Types of Web Sites

If you've been surfing the web for any length of time you'll probably agree with the statement that no two web sites are the same. However, beneath the surface, many web sites share some similarities. It only takes a handful of categories to classify 99% of the web sites that you and I are likely to visit.

E-Commerce Sites

E-commerce sites are those whose primary purpose is to sell you goods. One of the most widely recognized sites in this category is Amazon.com. These sites are often the most expensive to build, but can also be the most lucrative for the owner. Those with small budgets can opt for a pre-packaged e-commerce solution such as those offered by Amazon.com and Yahoo.com, but these often fail to distinguish your company from the 100 other companies selling the same product. I'm clearly biased, but in my opinion you're better off having some custom software development done to meet your business' specific needs.

Visitors to e-commerce sites often know what it is they want and so it behooves the e-commerce site to help them find it. At the same time these sites want to show you information about other products (referred to as up-selling and cross-selling) so that you'll spend more money. Because of this need to show you what you're looking for while at the same time sell you related items, e-commerce site employ some of the most sophisticate search engine technology available. Don't believe me? Next time you have a chance visit Amazon.com. Search for anything you want. The search engine will almost always find something that matches. If you've ever searched for or bought anything at Amazon.com you've probably also noticed that related products keep showing up on the screen. That's the search engine at work.

Brochure Sites

Brochure sites are very common. Their purpose is to act as an extension to a company's sales and marketing efforts. They usually "don't do anything" other than provide information to prospective buyers or clients with the hope that the company will be contacted by e-mail or phone for more information. MariosAlexandrou.com is a brochure site. In my case, this site is an extension of my ongoing efforts to sell my custom software development services. On this site I include copies of my resume, samples of my work, and descriptions of some software tools I have created, but, as with all brochure sites, this site "doesn't do anything".

Communities

Web communities come in all sizes, but in all cases they bring together people that share a common interest. I'm part of several software development communities. Years ago when I owned an aquarium, I visited aquarium related web sites for information and tips on how best to care for my fish. Sometimes web communities are run by people who are also looking to sell products or services. However, if the community doesn't contain useful and timely information, then any sales pitches will be likely fall on deaf ears. Tricking people in to buying something might work once or twice, but it's more effective to build trust and provide value.

Portals

Portals, as the name implies, act as gateways to information from various sources. The goal behind a portal is provide relevant information to user's without requiring the user to spend a lot of time searching. Ideally the information gathered is tailored to the visitor.

An example of this type of site is a corporate intranet portal which brings together documents and resources from many departments within the company. This can be particularly helpful when a company has many offices around the country or world. Employees of the company are then able to search for company related information that other employees have published. This information can be simple things like a phone directory or more sensitive information such as market research reports. A good example of a public portal is Yahoo.com although some might argue that in recent years Yahoo has grown beyond just being a portal.

Search Engines

Search engines are probably the single most useful tool on the Internet. Without them it would be next to impossible to find anything. By many accounts, the best search engine is Google.com. With a few clicks you can usually find answers to questions or, at the very least, a good starting point for where to look. Chances are you won't build a search engine, but it is important to know about them and understand how they work. Businesses should be particularly concerned with the details of how search engines work since they can be used as an inexpensive advertising tool.

contributed by, ABHISHEK SEO

Top effective 7 Social Marketing Resources

Top Effective 7 Social Marketing Resources


1. Google Friend Connect




2. Facebook



3. MySpace




4. hi5




5. LinkedIn




6. Tagged



7. Ning

Blog Applications & Sites

1. Yahoo! Shortcuts

2. Blogger


3. WordPress


4. Kindle Publishing

5. TypePad




6. Wordpress for iPhone



7. Technorati

Bookmarking Applications & Sites

1. Digg


2. Stumbleupon


3. AddThis!


4. bit.ly



5. Delicious



6. diigo



7. Jumptags

contributed by, ABHISHEK SEO

Get More Web Site Traffic With 7 Simple Tips

1. Sign up for as many niche forums as possible and start making useful posts; obviously, the closer to your niche the better. Niche forums are a great place to find targeted prospects for your mailing list, or to just get more targeted visitors. Always attach an eye catching signature to every one of your posts. Build up your reputation and your trust level with the members and you won't have any trouble generating traffic.

2. Offer to be a content provider for a newsletter publisher. Find some newsletter publishers that focus on the same niche as you and tell them that you will write content for them in exchange for advertising benefits. If your content is really impressive, not only will receive great traffic benefits, but you may even be paid as well.

3. Write articles and submit them to directories. Article marketing is a great way to get more web site traffic because all you have to do is write about a topic you love or are very passionate about. Throw in some lucrative keywords, slap a keyword rich title onto the article, and then ship it out to directories all across the net. Within weeks, that bad boy should be generating hundreds of free traffic hits.

4. Get involved with some pay-per-click campaigns and see what develops. PPC advertising can be very effective, especially when you know your target audience, what keywords are highly searched, and have a great way to monetize that PPC traffic. It's doesn't take a lot of money to get involved with PPC advertising, maybe $50-$100 a month; which is the lower end of the spectrum. But, if your fortunate enough, you may be able to turn that $50-100 into $300-$500 a month.

5. Create a newsletter for your website. A newsletter is great for getting repeat visitors to your website, as it practically forces subscribers to visit your site. Even if the newsletter is completely Email based, you can still get your readers to take a look at a product or visit an adsense filled webpage with ease. Plus, they have already signed up to receive emails from you, so you can send them all the offers and product recommendations that you want.

6. Update your website, or blog, as much as possible with fresh content. Search engines love websites that are updated frequently; so updating your website 2-3 times a week will put you in good standings with Google and all the other search engines. Make it a habit to sit down and write 3-5 articles at the beginning of every week. Then, use one article every 2 days to update your site. Piece of cake, right?

7. Practice better SEO habits. Search engine optimization should be one of your primary techniques, or at least one of your top 5. Do some keyword research and find the best keywords possible for your niche; high search volume, low competition. When you have those keywords, put them in your page titles, use them in anchor text, put them in your meta tags, and basically place them wherever they will look natural. But, if you over do it, you may be penalized.

contributed by, ABHISHEK SEO

How Google Indexes Your Site

First off, let's describe what we are talking about. A "bot" is a piece of software from a search engine that is built to go through every page of your site, categorize it, and place it into a database.


Google has three well known bots: The Adsense bot, the Freshbot and the DeepCrawl.

The Adsense bot, as you could probably guess, is used for publishers who have Adsense on their sites. As soon as a new page is created, the JavaScript within the Adsense code sends a message to the Adsense bot, and it will come within 15 minutes to index the page so that it can serve up the most relevant ads.

But, for this conversation we are only concerned about the DeepCrawl and the Freshbot.

The Freshbot crawls the most popular pages on your website. It doesn't matter if that is one page or thousands. Sites like Amazon.com and CNN.com have pages that are crawled every ten minutes, since Google has learned that those pages have that amount of frequent changes. A typical site should expect to have a freshbot visit every 1 to 14 days, depending on how popular those pages are.

What happens to your site on a Freshbot visit is that it finds all of the deeper links in your site. It places those links into a database so that when the DeepCrawl occurs, it has a reference.

Once a month, the DeepCrawl bot visits your site and goes over all the links found by the Freshbot. This is the reason why it can take up to a month for your entire site to be indexed in Google - even with the addition of a Google Sitemap.

So, be patient and keep on adding content to your site, and work on getting valuable in-bound links to your site - Google will reward you for it.
contributed by, ABHISHEK SEO