use, if
it is written for your visitors plus check it for spelling and grammatical errors.

7. Boost link popularity - this refers to the amount of other quality web sites that have links pointing back to
yours. The more quality links there are, the better you will rank on the major search engines. I extensively
research other sites related to yours and add or exchange links with them. This may require a links/resources page to
be added to your site.

8. Tweaking web site structure and navigation - if visitors are having a difficult time navigating your site, reading
the content or experience broken links, then I will repair or tweak the site to make it more suitable for your
visitors.

Conclusion - your web site should be an integral part of your business plan. It may be the first view your visitors
have of your business. You therefore should update and maintain it regularly so your visitors will want to revisit
and keep doing business with you.

To choose a Search Engine Optimization Plan or SEO Maintenance Plan that fits your web site, visit:

Search Engine Optimization Services

Copyright 2002 Herman Drost

You just received a higher than normal monthly bill on your credit card for web hosting. Your hosting company explains that you exceeded your monthly minimum for “bandwidth usage” and suggests reducing the size of your web site
files.

What is bandwidth usage?
What does bandwidth mean?
How much bandwidth do you need?
How can you reduce bandwidth usage?

Let’s discuss each of these topics in more depth.

READ MORE..

What is “bandwidth usage?”
This refers to the total amount of information that has been served to your web site visitors each month. Every file on your Web Site has a specific size (e.g. 22K). Every time a visitor downloads that file, your bandwidth usage goes up by that amount.

The larger the file, the higher the bandwidth usage when it is downloaded. The more traffic to your site, the more bandwidth you will use. What does “bandwidth” mean? Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time. The “data transfer rate” is the speed with which data can be transmitted from one device to another. Data rates are often measured in megabits (million bits) or
megabytes (million bytes) per second. These are usually abbreviated as Mbps and Mbps, respectively.

Bits and Bytes
8 bits = 1 byte.
1,024 bytes = 1 kilobyte (Kb).
1,024 kilobytes (Kb) = 1 megabyte (mb or meg)
1,024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte (gb or gig)
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How Much Hosting Space Do You Need?

Hosting from $30/year



How much bandwidth do I need? To determine how much bandwidth you need, estimate the
file size of each web page, and then multiply it by the number of pages on your web site.

Multiply this figure by the number of the number of page views you expect per month from your site.

For example, if your web page consists of two 15Kb images and 3Kb of html, you would have 33Kb of data for that page. Now multiply this by the number of page views you
expect to have per month (e.g. 100,000 per month). This would mean 3.3Gb of data needs to be transferred per month for that page.

Now recalculate this number for each page, and you’ll know approximately how much bandwidth your entire site requires.

How can you reduce bandwidth usage?
The easy way is to reduce the size of the files on your site, particularly images and other graphics. For example, you have a large image (i.e. 200KB) on your web page that is downloaded by each visitor every time the page is requested. If you
reduce this image to 20KB or remove it altogether, it will dramatically cut your bandwidth usage. It will also speed up your site’s performance.

For more information on optimizing images for the Web, read my article, “Preparing Images for Your Web Site”,

Web Sites that have MP3s to download, movies, music playing in the background and large images, will obviously have a higher bandwidth. Large web sites or sites that expect a lot of traffic, will also use a lot.

If your site has mainly html pages and small images, your bandwidth will not be that high.

Bandwidth Tools
Monitoring bandwidth
http://www.utoronto.ca/ucres/netup.htm

Web Page Checker
http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/page_size.cgi

Tuning up your Web Site
http://websitegarage.netscape.com/

Bandwidth Tips
If you make changes to your site by adding
more files and/or web pages, recalculate your web site
file size.

Estimate how many visitors will be accessing your web pages
over the next few months.

Recalculate the bandwidth usage for your site. You may need
more web space and bandwidth for your site to function
effectively.

Check with your web hosting company to upgrade your
hosting plan.

Conclusion
Now you can avoid the shock of exceeding your
monthly bandwidth usage and paying higher hosting fees.
You are now ready to receive more traffic to your site and
therefore make more sales.

How to Layout Your Web Pages
Copyright 2002 Herman Drost

Searching for the right information on a web page can be a very frustrating experience. Have you ever encountered web pages that are so cluttered with information and graphics, that you leave, totally exasperated? The same situation applies if you have a web site designed with animated graphics, pop ups, revolving text etc. It may dazzle your visitors, but if it takes more than 10 secs to load, you will lose them. See: How to Calculate and Speed-Up the Download Time of Your Web Site

Start With a Simple Plan – to design a good web site you must start with a good plan. Create a list of all the information and graphics you want to include on the site. To see how to sketch out your site, see my previous article: How to Build A Web Site That Sells
READ MORE..
Factors That Effect Web Page Layout.
1. Screen Resolution – Most Internet users these days use a 15-17 inch monitor. Therefore, use a screen resolution of 800x600 pixels when designing your web page. Some still use 13-inch monitors and many have large monitors over 17 inches.

The way around this is to use percentages when designing your web page. The web page will then resize to the particular resolution the visitor is using. For the designer, this takes more work than using a fixed width for your pages. If you want to design your pages with a fixed length, then it’s best to use a resolution of 800x600 pixels.
2. Contrast – strike a good balance between graphics and text.It is easy to have too much text on your site (unless it is a book or an article). Visitors usually scan web pages so make sure you use short sentences, small paragraphs and it contains
small headings. See: How to Avoid Sloppy Web Site Copy

Too many graphics on your web page may create too much clutter. It also slows the loading time of your site. Only use graphics to emphasize the points you are trying to make. Remember, a graphic can also distract people from the message you are trying
to convey.

3. Color – Have you ever gone to a site where there is a dark background and dark text? You can hardly read it. Try to stick to a light background with dark colored text. For example, a white background with black text is still the easiest to read.
Beware of using a dark textured background. The text will become unreadable. The color should not distract your reader from the main points of your site.

4. White Space – this is the space between the elements on a web page. If there is none or too little white space, your web page will appear disorganized. Try to make the page look clean, simple, easy to read and navigate.

5. Navigation – the key to good navigation of your site, is for your visitor to find the information quickly and easily. It must be clear and simple. If the presentation and organization of the content is vague, the visitor will get lost, frustrated and move on to another site.

The home page is usually the web page that contains all the initial navigation to your web site. However, planning your homepage is only a small fraction of your job when designing your navigation. The deeper you can plan your site’s structure
and navigation, the more successful your site’s navigation will be.

With clear, clean, simple and attractive layout of your web pages, information is easily retrievable. Your visitor will have an enjoyable experience and wish to return.

© Herman Drost
If you are looking for a fast way to market your productsor business, then Google AdWords is a great solution. Youcan set up an AdWords campaign within a few minutes and bemaking good money within days.

What is Google AdWords?
These are small pay per click ads that are displayed on the right side of Google search results. The ads provide highly targeted text or image ads based on what words people use to search for your product.
READ MORE..

Steps involved in setting up an AdWords campaign?
1. Read an overview of Google AdWords to become familiarwith how it works.
2. Find a product, service to promote that is in highdemand. This can be an affiliate product or one of your ownproducts. Don't create and promote a product which has nodemand. Do your keyword research first.
3. Keyword research - try to think of the main keywordspeople would enter into a search engine that is related toyour product. Then use the keyword research tools below tosee how many times these keywords have been searched onin last month. Also research alternative or similar keywords.

Google Adwords Suggestion Tool
Overture Suggestion Tool
Wordtracker

4. Create ad groups - create an ad group for each mainkeyword or keyword phrase. Use Wordtracker to researchanother 10 to 20 keywords related to your main keyword.This will enable you to target people who are specificallyusing those words for searching. Now you can create anumber of different ad groups for each main keyword.

5. Check the number of AdWords campaigns - enter any ofyour main keywords in the Google search engine and see howmany ads are displayed on the right side of the searchresults. This will tell you how many AdWord campaigns are running already. If there are only a few Google Ads displayedand your targeted keyword is in high demand (high number ofsearches), you have the potential to create a winning ad campaign.

6. Write your ad copy - look at the ads people are alreadyusing on Google to give you an idea of how to write them.Use your main keyword or keyword phrase in the title ofyour ad copy. You may even be able to include otherkeywords within the body of your ad. Here's an example of atypical ad:

Effective Web Site Promotion Promotion strategies formarketing your product or serviceisitebuild.com/web-site-promotion

You can write three lines of ad text with a total of 95characters. The Display URL has a 35-character limit. TheDestination URL can be up to 1,024 characters and is theactual web page users will land on after they click on yourad.
Write different ad copy for each of your ad groups. Younever know which one will pull the best.

7. Create a Google AdWords account - there is a US$5.00activation fee for Google AdWords. After that, you decidehow much you are willing to pay per click and per day. Youcan choose a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) from US$0.05 -US$50 and set a daily budget as low as 5 cents USD or ashigh as you want.

For example, if you set your daily budget for $50/day/ad at10 cents/click, you will get a maximum of 500 clicks/ad.Once you have reached your limit for that day, Google willautomatically suspend running your ad until next day.

8. Test and monitor your AdWord campaigns - start with 3 adgroups, then keep the other ad groups for later as you monitor your current campaign. Make the necessary changes to your ad copy, keywords or bid prices to improve your clickthrough rate. Google automatically tracks the clickthrough rate for each of your ads.

To identify how many of your customers clicked through toyour site from your Google AdWords ad, use a unique trackingURL for each ad. This will also give you an indication whichads and keywords converted the most clicks to sales.

To use tracking URLs, just place the following parameter atthe end of your URL: ?referrer=source.

Example: If your URL is: www.your-domain.com, your trackingURL could be www.your-domain.com/?referrer=Google

Once you've created your tracking URLs, you can get yourtraffic data from your Web server logs or from third partytracking software. Your log file has an entry for eachclick to your site. Just count the entries where "Google"(or another source reference) appears in the referring URL.

The tracking software I use is Adtrackz

Here you can set up any number ad tracking campaigns and easily view them all on one page.

If you follow these guidelines for creating your Google AdWords campaign, you can quickly attract thousands of visitors to your web site or affiliate program and generate instant sales.

Resources

The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords.
Google AdWords Tips
Google AdWord Campaign Article
Mastering Google Adwords Article

Copyright Herman Drost
Google Sitemaps is a simple and fast way for your site tobe constantly indexed and updated by Google.This article will discuss the benefits of implementing thisnew technology, who should use it, how it works and how tocreate a Google Sitemap for your web site.

Benefits of having a Google Site Map

1. Speeds up the discovery and addition of your web pagesin the Google index.
2. Enables Google to quickly find web pages that have beenrecently changed.
3. A method for your site to be listed and appear quicklyin Google.
4. Helps Google to keep search content fresh, so peoplehave the most up to date information available.

Who should use Google Sitemaps?
READ MORE..

All site owners can use Google sitemaps whether you haveone page or millions of pages, however it's mostly gearedtowards people that make frequent changes to their webpages.

Normally web pages on a large site will not all get indexedbecause the links are too deep within the site. Byincluding all your pages in the Google Sitemap you have abetter chance of them all being indexed as Google thriveson fresh content. According to Google, it won't increaseyour site's rankings.

How does it work?

Google sitemaps are created using XML (Extensible Markup
Language). This is a coding language similar to HTML(though
a little more complex). It is often used these days in
syndicated feeds or blogs.

Here is the sample XML code you would include for each page
of your site:


http://www.yoursite.com/
2005-07-15
monthly
0.5


Here is a breakdown of what each line represents:

location - name of your webpage ie http://www.yoursite.com

last modified - when you last modified the page.

change frequency - tells Google how often you modify that
particular page, whether it's never, weekly, daily, hourly,
monthly or yearly.

priority - sets the priority you want Google to place for
that page on your site. You can prioritize your pages: 0.0
being the least, 1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the
middle.

This is only relative to your site. It will not affect your
rankings. Certain pages on your site may have more
significance than others because they are updated more
often ie home page, articles page.

How to Create a Dynamic Google SiteMap XML File

It would take a long time to create your Google Sitemap by
hand especially if you have a site that contains 1000s of
pages.

Fortunately Google provides the Sitemap Generator that
allows you to generate a sitemap very quickly. It's a
Python script that creates a Sitemap for your site using
the Sitemap Protocol. This script can create Sitemaps
from URL lists, web server directories, or from access
logs.

You can read more about it here:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Other Sitemap Generators.

Google has also compiled a list of third party generators.

Personally I use the free sitemap generator
It's simple to use and quickly produces the necessary
XML code for your site.

Here are the steps on how to create your Sitemap using this
free Sitemap Generator:

1. Go to http://www.sitemapspal.com and enter your site's
address.
2. Copy the code that it generates for your site and paste
it into notepad.
3. Save the text file as sitemap.xml
4. Upload this file to the root directory (same place as
your home page) of your web server.
5. Open up a Google Site Map account and submit
your site's address.
6. Every time you modify a page or pages, login to your
Google account and click on the resubmit button.
7. Repeat this procedure for all of your web sites.

Conclusion

Google is still the largest and most accessed search engine
on Net. Each year millions of web sites get added to Google
making your site harder to find. Creating a Google Sitemap
will help your web pages stay fresh in Google's index.

© Herman Drost

Many web site designers don't design their sites for the search engines. This is a huge mistake because they miss out on attracting lots of free traffic. Your beautifully designed web site may have cost you thousands of dollars but it still needs to attract visitors to be profitable.Here are 12 highly effective strategies for designing a search engine friendly web site:

1. Research highly targeted keywords - do this even before you begin designing otherwise you may have to go back and clean up some of your web site design. Use the keyword research tool, Wordtracker to research the most popular keywords that pertain to the subject matter of your web site. Wordtracker will show how many people have searched for that particular keyword over several search engines within
the last 60 days.
READ MORE..
2. Create a list of approximately 100 keywords or keyword phrases that you can include within your web pages. After having completed the above research, you should have found the keywords that were searched on most frequently, but only produce a small number of competing web sites.

3. Write a paragraph of 250 - 500 words of text for the top of each web page. Weave your keywords within this text being careful not have them so close together that your copy reads strange for your visitors. Aim to please the search engines as well as your web site visitors.

4. Optimize meta tags - the most significant meta tags are the title and description meta tags. The keyword meta tag has lost its effectiveness due to people spamming it,
however include it anyway as some search engines still use it. Include your keywords within each of these meta tags. The title meta tag should be a short sentence about the purpose of your site. In your description meta tag, write a sentence on the greatest benefit of your site. Your keyword meta tag should include the most frequently used keywords contained within your web page.

5. Include Header Tags - these can range form H1-H6 most designers will only use H1-H3. These tags separate each section of your web page with subheadings. The H1
tag contains the largest font and is the most significant. Within the descriptive text of these header tags you should include the keyword phrases placed in the same order as your keyword phrases that are within your keyword meta tags.

6. Optimize images using the alt tag - write a short description for the alt tag of your image. The alt tag has 2 purposes:

a) visitors can read the description if they can't see the image.
b) search engines only spider text (not images), therefore this could help your site's rankings.

7. Reduce image size - too many images or very large images on your web page will slow down the loading time of your web site. Make sure your images have a resolution of 72ppi.Slice large images into smaller pieces with your graphics editor.

8. Find incoming links (backward links) - web sites that link to yours raise your link popularity. Search for web sites that are compatible with yours and have a PR 4 or more to do a link exchange. Write optimized articles and include them on your web site. This means your site has a greater chance of being indexed quickly as well as getting a boost
in its rankings.

Create absolute links (ie http://www.domainname.com)from all your internal pages to your home page. This willincrease the number of links pointing to your home page.

9. Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to implement a clean design throughout your web site. This will reduce the time to implement a consistent text (or layout) style for your web site. It will also enable you to easily update your whole site should you wish to make any future changes.

10. Place any script code into external files - when using javascript (ie for swapping images on your navigation bar)it creates a lot of code between the header tags, pushing down the text that search, engines would spider first. Placing the script code in an external file reduces the code to just one line.

11. Insert the DOC TYPE tag at the top of every web page. A DOCTYPE ( “document type declaration”) informs the validator which version of HTML you’re using for your web
pages. DOCTYPEs are a key component of compliant web pages:your markup and CSS won’t validate without them. i.e.

[!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"]

DOCTYPES are also essential to the proper rendering and functioning of web documents in compliant browsers like Mozilla, IE5/Mac, and IE6/Win.

12. Write clean html code - web site editors often write extra code. This can increase the loading time of your web pages. Check your html code by running it through a html validator.

Once you have implemented all the strategies above, submit your site to the search engines and get ready for lots of targeted traffic.

You now have built a profitable search engine friendly web site.

Resources

The Global Structure of an HTML Document
Page Validation and Loading Times
HTML Validator

© 2005 Herman Drost
If you have been struggling to set up forms on your web siteusing cgi, then definitely read this article. Installing asimple PHP form is much easier and faster than installing a cgiform and doesn't need any programming experience.
How does a PHP form work?
PHP is short for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". It is aserver-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language

A server side scripting language allows you to create dynamicweb pages. Web pages that have been enabled with PHP aretreated just the same as any other HTML page, and PHP even letsyou create and edit them the same way you would create and edityour HTML pages.

This PHP form consists of 3 web pages, an html page, a PHP page(PHP script) and a thank you page. You collect the visitorsinformation when he fills out the form on the html page. It isthen processed by the PHP script which resides on the server.The visitor automatically receives a "thank you forsubscribing" message. The form results are returned from theserver to your email box.

READ MORE..
Server requirements for your PHP form

Check with your web host you have PHP4 installed on your server
Most Unix servers do - if so you are in luck and ready to go.

How to create the simple PHP form

You will create a very simple, effective form in which you will
collect the name, email address and comments of your visitors.
The form results will be sent to your email address.
Here's the Simple PHP Form in action.

1. Download the PHP script - once downloaded, copy and paste
the PHP code of Jack's FormMail.php script into notepad (not MS Word)
and save it as securemail.php (not formmail.php - this will
make it a more secure form)

http://www.dtheatre.com/scripts/formmail

2. Edit Recipient Field - the recipient field allows you to specify to
whom you wish for your form results to be mailed. For Multiple Recipients
separate the email addresses with commas (",").

$recipient = "info@domain.com, steve@domain.com";

Note: If you use this option you cannot use recipient in your html form i.e.



If you already inserted this in your html form, then simply delete it.
This will prevent spammers from harvesting your email address
because it now can't be found on your html form.

3. Edit the referrers field - the only recommended field to edit in
the script is the "referers" field. This field defines the domains that allow
forms to reside on and use your securemail.php script. If you try
to put the form on another server, that is not the specified
domain or ip, you will receive an error message when someone
tries to fill it out.

ie: $referers = array ('ihost-websites.com','www.ihost-websites.com','209.123.240.161');

4. Upload the securemail.php script to the root directory of your server
(same location as your index.html file).

Note: Make sure you upload the php script in ASCII mode. This is
because it is a text file. You will get errors if you upload it in binary mode.

5. Create your HTML form - create a web page (ie contact.htm)
that contains your html form (see example html form below).

6. Point the action of your form to the securemail.php script you
downloaded in Step 1.

ie:

action="http://www.ihost-websites.com/securemail.php">

7. Add optional form fields

"subject field" - this allows you to specify the subject that
you wish to appear in the e-mail that is sent to you after this
form has been filled out. If you do not have this option turned
on, then the script will default to a message subject: "Form
Submission".

ie:

"full name field" - this allows visitors to fill in their name.
This will help you to personalize your return email by
including their first and/or last names.

i.e:

"email address field" - this allows you to specify your return
e-mail address. If you want to be able to return e-mail to your
user, I strongly suggest that you include this form field and
allow them to fill it in. This will be put into the From: field
of the message you receive. The email address submitted will be
checked for validity.

i.e:

"comments field" - this allows visitors to add any comments in
your form. You could name this field anything you like.

ie:

"required field" - these are the required fields you want your
visitors to fill in before they can successfully submit the
form. If the required fields are not filled in, the visitor
will be notified of what they need to fill in, and a link back
to the form they just submitted will be provided.

ie:

"redirect field" - if you wish to redirect the visitor to a
different URL, rather than having them see the default response
to the fill-out form, you can use this hidden variable to send
them to a pre-made HTML (ie thankyou.htm) page.

ie: value="http://www.ihost-websites.com/thankyou.htm">

"submit field" - this allows the visitor to submit the form

ie:

8. Create a thank you page (thankyou.htm) - this web page will
automatically thank visitors for subscribing. Add your own
comments you wish them to receive. Upload this web page to your
server.

Tip: Use your own domain name, email and IP address in the
fields above.

Here's an example of a typical web page using the PHP form.
(http://www.ihost-websites.com/contact.htm)

All the fields are included as was discussed above:
/*





method="post" action="http://ihost-websites.com/securemail.php">





value="http://www.ihost-websites.com/thankyou.htm">

Name



Email




Comments

*/
9. Copy and paste this html form into your web page - name it
anything you like (ie contact.htm), then upload it to your
server.

10. Test out your form - when you fill out the form, you should
immediately receive the reply from your thankyou.htm page
and receive the form results in your email box.

Conclusion - you now have a fully functional and flexible PHP
form on your web site to collect visitor information. You can
add more fields to the form if necessary. You may also add any
number of HTML forms to your web site and still use the same
PHP script.

Resources

Jack's PHP FormMail

Help/Support - PHP Form Forum

© Herman Drost
Then most difficult aspect of marketing a new product orweb site is to find enough people that are interested in itso that they are ready to buy. Mastering Google AdWordswill enable you to drive traffic to your web site and startmaking sales immediately. You can create a Google AdWordcampaign in a matter of minutes and be making sales within24 hours.

Benefits of Mastering Google AdWords
READ MORE..
1. Test Products - with Google AdWords you can quickly
test a product to determine if there is a demand for it.
If you generate a lot of clicks, this may mean you have
a winning product.

2. Generate sales leads - use Google AdWords to generate
leads by offering something for free to obtain their email
address. Following this, create an autoresponder series to
build a relationship with the person. Through this long
term relationship you can continually introduce new
products to them.

3. Sell your own products - this can produce large profits
because you don't have to deal with any middle men which
tend to reduce your total profits.

4. Sell other people's products through affiliate programs -
you become the sales person for a large company.
The company provides a quality product that is in high
demand, with a professional web site and sales page.
You simply direct visitors to this site and collect commissions
for every sale you make.

Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Do extensive keyword research first - use Wordtracker to
find the best keywords that fit the product you wish to
sell. Make a list of at least 50-100 keywords or keyword
phrases. Create different ads based on your most targeted
keywords. Not all keywords will necessarily be profitable,
however you can use them later when developing content for
your web pages.

2. Create several ads within an ad group - an ad group
consists of a group of ads you create for the keywords you
have researched. Choose your most targeted keyword or
keyword phrase then create at least 2 different ads so you
can see which ad produces the highest click through rate.

The click through rate (CTR) is the ratio of the number of
times a person clicks on your ad based on the number of
times it is viewed. For example if 100 people see your ad
and only one person clicks on your ad to be taken to your
web site, then the CTR for that ad is 1/100, 1%.

3. Don't place too many keywords in one ad group - if your
keyword phrase is “red wagons” then create an ad group of 2
ads containing this phrase. If your keyword phrase is “blue
wagons” then create another ad group with 2 ads containing
this phrase. All your keywords must be similar.

4. Write an attractive ad - you have a very limited space
to write your ad so you need to make each word count if you
want your visitors to click through to your web site or
landing page. Start with a clear headline, followed by
benefit, feature then web address.

5. Use strong verbs in your ad - strong verbs link directly
to the five senses--touch, sight, smell, sound, and
taste--and to familiar emotions. They are short and
personal: "run," "fight," "love," "say."

Weak verbs seem abstract and impersonal. They tend to
be long words: "employ," "postpone," "construct."

Here’s a comparison of weak and strong verbs:

Weak verbs
Inform
Reduce
Indicate
Modify
Endeavor
Desire

Strong Verbs
tell, say
cut
show
change
try
want

Next time you visit the grocery store look at some of the
headlines of popular magazines ie Cosmopolitan Magazine.
They spend millions of dollars researching words which will
attract readers. By using strong verbs in your ads your
visitor will be more inclined to take action.

6. Write ads that have rhythm - ads that have a flow nice
flow to them effect people in a better way than ones that
don’t ie “simple self defense”

7. Set a daily budget - Google will recommend a specific
amount to spend for each click. Don’t go with their
recommendation as they probably have their own self
interest in mind. Start with a smaller daily amount than
what is suggested ie 5 cents per click and keep a eye on
your CTR. Ads shown at the top of the page don’t
necessarily produce the highest CTR. Aim for positions 6-8.
Google will rotate your ads periodically so each one of
them gets equal exposure.

8. Check on your ad regularly - when you first run your ad,
check on it 3-4 times per day until you have got at least
50 clicks.

9. Refine your ads - discard those ads that are not
producing a high click through rate. Continue editing those
ads that work or create new ones within your same ad group
until you find a winner. You can do this by using different
combinations of keywords or trying different headlines.

10. Track your ads - track which ads produce the most
clicks. The adtracker I recommend you use is Adtrackz:

http://www.isitebuild.com/cgi-bin/a/t.cgi?adtracker

This software allows you to create a different URL for each
ad and tracks how many clicks you receive each day from
placing the ad. You can also use the Google tracker that's
included with your AdWrords account, however it is not as
powerful as Adtrackz and has much less features.

When you have created a winning ad (high CTR) adjust the
landing page of your web site until you convert the
visitors into buyers.

By mastering Google Adwords Ads, you can confidently
expand your marketing campaign to include other PPC
advertising companies ie Overture, FindWhat and also try
offline advertising.

Copyright Herman Drost

Are you always looking for new and better ways to market your web site? Search engines are always on the look out for fresh content. When doing a search you don't want old content popping up, you want to have the most up to date information. Search engines will generally reward those sites which provide new content on a regular basis ie daily or even bi-weekly.One of the best ways to provide fresh content is to create
an RSS Feed. What is an RSS Feed?
READ MORE..

RSS stands for "really simple syndication". For example I
write articles every 2 weeks and place them on my web site.
I then link to that article from my home page and from my
article headlines page. I make that article available to
others as an item in my RSS file. People who use RSS
readers or news aggregators can read then link to your
article from their web site.

To explain further about RSS readers visit:
RSS Readers

You have now syndicated your content for others to view.
This is a great way to improve or maintain your search engine
rankings by naturally getting incoming links. Every time
you write a new article it will be instantly available to
1000s of web site owners.
How to create an RSS File

RSS files use the XML language. This is similar to html
except you must be careful to use closing tags and be sure
to validate it before you use it. An XML file contains the
information (Title, Description and Link URL) that your
audience will receive through a RSS reader.

Here is all you need to create an RSS file:

-Title
-Description
-Link

1. Open notepad on your computer, then copy and paste the
information below replacing it with your own title,
description and link information.

The first part contains information about your web site.
The second part contains information for one of your articles.
You can also include optional information in your headlines
such as language, copyright info, contact email addresses,
or an image.

Try to limit the number of articles you wish to include in your
RSS file to 5 or less. Enclose your RSS information with
the xml and rss versions you are using followed by the
channel and item tags. Finish off with the RSS closing tag.

Here's the example:






http://www.isitebuild.com
Affordable Web Design in Maryland
en-us



http://www.isitebuild.com/add-search-engine.htm

When visitors arrive at your web site you want them to find
the information quickly otherwise they will lose patience
and move on. A great way achieve this is to add a search
engine or search box to your web site.





You have now created your first RSS file that is almost
ready for syndicating.


2. Save your RSS file - save your RSS file in plain text
format with an XML extension ie
http://www.isitebuild.com/rss/rss-feed.xml. You can also
save it as .rss however when I originally tried this some
RSS readers did not read the file.

3. Check your RSS file - since RSS is an XML file some
characters are illegal in XML so you have to 'escape' them,
that is, insert a text string in their place.

Here are the main ones to watch out for:

-Replace all instances of '&' with: & For example if
you use quotation marks ie "Click Here" change it to
"Click Here"

-Change every apostrophe to ' For example: It's a boy.
becomes It's a boy.

4. Upload your RSS file - upload your RSS file to your root
directory ie the same directory as your homepage. I saved
mine in a special folder called RSS where I keep all my RSS
articles. ie http://www.isitebuild.com/rss/rss-feed.xml

5. Validate your RSS file - don't assume your file is
correctly coded. If not, it won't be read by RSS readers and all
your hard work will be in vain.

Here are some validators:

http://feedvalidator.org/
http://aggregator.userland.com/validator

Copyright Herman Drost

When visitors arrive at your web site you want them to find the information quickly otherwise they will lose patience and move on. A great way achieve this is to add a search engine or search box to your web site. Since most visitors are already familiar with using search engines such as Google, they can easily use the search feature on your site.
READ MORE..

In this article I will discuss:

A. The benefits of adding a search engine
B. Types of search service providers
C. Where to place a search box on your site
D. How does the search engine work

A. Benefits of adding a search engine and types of sites
where it can be used.

1. Ecommerce sites - your ecommerce site usually has many
different types of products so the navigation menu is not
focused enough to rapidly find the specific product your
visitor is looking for. Adding a search engine to your
ecommerce site will help the visitor to easily and quickly
zoom in on the product by entering their keyword in the
search box.


2. Dynamic sites - search engines have difficulty spidering
dynamically generated web pages. These are pages often
generated from a database, so the information on your pages
will not appear in the search engine's index. Add a search
engine to each page of your site. If a visitor arrives on
that page from one of the large search engines, they can
then do a quick search from that page instead of searching
elsewhere.

3. Small sites - web sites that contain 5-10 pages don't
need a search engine because visitors don't have to search
through many pages to find the information. Instead, make
sure you create a simple navigation menu at the top or side
and bottom of your web pages.

B. Types of search service providers

1. Atomz (www.atomz.com) - Atomz Express Search is a free
service where you can integrate basic search capability on
your personal web site or on one of your commercial sites.
It can be used on sites with 750 total pages or less and
allows customization of look and feel to match your site's
design. Some third-party text ads are shown above and below
the search results. You can use it for as long as you like
for there is no trial period.

2. Freefind (www.freefind.com) - features include the
ability to customize search and results pages. The free
accounts are limited to 3,000 pages or 32MB of storage.
Site search is hosted on FreeFind's server. It generates a
site map for you, tracks visitors searches and indexes
password protected pages.

3. Google Free site search service
(www.google.com/services/free.html) - searches only the
specific domain(s) that you list when you create your
search box. You can customize your results display to
include background, text and link colors you select. The
search box itself will reside on your web site. The search
results page will be served by Google with the customized
look and feel you specify. Google may serve ads on the
results page. You can do an unlimited amount of searches.
You must display the Google logo on the web pages that
contain the search box.

C. Where to place the search engine on your site?

1. Place the search box in a prominent location on your web
page...preferably top center or top right.

2. Place the search box on all pages of your web site.
Visitors may enter your site from any page.

3. Make the search box large enough to accommodate all
search terms the visitor would use to find the information.

4. The search box should be a type-in box, not a link so
visitors don't have to wait for another page to load.

5. Limit the search results to 50 per page. Visitors
lose their patience if they have to scroll through long
lists of results.

D. How does the search engine work?

It works similar to the major search engines that search
the web, however instead of crawling the web they search
engine spider will search your site. The results of the
crawl are stored in a database that resides on the search
company's server.

The company provides the necessary code to add a simple
form to your web page. This usually consists of a search
box for inserting your keywords and a send button. When you
click the button it sends the query to the search company.
They process the query to create a search results page.
This shows those pages in your site that match the
visitor's query.

The quality of the search results the search engine spider
collects depends on how much information is contained in
your site. Therefore take time to correctly optimize your
site i.e. provide lots of good content that includes your
keywords. Optimize your meta tags, images and create an
accessible navigation structure.

Optimizing your site will not only provide focused results
from your internal search engine but also boost your
rankings in the major search engines.