There are thousands of sales letters, forum posts, and gushing articles written about someone achieving the miraculous feat of being listed on Google’s Number One position for some keyword phrase.

The writer then usually goes on to say that this is especially miraculous, since there are several million other pages competing for that keyword phrase – and THEIRS is at the TOP!

Then come lots of comments from other people, congratulating them on this marvellous achievement.

Or you’ll see some dodgy Search Engine Optimisation company promising to “Get you to the top of Google in 7 days for only $99″

And the scary thing is that they CAN.

WOW! Order the champagne and dancing girls, it’s party time – because huge amounts of money will surely start flowing from Adsense earnings.

Well Sorry guys, but I’m going to pee on your parade.

Just the fact that you are on top of the Google listings is USELESS. Unless it’s for a term that a lot of people are searching for.

And because they say “Number 1 out of millions of pages” can also be misleading – because they will be giving you the number of pages in a broad match search, instead of an exact match search (Google these terms if you don’t know the difference.)

Now where was I before I started raving on – oh yes! -

Getting number one position on Google is DEAD EASY.

I’ve done this myself, by just making some posts on a few websites.

Go on – check it out if you don’t believe me. Do a search on Google for:

rex the performing ferret.

At the time of writing, the top 2 positions for this term are for an article on Hubpages which is MINE!! MINE!! MINE !!!!

So that must make me a search engine champion, who is about to make a squillion dollars !!!

Sadly, No.
Because being on the top of Google doesn’t mean anything in this case. Because nobody but me – and those who read my articles – will ever search for that term.

I’ve written a short report about keywords and how they work. It’s easy to understand, and will give you a good basic grounding in the topic.

You can download it at TheInternetBloke.com/Keywords.pdf

( There’s no email address, pint of blood, or anything required.. Just download it and read it. And you’ll never be conned by those dodgy SEO messages ever again.)

Cheers,

Eric Graudins.

Lots of people have an almost unnatural obsession with how their website looks.

Especially many web developers, who convince their clients to spend tens of thousands of dollars for award winning sites that are monuments to the skill and flair of the developer, but may not do much to improve the profits of the client.

Well, I don’t believe that the look of your website is that important, if the visitors REALLY are interested in what you have to say to them.

Sure it needs an effective navigation system so that visitors can find what they want, as well as contain content that is important to them.

But most of the other stuff is just eye candy.

My reasons for making these heretical statements are:

1. Nobody ever refused to read a letter from someone they love just because it’s on the “wrong” colour paper, or the writing is too large or too small, or it doesn’t have pretty pictures.

2. I recently saw a museum exhibition of wartime relics, which contained letters from soldiers written on toilet paper. The writing was small and hard to read. And then the paper was turned 90 degrees and filled with more lines of text.
Paper was precious.

And reading those letters was extremely difficult:  but I’ll be that none of them were ever screwed up and thrown away.

Because again, the readers were vitally interested in what they had to say.

The reason that there is so much emphasis on presentation these days is because a lot of people are saying basically the same thing, and they need to have the gimmicks to attract the attention of visitors.

That’s why I believe that if your content is good enough -  and you have the attention of your readers, the  look of your website isn’t that important.

cheers,

Eric G.

1. You Need Your Own Domain Name:

A domain name is an internet address that is controlled by you. It uniquely identifies your business on the internet. ( ie www.yourname.com)

A domain name about the cheapest investment you’ll ever make for your business. The two main benefits are:

· It gives your business a professional image.

· You promote YOUR business every time you give out your email or website address.

(After all, why give free publicity to some other company (ie Yahoo, AOL, or Bigpond) if you use their name in your email address)

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How Many Home Pages are there on your website?

The old concept of having a main home page, and then links to many other pages to find what you want  is the traditional way of building a website.

So if someone was searching for “ferrets as pets”, the link would take them to the homepage of a ferret site, where they had to hunt around – possibly through several layers of menus – to eventually find a page about having ferrets as pets.

However, the increased power and effectiveness of search engines and websites mean that people expect to put a term into a search engine, click on one of the results, and start reading about exactly what they want to see.

So they’d expect to land exactly on a page that discusses the topic of having a ferret as a pet. This means that the selection of keywords, and writing content that precisely addresses that keyword, is vitally important.

So you should be constructing your site as if ANY page of your site is effective as your home page – with links, information, and contact details.

In these days of laser focussed keyword targetting,  it is common for an entire page to be written just for one keyword phrase.

This is very difficult to maintain and update  if your website is a traditional static type of site that has been created for you by a developer – but very simple if you are using something like WordPress as the engine that runs your website.

This article will introduce you to the simple building blocks that form the foundation of every internet business.

You will also discover the master key that is at the heart of every website. Without this master key, you do not have control of your internet business.

Most business owners are what I call Technically Terrified.

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It’s probably NOT YOU!

To discover who is in charge of your online business, here’s the worlds shortest quiz.

It only has one question, and you might not like the answer.
The question is:

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For most people, starting an online business involves finding a website developer, and then going along with whatever the developer says.

While this may seem easy and convenient, it also has many dangers. The main one is that you can easily lose control of your website and your entire online business. You can also become locked into an arrangement where any change to your website will be time consuming and expensive.

I want to take you back a couple of steps, and share some basic stuff about websites and online businesses that most people don’t know. (more…)

I’ve personally broken most of these, and suffered the consequences.

I hope you learn from my mistakes.

1. Use your commonsense. Don’t believe everything you hear, read, or see.
2. Don’t authorise, buy, or sign up for ANYTHING unless you know what is, what it does, whether it works, and whether you need it.

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There are many ways of collecting payments for the goods and services that you sell online. Many are simple to set up, and just involve pasting a bit of code onto your existing web pages.

I’ll start off by discussing the easiest method – the  non-bank service providers. (more…)

Does YOUR website will work with and without the www prefix?

"Don’t know. Why does it matter" I hear you say.

Well, here’s why it is important.
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