The first part of this article illustrated how to install and configure the MySQL Database Server, install and use the MySQL Administrator, create a new database, and create and populate a new sample table with some sample data.

Now that the database server is up and running, this part of the article will complete our coverage of using MySQL with ASP.NET by covering how to:

• Add a new MySQL user.
• Assign the new user the appropriate permisions to the database.
• Connect to the MySQL server from .NET.
• Build a simple ASP.NET page to query the database.

Step 7 – Creating a New MySQL User Account

I’m assuming that you’re been following along with part one, so at this point you should have the MySQL Server and MySQL Adminstrator installed, and have a sample database named “mydatabase” which contains a sample table named “mytable” with two rows of data in it.

In order to add a new user account, we’ll once again need to run MySQL Administrator and login to your server using the password you set during installation. You’ll then want to select the “User Administration” item from the list of items at the left of the MySQL Administrator window. This should bring up a list of the current user account on the server (There should already be once called “root”). If you right-click in the small window where the users are listed you should get the option to “Add new User”.

You’ll then be prompted to enter the new user’s details. I’ve named the user “15secs” and assigned a password of “password”.

Once you’ve finished entering the user’s details press “Apply Changes” to save your modifications.

Step 8 – Granting the User Account Access to the Database

By default new users have permission to do almost nothing. In order to allow our new user to connect to the MySQL database server, we need to grant him what MySQL calls “Schema Privileges”. This is naturally done from the “Schema Privileges” tab in MySQL Administrator.

Notice in the above screen capture that the user has no “Assigned Privileges” to the “mydatabase” database. Since the user will need to be able to query the database to run the sample code which follows, I’m now going to assign the user the “SELECT” privilege by highlighting it in the “Available Privileges” column and clicking the arrow to move it to the “Assigned Privileges” column. Once again I’ll click the “Apply Changes” button to save changes.

Depending on your application the user may very well need more permission then I’ve assigned to “15secs”. Most non-trivial applications will probably need at least “INSERT”, “UPDATE”, and “DELETE” permissions in addition to “SELECT”, but it’s always best to err on the side of caution and add more permissions as they are needed then to simply give everyone full control.

Step 9 – Connecting to the Database Server from an ASP.NET Page

To my knowledge there are currently two main ways to connect to a MySQL database server from .NET: MySQL Connector/ODBC (aka. MyODBC) and MySQL Connector/Net. While the ODBC connector is cross-platform and is compliant with ODBC standards, the .NET version is generally the better choice when using MySQL with .NET.

The setup files can be downloaded from the MySQL Connector/Net page and installation is straight-forward.

Note: Even though I selected the option to register Connector/NET in the Global Assembly Cache and when I checked it later I found that it actually was installed there, until I copied the MySql.Data.dll file to my application’s /bin folder I couldn’t get the import statement to find the Connector/NET’s namespace. The exact error message was:

BC30466: Namespace or type specified in the Imports 'MySql.Data.MySqlClient' cannot be found. I’m not sure what the problem was/is, but I looked around and it seems some others are having the same issue. So, for the time being, placing another copy of the file from it’s installed location (ie. C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Connector Net 1.0.4\bin\.NET 1.1\) to your application’s /bin folder (ie. C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\bin\) should resolve the issue.

Step 10 – A Sample ASP.NET Page to Query a MySQL Database

So with our MySQL database finally squared away and MySQL Connector/Net installed, we can now start using MySQL from our ASP.NET web pages. For illustration I’m going to provide a very simple script with no bells and whistles. You can find fancy database scripts all over the web. The point of this one is simply to show you what you need to do to connect to MySQL. Don’t get me wrong… all that fancy stuff works just fine using MySQL (and usually with very few changes) but that’s just not the point of this script.

MySQL.aspx

<%@ Page Language="VB" debug="true" %>
<%@ Import Namespace = "System.Data" %>
<%@ Import Namespace = "MySql.Data.MySqlClient" %>
<script language="VB" runat="server">

Sub Page_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)

Dim myConnection As MySqlConnection
Dim myDataAdapter As MySqlDataAdapter
Dim myDataSet As DataSet

Dim strSQL As String
Dim iRecordCount As Integer

myConnection = New MySqlConnection(“server=localhost; user id=15secs; password=password; database=mydatabase; pooling=false;”)

strSQL = “SELECT * FROM mytable;”

myDataAdapter = New MySqlDataAdapter(strSQL, myConnection)
myDataSet = New Dataset()
myDataAdapter.Fill(myDataSet, “mytable”)

MySQLDataGrid.DataSource = myDataSet
MySQLDataGrid.DataBind()

End Sub

</script>

<html>
<head>
<title>Simple MySQL Database Query</title>
</head>
<body>

<form runat=”server”>

<asp:DataGrid id=”MySQLDataGrid” runat=”server” />

</form>

</body>
</html>

In the above script, I’ve highlighted the places where the script varies from one you would use to perform the same thing using Microsoft SQL Server or Access. As you can see there’s really nothing new here. Instead of importing System.Data.SQLClient like we would for MS SQL, we import MySql.Data.MySqlClient. Oh and if at any point you need a reference for the MySql.Data.MySqlClient namespace, you’re in luck… it ships with one.

Here’s a screen capture of what the script above produces when run against the sample database and table we set up in this article. Like I said, it may not be pretty, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be. I’m just keeping it simple for illustration.

Conclusion

In part one of this article I illustrated how to:

• Download and install the MySQL Database Server.
• Configure the server.
• Install MySQL Administrator to make managing the database easier.
• Create a new database named “mydatabase”.
• Create a new table named “mytable” in that database.
• Add a couple rows of sample data to that table.

This part illustrated how to do the following:

• Add a new MySQL user.
• Assign the new user the appropriate permisions to the database.
• Connect to the MySQL server from .NET.
• Build a simple ASP.NET page to query the database.

I hope this article helped ease your introduction to this great little database server. Whether you are upgrading from Access or starting from scratch, MySQL is certainly a viable option and despite the fact that it’s open-source and not shipped from Redmond, it really does work great with .NET. And, with the addition of MySQL Administrator, management is no longer the source of nightmares that it used to be. Hopefully the next time you’re looking for a database server to use as the backend for your .NET application, you’ll at least consider using MySQL.

No related posts.

Introduction

Back in the days of classic ASP, if you were building a database-driven web site, your choice was either to invest a lot of money to get a copy of Microsoft SQL Server (or some other enterprise-ready database) or invest a lot of time finding a way to deal with the performance and scalability limitations of Microsoft Access. Luckily these days there’s another viable alternative: MySQL.

What is MySQL?

MySQL is an open source database server. While many organizations may choose to purchase a commercial version of the product, the GNU General Public License (commonly known as the “GPL”) ensures that the source code will remain available and therefore the software can be used free of charge for those willing to forego official support and support it themselves.

For more information, see the MySQL website.

Step 1 – Download and Installation

As with most any software, the first step to getting up and running with MySQL is to obtain and install the product. You can download the setup file from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/index.html. As of this writing the current version is MySQL 4.1 so that’s the version I’ll be using for the rest of this article. Unless you have a reason to do otherwise, I’d recommend just downloading the pre-compiled binaries for you current platform. In this case I’ll be installing on a Windows XP machine so I downloaded the normal Windows version which includes the installer. The download is just under 35 MB so over it shouldn’t take too long to get via any resonable internet connection.

The installation is straight-forward and caused no problems for the very modest laptop I installed it on. Just so you have an idea of what to expect, I’m including screen captures of several steps of the setup process.

As you can see in the screen capture above, at the end of the setup process the installer asks if you’d like to configure the MySQL Server. If you choose to do so, it will launch the MySQL Server Instance Configuration Wizard which brings us to the next step in the process.

Step 2 – Configuration

The MySQL Server Instance Configuration Wizard makes configuring your server really simple. Configuration is straight forward and I just used the default setting for most everything.

If your’re installing on a dedicated database server or a shared server you should obviously select the appropriate choice. Since I’m installing on my laptop, I simply left the server type as “Developer Machine”. This setting won’t offer the same performance, but it also won’t use as many system resources.

I made sure to enable TCP/IP networking in order to allow the web server to connect to the database when we get to building a web page to query the database. If you’ll be running the database and web servers on the same physical computer then you can disable this option to prevent access to the database via the network.

Step 3 – MySQL Administrator

While it’s certainly not required, I highly recommend you download and install the MySQL Administrator. It’s a great little application that provides a GUI to help you manage your new database server. While you can get up and running using only the command line, for users who are used to using Windows applications and wince at the thought of editing configuration files by hand or using a command prompt it’s almost a necessity. For the rest of this article, I’ll assume you’ve installed MySQL Administrator and I’ll be using it for illustration.

Step 4 – Creating a Database

In order to create our database, we first need to connect to the server. Run MySQL Administrator and login to your server using the password you set during installation.

You’ll then want to select the “Catalogs” item at the bottom left of the MySQL Administrator window. This should bring up a list of the current databases on the server (There should be two of them: “mysql” and “test”). If you right-click in the small window where they are listed you should get the option to “Create New Schema”.

You’ll then be prompted to enter a name for the new database. I’ll be using “mydatabase” as the example for the remainder of this article.

Once created, your new database will appear in the Schemata list along with the other databases on the server. Selecting it from this list will bring up its details in the right hand pane.

There’s not much to see because the database is still empty… so let’s put something in it.

Step 5 – Creating a Table

To create a table simply click on the “Create Table” button. This brings up the following dialog box:

As you can see, I’ve named the table “mytable” and added 4 fields to it: an auto-incrementing primary key id field, an integer field, a text field, and a date/time field.

When you’re done making changes, you simply click the “Apply Changes” button. A window that looks something like the one below will pop up showing you the SQL that will be executed and asking you to confirm that you want to save changes to the table design.

At this point, we’ve got a database named “mydatabase” that contains a table named “mytable”. Now all we need is to add some rows of data to the table.

Step 6 – Adding Data

In the real world, data in your table would probably come in via your application. To get some sample data into our table, I’m simply going to insert a few lines by hand. To do this I’ll use the MySQL Command Line Client. If you’re still in the MySQL Administrator you can access the command line from the “Tools” menu (Tools -> MySQL Command Line Client) otherwise you can run it from the MySQL group on the Start Menu.

The first command in the screen above tells the server which database I want to be working in. The second and third commands simple insert some dummy data and are the same except for the the differences in the data being inserted.

Now we’ve got two sample rows of data in our table. At this point our database server is up and running with a database, a table and even some data.

Conclusion

This article illustrated how to do the following:

• Download and install the MySQL Database Server.
• Configure the server.
• Install MySQL Administrator to make managing the database easier.
• Create a new database named “mydatabase”.
• Create a new table named “mytable” in that database.
• Add a couple rows of sample data to that table.

No related posts.

If you expect to achieve sustained growth for your Web business and you don’t have a plan in place to get you there, you might as well forget it. Growing a profitable Web Business is a strategic process that requires long range vision, careful planning, precise execution and patience. It’s vital that you know exactly what you want to accomplish and that you have a detailed blueprint to follow.

Of course you need to have a website that is optimized and tested to convert traffic, and then you need to devote time to developing and executing short-term and long-term promotional strategies. These strategies must stand on their own as well as work together to get you the best results.

Here are five key strategies you can use to advance your business and improve your profit margin:

#1. Always Look For Opportunities to Increase Sales

Let’s face it, sales drive business and sales come from customers; therefore, the hunt for new customers should be phase one of an ongoing three-phase marketing approach that every online business owner should embrace.

Phase two is to follow up with these new customers from time to time, and introduce them to additional offers. The objective of this second phase is to get them to buy from you more often.

The final phase of this three-pronged strategy is to offer expensive items, or bundle multiple items into higher-priced packages. This will give your customers more opportunities to make larger purchases.

#2. Find the Best Use for Your Marketing Budget

After you have identified your market demographic, fixed your goals and decided on a promotional strategy for reaching potential customers, the next step is to figure out how to maximize your budget and get the job done without over spending. Even though the exact process will vary from business to business, the principle remains the same.

You want to expose your product or service, as often as possible, to consumers who will derive the most benefit from it. Studies show that the average consumer will see a promotion about five to seven times before taking action on the offer.

So instead of blowing your budget on a single opportunity to reach your select group, it is much wiser to get everyone’s attention with repeated promotions. Use as many different forms of advertising as you can afford and squeeze the most out of your marketing dollars.

#3. Invest in a Virtual Assistant

This is an opportunity to outsource various redundant tasks to someone who is capable, reliable and trustworthy. The big advantage to you is you’ll have more time to devote to activities that generate income and help you grow your business.

A virtual assistant works from his or her office as an independent contractor and is responsible for whatever administrative or operational responsibilities you assign. Compensation can be agreed upon at an hourly rate, per assignment or by retainer.

If you are not yet at the stage where you can afford to pay a virtual assistant, you can consider a suitable barter arrangement with a subscriber or a customer. You can also ask a family member or a friend for help. You can’t do it all yourself and you shouldn’t even consider that option for the longterm.

#4. Use the Power of Email to Convert Visitors Into Customers

Email marketing is one of the most economical and reliable ways to build a relationship with visitors and eventually convert them into buyers. It is an effective tool for staying in touch and developing the level of comfort and trust that is necessary before they will agree to do business with you.

You can use email to convince your subscribers of your expertise in your niche. The more they come to accept you as an authority, the greater your credibility will become and the easier it will be for you to make sales.

Plus, email is a very handy tool for keeping customers abreast of new products, special promotions and the latest announcements about your business.

#5. Develop a System for Everything You Do

Make sure to design methods and procedures that simplify and expedite important aspects of your business operation. Very often these systems will evolve from trial and error, but when they have been perfected they should become standard procedure.

The most efficient systems are those that get you to your objective as quickly as possible, for as little money as possible and with the least possible effort.

The above strategies are vital to the success of any online business. Together they save you time, money, effort, and provide a pathway to sustained growth and expansion. Just be consistent in the marketing practices you implement and the results will come out in your favor.

About the Author: Hermas Haynes is the founder and webmaster of eBizInfoCenter - a popular resource where you can find many more marketing strategies, tools, articles and ideas for advancing your web business.

No related posts.

The most important function of a website is to help a company to sell their services/products to new clients.

When potential new clients/tourists need to choose between two companies with whom they aren’t familiar, they are most likely to compare the websites. This is because a website is almost the only method for a person to actually see beforehand what he/she pays for. In general, more than 90% of these potential new client’s decisions are decided upon the impression that is reflected from the website, regardless of the competence of these companies. The general truth is that most potential clients do not know how to technically compare companies, and therefore trust that the website’s professionalism will reflect the expertise.

Therefore large amounts are invested in corporate website development.

Unfortunately most companies tend to overlook the importance of building a trusted web presence. Without having a web presence with authority almost no new visitors will end up at your website. And since every company wants to expand, they need to focus on improving their web presence in order to increase the chance of getting new customers.

The best and most effective long term solution to increase your web presence is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It is a highly specialized field that focus on improving the amount of trust the rest of the world will have in your website. The more trust you have, the more potential new clients will visit your website daily.

The amount of trust your website has, is most of the time determined by search engines (for example Google, Yahoo, etc.). This is because the search engines have the most advanced mathematical algorithms available today, hence the acronym, SEO. Of all these search engines, the world’s most accepted benchmark of website trust is known as the Google rank (or page rank) of your website. Therefore, if you could increase your Google rank, your number of new visitors to your website will most certainly increase.

Google Rank of well known organisations’ home page:

4/10: Pick n Pay, Steers, KWV, News 24
5/10: Anglo Gold, Checkers, Spur, Shoprite, Nedbank, Old Mutual
6/10: Anglo American, Absa, Stellenbosch University, Telkom, MTN, Vodacom, Mobil, Virgin, Standard Bank, Die Burger, Sasol
7/10: McDonald’s, Ford, General Electric, Nike, Coke
8/10: General Motors
9/10: Microsoft, eBay, Amazon
10/10: Google, Facebook

Another reason why Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is so important is because of the quality of the traffic (website visitors) you receive on your website. If somebody visits your website due to a search engine query, as opposed to other reasons (such as typing in the web address/clicking on a link from another website, etc), the new visitor will most likely already be looking for your services. For example, if someone types in the word “wine” in Google, they are probably looking for wine. So if your site comes up first on Google you can probably sell a bottle of wine if your offering is satisfactory. The contrary is that the person accidentally lands on your website, but has no immediate desire for the product or services.

Please note that it is possible to buy quality traffic, but this is expensive (depending on the product value and competition) and only effective in the immediate short term i.e. while it is active. SEO has a long term cumulative effect and is relatively inexpensive to maintain once a certain level of optimisation is reached.

Tips when hiring SEO experts:

• Whenever using a company in order to improve your SEO, always check out the Google Rank of their website. Since SEO is not that well known in management circles, there is a lot of companies that will try to sell SEO skills while there own SEO are terrible.
• Also try to get some form of guarantee. It is very rare that marketing companies ever give guarantees about the effects of their efforts, but if they actually do, you know they are serious about their skills.
• Try to get clear benchmarks to calculate the results of the SEO campaign. For example monitor the number of visitors that your website receives that came from natural search engine queries during and after the time of your campaign. (If your marketing team don’t know how to get these figures, don’t use them!)
• Make sure your SEO team have a clean record. Sometimes SEO companies may get desperate in order to get results and might step over the moral line by trying to fool search engines with unnatural ‘black hat’ methods. When caught out, these websites are usually banned from search engines and will not show in any search result. To look into any company’s track record simply Google them. Disgruntles clients tend to write their bad experience in public forums that will normally be listed in Google’s search results just below the company’s own website.

Good luck with your marketing campaign!

About the Author: Wim Conradie is a majority shareholder in Matogen Corporate Web Development (www.matogen.com). He studied electronic engineering, computer sciences & industrial engineering at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and started first web development business in November 2003. He has a ‘passion for business and adding value to other busnesses’.

No related posts.

Who are you, really?

Your brand, I mean.

What do you want other people to think when they think about your business, your service, or your product?

Do you want them to think your brand is the life of the party, or the designated driver? Is it a trusted friend, or a glamorous rock star? Are you a Volvo or a ‘Vette’?

So I repeat…who are you?

You may already know this, and if that’s the case, I congratulate you! Many small businesses struggle with this. If, however, you need a little help in defining yourself, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

1. How am I currently perceived by my customers?
If you don’t know, do a quick focus group with a target segment of your market (10 – 20 people), customers and non-customers. Have a list of questions ready to ask.

2. How do I want to be perceived by my customers?
Realize that your brand needs to reflect and resonate with your target market. If you want to be a sports car, but your customer wants you to be a sedan, you should probably reflect what your customer’s value unless you’re trying to attract a different set of customers.

3. How far apart is how I’m currently being perceived to how I want to be perceived?
What will it take to bridge the gap? Do I really need to bridge the gap, or should I enhance my current image?

Once you’ve got a general idea of perception, time to make your personality more definitive. So, ask yourself these questions:

4. What are my brand’s human characteristics?
As crazy as it may sound to you, many branding experts suggest you do this in order to put your brand on a level everyone in your organization can understand. Is your brand male, female? Old, young? Rich, poor, middle class? Where does it work? What does it do for entertainment? These are just starter questions…you can think of a lot more yourself!

5. If my brand was an actual person, what would be its name?
Think about it, when you hear someone is names “Biff,” an immediate picture comes to your mind. I bet you can think of a dozen such examples! Pick a name that personifies your brand. Paris, Tom, Jane, Inga, Ian, Jeff, Elsa…

6. What is my brand’s “life story?”
Biff needs to know where he came from, so create a brief, fictional biography of your humanized brand.

Once you figure all this out, consider building a Personality Board. This is very helpful in giving your brand a visual personification. Cut out pictures, stories, headlines, or any other visual reference you think would work to define your personality. You may even want to find a photograph of someone who is the image of your brand personality (your Biff) and place it in the middle. Display it proudly, and make sure your employees know what it is.

Now, when you create your advertising and marketing materials – from print ads to tv and radio spots, from websites to packaging, and beyond – you know what personality they need to reflect. And you will be on your way to delivering a brand with which your customers can identify.

About the Author: Donna Williams is the founder and creator of BusinessBurrito.com – a website dedicated to helping small businesses grow to their maximum potential. She is also a 25-year advertising / marketing executive, creative director, writer, and producer. Together, Donna and her husband currently own and co-own five small businesses. To learn more about Donna and read more of her articles, visit her website at http://www.businessburrito.com.

No related posts.

If you are like most people, it is probably safe to say that you are often annoyed when sales people become… pushy. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a car salesperson or someone blocking your way past a kiosk in the mall, these sales people have something in common, and that is persistence and the belief that they can persuade you to buy anything and/or everything.

If they talk fast enough, or maybe if they fill your head with so many claims, they feel that you can be convinced.

Unfortunately, there are many sites on the Internet who feel the same way, that if they inundate the friendly neighborhood visitor with claims and boasts and incomprehensible numbers and figures, they’ll persuade you that what they are offering is exactly what you need. And surely you’d agree with them… once you’ve waded through all the claims.

Or, there is the other situation, the one in which you wander into the wrong store, either because the name was misleading or you just weren’t paying enough attention. The same thing happens online. SEO practices can get certain websites to the top of the ranking for a given keyword, even if the searcher’s intent doesn’t quite match up with the content of the site. The visitors who click on your site need to know they found the right place before they have the chance to beat a hasty retreat.

Given these experiences, it should be obvious that being direct and being clear is at least as important a part of SEO as keyword rich content writing or link recruitment. Well, to rephrase, it is important if you want to increase your conversion rate and not just the number of visitors.

Often SEO developers are focused on creating keyword relevant content, and advertisers are focused on finding that great turn-of-phrase or magical call to action that will persuade a visitor to make a purchase. But the truth of the matter is that often it is the simple act of making your site clear that will do the most good for your business.

By clear and direct, this means that a potential customer will need to know immediately where they are, what they can do/buy there, and why they should choose you over the competition.

For example, an old SEO tactic (a bad tactic, it should be added) was to redirect visitors to a different page. But it doesn’t have to be that dramatic, either. If a visitor clicked on a PPC ad that claimed there was a free download/membership/whatever at the other end, yet when they get to the site there is no clear path to the freebie, this can lead a consumer to believe that they found the wrong place and they will try somewhere else.

Helping them understand what they can do on your site should happen next, and it should happen very quickly. Don’t make them wade through lines of text before giving them an option to do something. That option should be available to them from the beginning, and they should know exactly what that option entails.

Finally, they need to see why you are the right choice instead of your competition. This does not mean bragging and talking yourself up. When you do that you’ve just reverted to the care salesman mentality again. And no one likes dealing with these personalties unless they absolutely have to. Clear comparisons and honest testimonials will go a lot further than hollow promises and claims.

Many times content writers feel like they need to answer the “why” before the “what” and the “where”. This only leads to cumbersome dialogue and weary customers. Proper content needs to quickly confirm where they are and what they can do. Do not try to present the solution before the problem. When you address these issues you can start to create a site that will interest your customers and help them choose to do business with you.

About the Author: Andy Eliason is a writer at Main10, Inc, a Utah SEO firm. If you’d like to learn more about strong Internet marketing methods then visit their site today.

No related posts.

Where does traffic come from? Now I’m not talking about that stuff we all get stuck in during rush hour. Website traffic is essential, if you have no traffic to your website you are not going to get anyone buying your products or reading your articles. Traffic is one of the key components of your website and is available in these three forms.

1. Pay For It.

You can buy traffic typically using what is known as Pay Per Click advertising. The major names in this market are Google and their AdWords program and Yahoo Network Sponsored Search. There are many smaller companies around also but they all follow the same premise.

You create your account, grab a bunch of keywords and create your adverts. You can define the amount you want to spend per click or per day, what geographical areas you want your adverts to appear in and even what time they should appear.

When someone types one of your keywords into for example Google your advert will be displayed down the right hand side of the natural search results. If the searcher then chooses to click on your advert and gets forwarded to your website you will get charged for that click.

The price you pay for each individual click depends on a variety of conditions such as how many other people are competing on that keyword. The more competition the more it costs to be higher up the ranks. The position you want to occupy. The percentage of people who click on your advert, the list goes on.

Pay Per Click advertising can be very successful but has a steep learning curve, it is essential that you do lots of research into your chosen Pay Per Click vender and in the niche you are in.

2. Borrow It.

This option is not for everyone, but in certain niches it can be effective. The first method of borrowing traffic is what is called link exchange. This is where you put links to another website on your site and they put links back to you on theirs. This can be beneficial as you can get traffic from a more successful website reasonably quickly. However this traffic is not always targeted.

The second option in the affiliate marketing world is called a joint venture or a JP. This is essentially where you would contact another marketer or company who had products that complements yours. If they are interested they may send a mailing out to their list or put an entry in their blog alerting their visitors about you and your relevant products.

The key things to remember about borrowing traffic is that you have to give something in return. This can make it tricky when targeting very successful websites.

3. Create It.

Creating your own traffic is one of the best ways to start bringing people into your website. There are literally hundreds of ways to start creating your traffic but I’m just going to tell you about two of the most popular.

Articles are a great way of generating traffic. You can write your articles about your chosen niche, offering advice, definitions, explanations, news, reviews just to name a few. Once you have created your articles you can put them on your website or blog as content. You can also upload them to article directories or even assemble a few of them into a white paper or ebook to give away to visitors.

Video is currently the big thing on the internet world. Everywhere you look there are videos for everything. 50% of all web traffic is video and YouTube alone receives 12.5% of all the traffic out there. YouTube has made it possible for anyone to upload their videos for the whole world to see. Just as you can create an article about anything you can do the same thing with video. The best option is to do both: Create it in print and create it in video.

I wish you all the best of success.

About the Author: Mark Voce – I hope you found this article helpful. Check out my blog to get more advice, tips, secrets and the latest news on Google AdWords and Internet Marketing.

No related posts.

When it comes to web design one of the things I really like to see for a more hands-free experience for visitors is self-updating code.

In some cases this information is free. In other instances you may have to pay something to use it or allow the information to be ad supported.

Let’s say for instance that you sell replica NASCAR vehicles. You might want the latest NASCAR news on your website. You can search for sources that provide the information either as scrolling text or in a side box.

There are sites that can make customizable content for your website for things like recipes, news, gardening as well as music and entertainment news. You can paste the code they supply into a webpage and watch as that information is updated on a regular basis.

This can be an important element for those who don’t want static information on their homepage and can utilize information relevant to the primary business website.

It is likely that if a visitor clicks on a link within the text of this information they will be taken away from your webpage, but if they are used to finding that information with you they will likely come back for more.

It is sometimes difficult for business owners to keep up with every aspect of their industry and this type of updating tool allows comprehensive and current information to flow without intervention from the site owner.

One site that seems to do a good job of listing lots of free content for websites is http://www.freesticky.com/stickyweb/. Categories include cartoons, education, entertainment, sports, news, maps, weather, tips and advice to name a few.

Most online sites look for relevant and changing content. The use of a free article directory can help you locate very specific content for your website, but for news and current events it can be difficult to broker individual agreements to cover the use of current content. That’s why finding self-updating source code can be important to your web design.

You can even segment small portions of your website to include things like a quote of the day, this day in history, unusual facts, daily questions and even games.

These elements can add some personality to your website as visitors become used to intriguing content that never seems to stay the same even when other content might.

You should know that not every html code you place on your website will match the look and feel of your website. There may be some adjustment you can make to help this. It is also possible that the code may interfere with your website design and you may need some help from a code expert to either fix the coding issue or find something else that may be more suitable.

Some individuals are also using RSS feeds to accomplish a similar goal. The point is that no matter the method you use to obtain the information the addition of content that remains in a state of flux can help in providing an improved user experience for your regular site visitor.

About the Author: Scott Lindsay – Make A Website in minutes with the Website Builder at HighPowerSites.com. Start a Home Business and Sell Ebooks at BooksWealth.com.

No related posts.

Joomla’s default URLs, like the standard URLs of any CMS, are terrible for Search Engine Optimization purposes. They have several querystring parameters, they are not human readable, they offer search engines no keywords or insight into what content the page holds, and they use the Itemid parameter to create multiple URLs for each content item. Luckily there are Search Engine Friendly URL components available for Joomla that solve all these issues for us.

I used to use the JoomSEF component on my Joomla websites. It worked very well to create descriptive, search engine friendly, human readable URLs for my web sites, but it didn’t properly remove the Itemid URL parameters. This meant that each article still had several URLs. This was very bad for search engine optimization and for people visiting my sites. Search engines thought I was duplicating content and often indexed the wrong URLs, and visitors would get confused with different URLs pointing to the same article.

I just recently uninstalled JoomSEF and installed sh404SEF here on JoomlaDigger.com. What an improvement! JoomSEF had an excellent feature set, but in my opinion sh404SEF is a much better solution. It has completely removed all Itemids from the web site’s URLs, leaving just one URL for every article. It accomplishes this by looking into your main menu to find the best Itemid for each content item, then routes all other links to that article to the new SEF URL using only one Itemid (which is hidden from visitors and only used on the backend).

There were so many links pointing to JoomlaDigger.com’s old URLs that I did have to spend a couple of hours creating Search Engine Friendly 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones. Luckily sh404SEF allows you to create URL aliases for every new SEF URL. Each alias you enter is then automatically 301 redirected to the new SEF URL, pointing search engines and visitors coming in on old links to your new articles. This takes a little time to set up, but it is definitely worth it to redirect your PageRank to the new URLs and keep visitors from getting 404 pages.

SEF URLs are a MUST for every Joomla website. I highly recommend downloading sh404SEF and installing it for Joomla 1.0 or Joomla 1.5.

No related posts.

Here’s a cool SEO tip that will automatically bring you more traffic from Google and other search engines:  Put a Random Content module on your homepage. It’s better to have it on as many pages as possible, but the homepage is key. I discovered this trick while experimenting with a few different ideas over at http://www.patrickswesey.com.

The website originally had several hundred thousand inlinks as a result of free software and Joomla extensions I had offered. Pretty soon I started up JoomlaDigger.com and moved all the free extensions from PatrickSwesey.com over to here.

Since the move, most of the traffic on PatrickSwesey.com had died down. The content left at PatrickSwesey.com was free software for Windows XP and a blog of stupid dreams I have. It wasn’t a terribly exciting website and its traffic reflected that. I didn’t really care if the site got traffic or not so I decided to experiement a little and see how I could affect its search engine traffic.

I decided to add a Random Content module, which simply adds links to random articles in your website. Within a couple days my traffic had almost doubled with new visitors from Google. Most of the search terms were obscure, phrases like alligator gar, weird bug, hot aunt, gross stories, alien ass, first day of work, the fonz, cat in a blender… There were also more visitors searching for the standard search queries I was already seeing, like free file renamer, windows file renamer, desktop image changer…

Several months have passed. I have not made any changes to the site, nor have I added any new content, but I continue to see a steady flow of traffic from Google. Here is why a Random Content module is so good for SEO:

1. It shows Google that the articles exist.
2. It shows Google that the articles are important.
3. It shows Google that the articles are important to your site visitors.
4. Google likes regularly updated content.

If you don’t have a sitemap or Google XML sitemap then Google and other search engines will have a hard time finding articles buried in your site. Your main menu only has links to content sections and categories, not many web sites have links to every article ever written.

Google is pretty smart and probably already knows about most of your website’s pages. However, the most important aspect of SEO is the number of links to a page. If you have more links to an article then it has a better chance of being higher in Google’s search results. Your homepage probably has the highest Google PageRank of any page on your website, so a link from your homepage is the best PageRank boost your website can give an article.

Your website’s homepage is supposed to give your visitors a quick overview of your website. It shows them what is available and what is important. Google will pick up on this and give precedence to what you are implying to your visitors.

Google likes to see sites that are updated often. Even if you aren’t creating new content (PatrickSwesey.com has sat untouched for several months) having a Random Content module simulates a list of top rated or featured articles, making your site seem more interactive and dynamic.

Camp26 has released a random content module for Joomla 1.5, I’ve used it on another Joomla 1.5 site and recommend it:

http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,4406/Itemid,35/

I used this random content module for PatrickSwesey.com, which is a Joomla 1.0.x site:

http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,1178/Itemid,35/

No related posts.