Here is an outline of things your website needs to have a chance of reaching your target market or audience.
1-  It needs Search Engine Freindly Urls = www.yourwebsitename.com/page_name.php or .html or any extension available by the programming language you had your website build in.  But do not have an url string for any page through your website like this:  http://www.yourwebsitename.com/%index.php?.27289_56/About_us%.php  etc, etc  This sort of url will not get rated well by Search Engines.
2-  Have a sitemap in your website outlining all your pages in your website. Best case would be to also have an XML file on your server which Google or other search engines could read and index.  “Ask your web designer to implement it, if this is coming across like instructions in another language.”
3- Navigation buttons that are crawl-able like dynamic text, not images only. This is just for good crawlableness for spyders to read all your content.
4-Have a Blog as a part of your website which you can author great content to profess yourself as an expert in your marketplace. (Then start a Facebook fanpage -wink-)
5- Have a contact page with a form which people can easily email you through, not just an email address they have to copy/paste into another email program.  “If it is to much work on the internet for people, it probably is.”
6- Have a subscribe to your Newsletter or Blog on your website to datagather emails so you can market to a database.  Say it with me folks: “my database is one of my most important items to help me promote my website”.
Ok, I got this off my chest.  Now get to it everyone.  You have work to do on your website.
Because it is one of the most important marketing tools you have!

Even if this is a little over your head the most I think basic website owners could take away from this is a linking strategy.  I watched this video and thought that when making pages of content for clients I could integrate a strong outbound linking document for them.  Most clients I have had are very wary of linking out as this could dilute there results of people contacting them for business.  Yet, I believe Google could reward you for linking out to products, services or even topics of interest in your business area.  So don’t be shy in creating a weblink network as it can also help grow your community online which we should all be actively helping each other.  This could be as simple as having a favorite weblinks page on your website or as complex as having specific OUTBOUND links on every page of your website. Remember, you could be linking to pages within your website also. Creating webpages dedicated to topics on your business area is a great way of professing yourself as an expert.  Thats one core to what blogging is all about.  Just remember to link to it and share it online.

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Here is Part 2 of my FREE videos for marketing online with Twitter! This one covers some techniques of how to follow more people specific to your target market area along with using a powerful tool called Twitter Search. Don’t worry about the homepage of Twitter.com as it looks a little different. Websites change their homepage often. The most important aspect is the SIGN-UP button or the SIGN IN. Happy Tweeting!

Here is the first of 2 FREE videos I have made for all you lucky business owners wanting to market online with Twitter! This one covers how to set up an account and get rolling. Don’t worry about the homepage of Twitter.com as it looks a little different. Websites change their homepage often. The most important aspect is the SIGN-UP button or the SIGN IN. Happy Tweeting! I’ll have a 2nd tutorial video up next week also!

Google’s Matt Cutts | How to Get Better Visibility on Google with SEO

Watch this video by a famous Google Blogger Matt Cutts. He shares some great fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization tweaking for a business website. If you want to rank for a keyword with your target audience, follow these rules.  Subscribe to his Blog here:  Matt Cutts Google SEO Blog.

Ok, this is a very large topic and could span many books but I’m going to give it to you in a nutshell today.  Here is the golden rule to remember: “The Internet is based on words“!   Search Engines, such as Google, MSN/Bing, Yahoo, etc. all look for words to rank or gauge your website’s content.  And the key to having a successful business website is using the right words within it.  So, how do you get the “right words” and where do you put them?  Well, each of those areas is an art and a science in and of themselves, so for now, I’m going to start with where you can get ideas to get good keywords for your business website.  Next month, I’ll cover some tips on where to put them.  Here are my top 2 favorite FREE Google online website tools for doing keyword analysis for your website.

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Search Engine Optimization (also known as “SEO“) is based on the old motto “If you build it they will come”.  But it is a little different with SEO.  You would say, “If you build in RIGHT, they will come!”.   So in a nutshell Search Engine Optimization is about having your website built correctly that covers such things as the programming code,  content on your web-pages, names of your pages, meta tags, and many more little things.   Search Engine Optimization is not marketing.  Search Engine Optimization is about building your website so that it is FRIENDLY for Search Engines like Google, MSNlive, Yahoo to read your content and consider your website relevant to people searching for your topic.  In return if you have your website built to their SEO standards, they will rank you higher in their listings for KEYWORDS your target audience is typing in to find you.

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What is a Google Algorithm?  It is like a mathematical system that makes sense of websites based on specific parameters. This is where Google’s power and popularity comes from.  Google’s job is to get us the best possible result for our search and it is succeeding!

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Ok, a little techie post this time around but want to share this simple technique I use for my clients so they get the best of both worlds for your client websites. This is what I call giving back to my fellow competitors.  In my professional eyes, Wordpress and Joomla are the top 2 Content Management Systems for blogging and business merchant sites. The problem is that both don’t really fuse well with each other. So my hack is to merge them on the same server. Here are the basic steps below.

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