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The world of search engine optimization (SEO) can be a big scary place for newbies. Most SEO professional companies charge astronomical prices that may or may not guarantee success. The search engines are forever changing the way they rank websites and what is important to achieve a higher ranking. Even with these everchanging factors, there are 8 important points that you must use with your website that are not likely to change any time soon. 1 all-altrincham.co.uk . Domain NameIt is better to register a domain with a keyword in it, unless you are trying to brand yourself (think Coca Cola or Ebay). For instance, if your name is John Smith and you sell golf items you would be better off by registering a name like www.golfproducts.com instead of www.johnsmith.com. Unfortunately with millions of website domain names being purchased all the time, finding a related domain name not already taken can be a daunting task. Still it is worth it in the end because it will carry more significance with the search engines. 2. Title TagThis is an often overlooked place to input keywords business . Have you ever been to a website and the bar at the top of the page just said 'untitled' or 'homepage'? That reflects how little the site designer knew about SEO. Always put a descriptive title on EVERY page of your website. Put something like 'Find golf clubs, golf clothes and the latest pro golf tips', instead of 'John's golf shop'. Make sure not to go overboard and just list 10 or more keywords or long sentences in a row or the search engines will think you are trying to spam them. Think quality over quantity. The title tag should contain one keyword rich descriptive sentence. 3. Meta TagsThe importance of meta tags in today's SEO world is still being debated. It is still advisable to include a meta tag keywords and meta tag description in your code. A lot of times the search engines will pull your description tag to show in your websites search result. If nothing is there it may not show anything at all or it may pull the first sentence off of your page which might be completely irrelevent to your intended audience. Do not, I repeat do not list 100 or more keywords in the keyword tag. This technique used to work years ago, but the search engines recognize this technique and will consider it spam. Place no more than 10 keywords in the meta keywords tag. 4. Link StrategiesAnother important tip is to include keywords when linking to other websites or pages within your own site. For example it is better to have a sentence like this 'Find out the latest professional golf tips.' then to say 'click here for the latest professional golf tips.' This also applies to any outbound links to other related websites. Include keywords on the part you want the visitors to click on. Same goes for incoming links to your site. If someone wants to link to your site give them the code to paste in their website instead of leaving them to do it on their own. Have something like 'Check out John's Golf shop for the best golf clubs, golf info and golf tips.” This is much better than 'Click here for John's Golf Shop'. Search engines also like longer more descriptive links than just one or two words. 5. Relevant ContentMake sure that you provide only relevant information to what your actually offering or selling. If you have a bunch of unrelated info on a wide range of topics than the search engines will have a harder time pinpointing exactly what it is your site is about. So if your selling golf stuff stick to golf content, don't throw in articles or links about scuba diving. 6. PageRankThis is still a relatively new term and applies to an algorithm that google's search engine uses. Other search engines use similar strategies to google's PageRank also. Basically PageRank is used to define how popular your website is. The more relevant inbound links you have coming into your website the higher your PageRank will be. Google also has a toolbar that you can download for free that will show you a site's PageRank. The best way to go about getting inbound links is to find related websites with a PageRank of 5 or higher. Then asking them to include a link to your site (giving them the proper code to paste in). Another way you can receive a higher PageRank is to have a ton of content on many different pages and then linking all the pages together in a way that will raise your PageRank. With that said this type of strategy will not boost your PageRank tremendously, so if your site doesn't contain thousands of pages don't stress over it. It is important though to link strategically with keywords between the pages of your site. 7. HTML HeadersSearch engines place more importance on text that is placed within the H1 tag. It's like telling the search engines that 'hey this text is important to my site'. The problem is that it can look unsightly. There are ways around this if you know about CSS styles, but for this basic intro article just know that in the end most people won't be bothered by how the heading looks, and it will make the search engines like you more. 8. Creating CredibilityAn often overlooked part of free publicity for your website is writing free articles like this one that relates to your intended audience. There are many websites on the internet where you can submit your articles for other people to place on their websites. I even employ this same strategy for my website. It's really a win win situation. They win because they get quality relevant content for their site and you win because your name and website info is included at the bottom of the article, driving traffic to your site. You increase your inbound links (PageRank) and provide free publicity for your website. It gets your name out there branding you an expert in your field of expertise and provides free web traffic to your site.About the Author:Leah West is the owner of West Marketing and Design, providing complete search engine optimized website design and internet marketing services for your small business success. Click here to sign up for Leah's fr*ee ezine

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Banner ads, search engines and link exchanges. We've all tried them while promoting our sites and online businesses, some have worked more successfully than others mind you but just because you run an online business doesn't mean you've to always promote it online. In fact on many occasions a websites marketing budget can be spent just as effectively using offline methods as it can be using online methods such as the ones mentioned above. Indeed website branding seems to be much more successful using offline methods such as TV and Radio. This article is your guide to promoting your website offline, I hope you enjoy it. Your URL is very importantThe basis behind any offline promotion campaign for your website is of course to get your website visited more often and if your sales letter is good enough to get more sales from these extra visitors. This can only be done by getting the address of your site 'out there' and visible to lots and lots of people. It's for this reason that your URL is very important, it's your lifeline in the offline world, the amount of exposure it receives will make or break your offline campaign. It should appear on any material you send to customers or clients, others businesses you deal with and most importantly potential customers. More on where you can put your URL offline a little later, but for now here's a little paragraph or two regarding things which you can do online to help your offline marketing efforts. First off your website should always have a banner (a standard 468 x 60 or larger banner works best) at the top of every page with your website address clearly visible on it. The reasoning behind this it that many people prefer to print out larger webpages with articles, stories, tutorials and the like to read later and then keep for reference rather than read them online as they're surfing all-ashford.co.uk . Without your URL on your banner people may re-read your content but never revisit your site due to them simply forgetting your website address and you may have lost a customer. It's also a good idea to make available online any recent press releases you may have issued. This is due to the fact that many journalists and editors surf the web, if they like your company and product they might be inclined to let their readers know why click here . A press release will provide them with the latest information regarding your company helping them to do this. Now we'll go through where you can promote your site offline.Put your URL on all day to day business items In the day to day running of your business you'll use many document type items. By these I refer to invoices you send, faxes you send, checks you send, product packaging, business cards etc. Your URL, email address and an attractive website slogan which makes people want to visit should all be present on each of these items either in the form of a banner used with faxes, invoices or other letterhead paper items or simple text which is generally used for business cards and checks. You could even include your URL and if space permits your website slogan on all the simple letter envelopes you send out. TelevisionNext we'll talk about the big one - TV. This may well appear to be financially out of reach of all but the biggest websites with very large advertising budgets, but no this is not true. OK admittedly you probably don't and never will have the financial capability to run ads on mainstream Cable such as Fox in America or Sky in Britain and Ireland, not to worry though as such advertising is usually targeted very generally and is useful only to sites with broad appeal such as Amazon.com or Yahoo.com. Local cable television advertising is much more feasible and effective for the more 'ordinary website'. This type of advertising appears to be very reasonably priced at the moment and is particularly effective if your product or services is oriented toward a specific geographic target market, for example imagine if you were a Detroit web design company, simply advertise your company and URL on a local Detroit channel. Contact a Sales representative from your local cable company to find out more. You should of course mention your URL on numerous occasions within your ad spot. RadioRadio advertising can be very effective in advertising your URL if your domain name is short, catchy and easy to remember. Creative webmasters could develop short scripts themselves whereby their ad incorporates their slogan which in turn incorporates the benefits of visiting their URL. As with TV advertising radio ads work best when targeted towards a specific demographically segmented market such as a certain cities residents. Again price wise you mightn't be able to compete with the big boys and have ads on very popular stations, but local stations offer good prices. Keep in mind however that prices all depend on when and how often your ad is run. Newspapers, classifieds and related magazinesThe print media which includes newspapers, journals and magazines is another avenue where your can have your URL exposed for everyone to see. It's best first to start advertising your products, services and URL in local newspapers and then if successful continue onto regional and national publications. If you can't afford the common graphical advertisement as seen throughout newspapers and journals related to your industry don't worry as most of these publications have classified ad sections. Classified ads allow you to reach a targeted audience very cheaply with a simple short message and of course your URL is included in there somewhere too. Company vehiclesWe all see vehicles with company names and telephone numbers on them driving our streets and motorways. This is a great idea as it gives potential customers the chance while out and about to learn about the company and also learn about how to contact them should they need the service or product they offer at some stage in the future. I often wonder why more websites aren't promoted in this way by simply adding the company website URL also, you definitely should do this. If your business is an exclusively online entity then your URL should be large and very visible to anyone who glances in the direction of your vehicle. Again many people would be driving or walking by as your vehicle drives by and wouldn't be able to write down a long website address so it would be an advantage to have a short, easy to remember URL. A word of advice before we move on, if you do choose to brand your personal or company vehicles with your URL have it done professionally, if your design looks poor people might be inclined to believe your site and products are poor too. Check a local business directory to find out who can do this for you.

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Two of the keys to financial success, especially in a couple's relationship, are knowledge and communication. This article focuses on the aspect of communication.Tom Monson, the Vice President of Simple Joe, Inc. was giving a series of free seminars on personal finance to people in his neighborhood. Many couples were scheduled to attend but only two or three were showing up.Tom and I discussed the situation and wondered why attendance was so low. We knew many people were interested and several had expressed a desire to learn more about finances directly to Tom. But when it came to showing up for the seminar they seemed to find other things to do.As Tom and I were discussing this he commented on the behavior and attitude of some of the people who had shown up for the first two seminars. At the first seminar, Tom noticed that several of the husband & wife couples seemed a bit uncomfortable discussing financial matters with each other.Much of Tom's seminar involved recognizing and evaluating your current financial situation, setting financial goals and ways to measure your progress. But he was having a hard time getting the couples to discuss financial matters between themselves.We wondered if these couples may be hesitant to have a frank financial conversation because conversations about money can lead to disagreements and even fights. It has been estimated that over half of all divorces occur to some degree because of disagreements over money and finances.So maybe these couples were hesitant to get into a public argument about their finances because they know that every time they talk about money they fight. Or they may just have had one or two really bad fights about finances and so now they try to avoid the subject.I would venture to guess that all fights about money and finances can be boiled down to one of two root problems; lack of communication (or misunderstanding) and selfishness.Lack of communication occurs when one spouse spends money the other had earmarked for something else. Or when an important financial decision occurs without input from the other spouse. Or when a large purchase is made without the consultation or consent of the other spouse.Misunderstanding can occur when the couple is hesitant to enter into a financial discussion, has trouble communicating or just has trouble expressing financial ideas. It could be that one spouse does not fully understand a financial concept. Or one spouse is not being patient enough to have a full discussion of the subject.The need to be right vs. wrong in making financial decisions is often very strong, especially in men. As the historical provider for the family, some men see finances as solely their domain. It can also be a sign of status or ego.And in a situation where there are financial problems, many men can get defensive easily when the wife questions decisions or situations. This can lead to fights and misunderstandings.After a discussion breaks down, the husband may feel like the wife is ungrateful for what he does and does not trust him to make correct financial decisions.Meanwhile the wife may feel like the husband is talking down to her, does not value her contributions to the family and maybe is even hiding something from her business .This can happen when emotions get in the way of communication. It is very important to be considerate of your spouse and be careful how you phrase questions and comments.Also it is important to ask questions when you don't know or understand a financial situation or decision. Lack of understanding will lead to future confrontations. The husband may assume that the wife knows the impact of the decision they just made. Then if something goes wrong the husband can get angered at his wife's questions because, to him, they could seem like an accusation.Or the wife may do something that the husband does not fully understand and then the husband gets upset because “she did not tell” him what it is she was doing or why.So how do we solve or avoid these problems of lack of communication and misunderstandings?The first step is to leave your ego outside the door. You don't know everything and neither does your spouse. It is important to make sure that both people understand the financial topic, how it affects their lives and what type of decision is best for them and why.If the wife is stronger in one area of finances, she needs to patiently explain to the husband what she knows and how it affects them. If the husband is more versed in a financial topic he should patiently explain to the wife what he knows.If neither of them have a good grasp on the subject, “shut up” and go learn something more about it. Also don't be embarrassed or ashamed of not knowing something. Just because you are the “man” does not mean that you were born with financial genius. Just because you are the “woman” does not make you an expert on household finances and it in no way means that you are “not capable” of understanding financial topics and concepts. Don't pigeon-hole your spouse or allow your spouse to gloss over something without an explanation that you both understand and could repeat to someone else.We all make mistakes and we all have things to learn. Don't let your pride or your ego get in the way of your financial success. Don't let the subject of money become a sore spot in your relationship. If you can remember to talk with your spouse in the same kind of patient and respectful way you talk with your boss, your conversations about finances will go much smoother. ***************************************************************© Simple Joe, Inc.David Berky is president of Simple Joe, Inc. a marketing company that sells simple software under the brand name of Simple Joe click here . One of Simple Joe's best selling products is Simple Joe's Money Tools - a collection of 14 personal finance and investment calculators. This article may be freely distributed so long as the copyright, author's information and an active link (where possible) are included.

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This is a growing concern amongst many business owners. Does your web design company own you? This may be possible if you've allowed them to host your web site for you and also register your domain name for your company. Web design companies have a lot of control over their clients. I refer to this as “False Power”. The sad reality is that most of their clients don't even know they are stuck in this potentially painful predicament. This power is usually exercised when a client of a web design company finds a better deal on hosting for their web site and they simply want to switch their hosting provider, or when the “client” wants to upgrade their web site for a better rate than their current web development provider is offering. Here's what usually happens to so called “traitor clients”: Current web design company sends their client a hefty bill for switching The web design company cancels their client's account They may point the domain name to another place They sometimes take down the entire website until further notice You get the point! Too much power is given to the web design company. I truly believe that it is your right to shop for better prices and it is your right to own your domain name even if you didn't have a hand in registering your domain name. As the owner of the website, you put your trust into your web design company to represent your business appropriately and honestly, only to find out down the road that honesty isn't in their vocabulary all-rochdale.co.uk . I truly believe there should be a law against web design companies that can be summarized as such: For any domain name registered by the web design company on behalf of their client, the domain name may not be disputed or need to be disputed, the domain name is automatically owned by the client and is automatically bound by their web development contract. With every new venture, there is always going to be loopholes. From the aforementioned example, what if there is no contract? If you are reading this and are in the process of searching for a web design company, please ENSURE that you have a contract drafted, outlining everything you are entitled to and that you have sole rights to your domain name. See what most business owners fail to realize is that their domain name is as important as registering their business name itself. I will repeat that… Your domain name is “hot real estate”, would you want someone else owning your property? The same applies for your domain name. Don't get caught with your pants down while asking, why don't I own my domain name. It is as important as owning your own company name. There are people out there searching for suckers to take their domain name - don't be the one who gets caught! How to avoid this “Power Stricken” disaster: The best solution is to go out and register your domain name BEFORE you hire a web design company. This ultimately gives you the power over your domain name. At any given time, you can go back and log into your “domain name registrant” in order to switch your web site to any hosting company you choose. When searching for an “all around” package for your web design project, make sure that your hosting is suitable for your needs. 95% of all web design projects don't need a large hosting package that costs between $150-$500 a year all-coventry.co.uk . The most you should pay for your hosting in this case is around $100.00 a year, no more. You only need a large hosting package if: Your web site is 1000+ pages in size You're going to buy traffic in the 1000's every month You need over 25 email accounts setup Ask questions when shopping for a web design company! Here are a few questions you should be asking right away before you sign any contract… Do you provide a contract for all your projects? If you register my domain name, will it state in my contract that I own the domain name under all circumstances? If I am late making payments, is it your company policy to cancel the account? Why are your hosting services so high in price? Why wouldn't I go somewhere else for $100 a year? Does it state within your contract that I cannot switch to a different hosting company later on? Going forward, am I going to be able to hire any web developer for my website updates, if I am able to negotiate better prices? This is another important note: Make sure your web design company gives you the “FTP (File Transfer Protocol)” access to your website. The FTP allows you to hire another web design company to go in and update your website at any time. Without the FTP information, no one can update your website besides the original web development company or hosting company that you hired. In Conclusion: Be weary of web design companies that don't provide contracts for all of their projects. Be careful with your domain name; make sure that in the end, you own all rights to your domain name, not someone else. I hope this article helps you out! About the Author:Martin Lemieux is the President of Smartads. For more of Martins articles, please visit his web site and join his newsletter.

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by Jan K all-oldham.co.uk ., The Proofer all-mansfield.co.uk .

Now that you have a web site and make it available to millions of users worldwide, you may be wondering how come your web site traffic is so miserably low? (hopefully, you are the curious type that put in counters to see who visited your site, if not, I highly recommend AXS Site Tracking System). The truth is that you have to do a lot work to increase web site traffic. Unpromoted, a web site will see very few visitors (if any). If you are like most webmasters, you want to have a web site that actually does something. If you have a message board, you want people to write. If you sell something, you want people to buy. And so on… The key here is to get people to come to your site. Here are several web site promotion techniques: Build a Good Foundation Before you start promoting your web site, it is worthwhile to get your own domain name Make sure your site is complete (no missing graphics or underconstruction sign, etc.) A complete web site can be as small as one page. You can always grow it later. Make sure your site has something useful to say or sell. People will not bookmark a site that is useless. Make sure each of your web pages is optimized for high search engine ranking. Build your Internet Presence Submit your site to major search engines, especially Google Submit your site to major web site directories, especially DMOZ Exchange links with other webmasters, but only with sites that are related to yours (reciprocal linking) Consider publishing monthly e-newsletter to keep your current user base to come back to your site Consider hosting discussion forums Other Promotional Techniques Add your site as part of your email signature. You can also add it as part of your signature when you write on message boards and newsgroups. For instance, this is my email signature: Pinyo Bhulipongsanonhttp://www.greatnexus.com Strategically mention your web site in other message boards and newsgroups with a similar topic. You have to be careful here and only use this technique sparingly, or else people will just ignore you. I only do this when my site would be a useful source of information. If you sell products, you can put up some auctions on eBay and mention your sites on the eBay About Me Page. Check out these web sites and newsgroups for more promotion techniques all-cheltenham.co.uk . Some good ones I found are: Search Engine Forums SelfPromotion all-scunthorpe.co.uk .com SiteOwners.com WebMonkey: Drumming Up Web Traffic on the Cheap Promotional Techniques to Avoid Avoid auto-submission to search engines and directories. In truth there are only a handful of good search engines and directories. Auto-submission usually will just get you a lot of spam emails Avoid participation in Free For All (FFA) listing. There is no quality monitor on FFA and you site can be listed amongs shady entries. Moreover, some search engines such as Google will actually penalize you for having any association with FFA Avoid participation in Link Farms. Read major engines policy and guideline and avoid techniques that they discourage. For instance, cloaking, hidden text, keywords stuffing, etc. See Google's Webmaster Dos and Don'ts Explained for a more thorough discussion on this topic. About the Author: Pinyo Bhulipongsanon is the owner of GreatNexus.com Webmaster Resources offering visitors with features such as webmaster forums, webmaster directory, webmaster dictionary, programming scripts, and webmaster articles. Visit his web site for more webmaster and SEO articles, or to submit your article.

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In a previous article, I discussed the advantages of using a customized 404 error page on your site and gave instructions on how to create one. As I explained back then, these pages are highly useful because they enable you to benefit from traffic that would otherwise be lost. They however do have one dark side that can make maintaining your site significantly more difficult than what it has been before. What is this problem I'm talking about? Well, it is quite simple. Usually when a server encounters a 404 error, it records the details about the event into its log file. Should you suddenly notice that the log shows multiple 404 errors due to a page named “abutme.html” not being found, you can deduct that you've probably accidentally linked to “abutme.html” somewhere on your pages instead of using the correct filename “aboutme.html”. As you can see from the above, the functionality offered by log files makes them a great help in tracking down such simple mistakes and enables you to keep your site relatively free of in-site broken links. However, if you happen to have replaced the standard 404 error with your own HTML 404 error page, you can't utilize this useful feature. Yes, you will still see that a 404 error has occurred, but you won't get any further details that would help you figure out what exactly happened. Finding and fixing these errors becomes nearly impossible, causing them to pile up over time and deteriorate the professional image of your site. Now you're facing the tough choice of either showing your visitors a very unfriendly error message that drives them away or accepting the fact that your stylish custom 404 error page will become an all too familiar sight to those who click around your site. All hope is not lost After reading the above, you must be feeling pretty down. I sure know I did after having installed my own 404 page only to notice that I had corrected one problem, but caused another one while doing it. Still, there is a solution to every difficult situation and this one is no exception. If you want to keep your 404 page and still get informed when you mess things up and create a broken link, you'll be pleased to hear that I happen to have just the thing for the job all-maidstone.co.uk . Before we begin, please take into account that in order to use this fix, your host has to be running Apache with support for .htaccess files, Server Side Includes (SSI) and CGI. Contact your technical support for information on whether you have access to these valuable features or not. Without further ado, let's roll up our sleeves and get to work. The first thing you will need is a CGI script that will log the errors and let you know about them. There are several ones out there that you can use, but I personally prefer Matrix Vault's free 404 Helper that can be found at http://www.apromotionguide.com/404code.txt . Download the source code to your hard drive and open it in a text editor. You can get free editors from the Net, but the old MS-DOS Edit supplied with just about every version of Windows will do just fine. To run Edit, go to Start, Run, type “edit” without the quotes into the box and click OK. Before you start editing the file, you'll need to know where your host has installed the Perl interpreter and Sendmail. Once you have figured it out, check if the paths used in the CGI script match those your host uses. The Perl interpreter's location is set to /usr/bin/perl in the first row and the location of Sendmail is set to /usr/lib/sendmail in the 21st row. Make changes, if necessary. After you have made sure that the paths are correct, modify the rest of the script to suit your needs. Be sure to replace the E-mail address in the $email field with the one you want the error report to be sent to. You might also wish to use a smaller value in the $mailon field than the default of 10, as it can take quite a while for a small site to generate enough 404 errors to fill up a 10K log. I suggest using a value of 1 or 2 at the beginning and raising it later if you feel that you are receiving the error reports more often than you'd like to. You're now done with the CGI script. Save it as “404helper.cgi”, without the quotes of course. However, there's still work to be done, so take a deep breath and prepare yourself for the next challenge. Editing your custom 404 page and .htaccess file Just having the script will not be enough. In order for it to work, it has to be executed when an error is encountered. This is the part where the SSI's step into the picture. Open up your 404 error page in a text editor and add the following line into it: <!–#exec cgi=”/your_CGI_directory/404helper.cgi”–> Because the script prints out a few rows of HTML after it has been run, the best place for that line is at the bottom of your 404 error page, but before the </BODY> tag. After everything is safely in place, simply save the file, but instead of ending it with the usual “.htm” or “.html”, use “.shtml”. Do not forget to do this, as the SSI tag might not work if you fail to use the proper extension. Finally, you will have to edit the .htaccess file you created when you built your custom 404 page. If you only have ” ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com/404page.html ” in it, modify the file so that it will contain the following: Options Includes ExecCGIAddType application/x-httpd-cgi .cgi .plAddType text/html .shtmlAddHandler server-parsed .shtmlErrorDocument 404 /404page.shtml The new lines will enable Server Side Includes and CGI so that your script will work. Do not forget to change the ErrorDocument 404 line to point to the new .shtml page instead of your old .html version. After you are done, save your .htaccess file. Upload, set permissions and launch! Connect to your host with an FTP program and upload the .shtml version of your 404 page and your new .htaccess file into your root directory. Then go to the directory you've reserved for CGI programs and send the 404helper.cgi file there. Make sure that you upload in ASCII, not in Binary mode! I nearly drove myself crazy by accidentally using Binary mode and then trying to figure out why the script refused to work. Everything is now uploaded and all that remains is to set permissions so that the CGI program can be executed. You'll need to CHMOD 755 both the CGI file and the directory where it is in. The steps you need to take in order to accomplish this depend on what software you are using, but here are the instructions on how to do so with WS_FTP, a popular Windows FTP program which can be downloaded from Tucows business .com. First, navigate to the directory where you've uploaded the CGI program. Left-click it once to highlight the file, then right- click it. Select “chmod (Unix)” from the menu that appears. Give Read, Write and Execute permissions to the Owner and Read and Execute permissions to Group and Other. Then go into the root directory and repeat the same process with the folder of the directory where you placed the CGI program. That's it. The work is finally done and you can now enjoy the luxury of receiving an E-mail report on all 404 errors, allowing you to quickly stomp out any broken links and improve the quality of your site. Congratulations! Lauri Harpf runs the A Promotion Guide website, where he offers free information about search engines, directories and other promotion methods. His site can be found at http://www.apromotionguide.com/

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Two of the keys to financial success, especially in a couple's relationship, are knowledge and communication. This article focuses on the aspect of communication.Tom Monson, the Vice President of Simple Joe, Inc. was giving a series of free seminars on personal finance to people in his neighborhood. Many couples were scheduled to attend but only two or three were showing up.Tom and I discussed the situation and wondered why attendance was so low. We knew many people were interested and several had expressed a desire to learn more about finances directly to Tom business . But when it came to showing up for the seminar they seemed to find other things to do.As Tom and I were discussing this he commented on the behavior and attitude of some of the people who had shown up for the first two seminars click here . At the first seminar, Tom noticed that several of the husband & wife couples seemed a bit uncomfortable discussing financial matters with each other.Much of Tom's seminar involved recognizing and evaluating your current financial situation, setting financial goals and ways to measure your progress. But he was having a hard time getting the couples to discuss financial matters between themselves.We wondered if these couples may be hesitant to have a frank financial conversation because conversations about money can lead to disagreements and even fights. It has been estimated that over half of all divorces occur to some degree because of disagreements over money and finances.So maybe these couples were hesitant to get into a public argument about their finances because they know that every time they talk about money they fight. Or they may just have had one or two really bad fights about finances and so now they try to avoid the subject.I would venture to guess that all fights about money and finances can be boiled down to one of two root problems; lack of communication (or misunderstanding) and selfishness.Lack of communication occurs when one spouse spends money the other had earmarked for something else. Or when an important financial decision occurs without input from the other spouse. Or when a large purchase is made without the consultation or consent of the other spouse.Misunderstanding can occur when the couple is hesitant to enter into a financial discussion, has trouble communicating or just has trouble expressing financial ideas. It could be that one spouse does not fully understand a financial concept. Or one spouse is not being patient enough to have a full discussion of the subject.The need to be right vs. wrong in making financial decisions is often very strong, especially in men. As the historical provider for the family, some men see finances as solely their domain. It can also be a sign of status or ego.And in a situation where there are financial problems, many men can get defensive easily when the wife questions decisions or situations. This can lead to fights and misunderstandings.After a discussion breaks down, the husband may feel like the wife is ungrateful for what he does and does not trust him to make correct financial decisions.Meanwhile the wife may feel like the husband is talking down to her, does not value her contributions to the family and maybe is even hiding something from her.This can happen when emotions get in the way of communication. It is very important to be considerate of your spouse and be careful how you phrase questions and comments.Also it is important to ask questions when you don't know or understand a financial situation or decision. Lack of understanding will lead to future confrontations. The husband may assume that the wife knows the impact of the decision they just made. Then if something goes wrong the husband can get angered at his wife's questions because, to him, they could seem like an accusation.Or the wife may do something that the husband does not fully understand and then the husband gets upset because “she did not tell” him what it is she was doing or why.So how do we solve or avoid these problems of lack of communication and misunderstandings?The first step is to leave your ego outside the door. You don't know everything and neither does your spouse. It is important to make sure that both people understand the financial topic, how it affects their lives and what type of decision is best for them and why.If the wife is stronger in one area of finances, she needs to patiently explain to the husband what she knows and how it affects them. If the husband is more versed in a financial topic he should patiently explain to the wife what he knows.If neither of them have a good grasp on the subject, “shut up” and go learn something more about it. Also don't be embarrassed or ashamed of not knowing something. Just because you are the “man” does not mean that you were born with financial genius. Just because you are the “woman” does not make you an expert on household finances and it in no way means that you are “not capable” of understanding financial topics and concepts. Don't pigeon-hole your spouse or allow your spouse to gloss over something without an explanation that you both understand and could repeat to someone else.We all make mistakes and we all have things to learn. Don't let your pride or your ego get in the way of your financial success. Don't let the subject of money become a sore spot in your relationship. If you can remember to talk with your spouse in the same kind of patient and respectful way you talk with your boss, your conversations about finances will go much smoother. ***************************************************************© Simple Joe, Inc.David Berky is president of Simple Joe, Inc. a marketing company that sells simple software under the brand name of Simple Joe. One of Simple Joe's best selling products is Simple Joe's Money Tools - a collection of 14 personal finance and investment calculators. This article may be freely distributed so long as the copyright, author's information and an active link (where possible) are included.

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by Jan K business ., The Proofer all-altrincham.co.uk .

If you are one to pay attention to what happens within the Google realm, you might find yourself thrown for a loop these days. As Google updates their results, it seems like they are having some issues dealing with so many new websites popping up. Indexing 8 billion websites is quite an accomplishment for Google. As they are reluctant to increase this number, they are faced with many challenges in trying to keep some sites within these 8 billion pages while losing some others, after each update they do to their database. So how do you determine which listings to lose? We've all heard of the “sandbox theory”! (New sites are added to a group of other new sites until a certain amount of time has passed and you've proven your worth. Once you've proven your site is valuable, Google releases it within its regular search results). It seems to me that if you don't own a large network of websites that can easily increase the websites link popularity overnight, your newly created website won't get hit as hard and is added to the sandbox for only a certain period of time. On the other hand, if you do own a large network of websites and increase the amount of websites you have, your newly built website(s) will get hit harder and may take a lot more time and promotional effort to get good search rankings results within Google. Let's take a look at why this may be true: It has been long speculated that Google searches through the “WHOIS” database regularly (”WHOIS” - Contact record of who owns a specific domain name). By doing this Google can now see who owns what and how many domain names they own. By doing this Google can now determine that “Company A” owns 25 websites. This collection of 25 websites can now all be crawled to look for content copying, ghost pages, mimic pages, irrelevant link directories, etc. By knowing that you own 25 websites, Google can quickly determine their worth and rank them accordingly. With this knowledge provided by the “WHOIS” database, Google can also see how many years you've registered each domain name for. For instance, if you register all your domain names for only 1 year, there is a possibility that you don't plan on using these domain names for the long term. Instead, you may be using these new domain names simply to keep up with new changes on the Internet and new standards in search engine optimization. On the other hand, if you register all of your new domain names for the next 5 years, it is more likely that you are going to use these domain names in the future. This now gives more relevance to each domain name you register for more than 1 year. I am now recommending to all my clients not only to make sure to register a domain name related to their country (i.e. Canada = .ca), but to also make sure that they register their domain name for 5 years. If you are truly serious about increasing your business online, why would you risk missing your domain name renewals every year and possibly loose your domain name? Google may also look at how long you've owned this website for! It may be true that by adding your new website to the “sandbox”, Google may also add your website to a “history report”. This history report can give their database detailed information about how old your website is. These days, I believe that it takes about 6-8 months before Google updates your “history report”. By updating, I mean possibly releasing your website further within search results. See, this combination of “who owns the domain”, “how long will you own the domain name”, and “how old is the website”, can provide a more accurate report to Google as to whether or not this website will survive, stay the course, or provide great content. Through this “history report” and “sandbox report”, your website will go through an “exam” after 6-8 months in order to determine whether or not you are ready to play with the big boys online or whether or not your website has what it takes to succeed online. Until Google increases the amount of websites it will index within its results, we are all going to have to battle to stay on top. Internet marketing in general is becoming increasingly tougher with every month that passes. It has finally caught up to us and we are now starting to fight a hard battle all-telford.co.uk . One more thing you may notice: Google's cache (Snapshot image of your website when it crawls through) is becoming a little wonky lately. One day Google will have an updated cache, the next day it won't have a cache at all, and the following day it will have a cache of your website from 2 weeks ago. What does this all mean? When Google crawls a certain page, it looks at everything. Let's take one specific internal page in your website. This specific page may be ranked 10 different times within the search results for 10 different key searches depending on the content within that certain page. As Google increasingly fights to keep certain pages, its cache may be having a tough time keeping up and delivering the most relevant cache to date. More times than not, the front page of a website doesn't have a cache at all anymore! This is very interesting. It may mean that your front page may not be the “key” anymore since more and more people are trying to cram everything under the sun within their front page. It is possible that your “Main Sub-Categories” are weighing higher in Google's eyes for the quality and relevance of your internal content. What you want to do is to provide a clean map to all your internal pages. Your front page was the best solution for providing a map to all of your pages. Maybe these days, your front page should be used only to link to your main “sub-categories” and also to show your most recent posted content! I will leave you with this. If you are new online or even an experienced marketer online, buying many new domain names may not be the key to increase your success right now. Buying new domains should be a long term investment. Try increasing the popularity of your already established websites in order to gain more exposure for your business. Owning more domains increases the amount of time and effort you need to promote each one. Like I've mentioned many times before, owning a network of websites is not enough! You need to expand your horizons online, increase your content and create more business partnerships every chance you have all-exeter.co.uk .About the Author:Martin Lemieux is the President of Smartads. For more of Martins articles, please visit his web site and join his newsletter.

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