New Online Articles

There are any number of online classifieds that Realtors can post listings to, but which ones are actually going to improve sales?

Here are the metrics I’m using the gauge the effectiveness of various classified services:

Popularity of site in your market - Popularity of classifieds sites are very location-dependent.

Relevance of users in your market - Sure, it might be popular, but what type of people are actually using the sites? Does the site’s search engine allow for very precise classifieds searching?

How quickly can listings be posted - Some sites make it quick and easy, others make it ridiculously cumbersome.

Back-links - Are they allowed? Are they free?

So, on to the list:
1. Kijiji - 4/5 (just because back-links aren’t free)
Popularity: 645th most trafficked site. Most popular in Canada. Less popular than Craigslist in Vancouver
Relevance of users: 4/5. Search engine is friendly, pages are indexed by Google for relevant search terms
Postings: ~30 seconds. No account required.
Back-Links: $4.

2. Craigslist - 5/5
Popularity: 25th most trafficked site. Popular in the USA, and Vancouver.
Relevance of users: 3/5. Search engine is not very user-friendly and therefore traffic won’t be as targeted. Pages are indexed by Google for relevant search terms.
Postings: ~30 seconds. No account required.
Back-Links: $0.

3. Google Base - 2/5
Popularity: Unknown, although Base does not have a lot of listings compared to the others in this article.
Relevance of users: 4/5. Search engine is very targeted. Pages with relevant content appear on generic Google search as well.
Postings: 1/5. You need an account, and need to enter all kinds of personal information. Once done, it is easy to add listings, but still not as convenient as the above.
Back-Links: 5/5. $0.
Notes: Base may pick up steam in the future, but for the time being, your most time-efficient posts are with it’s alternatives.

4. Facebook Marketplace - 1/5 (unless you have a big business network on Facebook, or are investing in building one)
Popularity: Unknown. Facebook is a closed system, so search engines can’t access it. Also, people commonly complain that your listings are accessible to people in your network by default.
Relevance of users: This depends entirely on what your Facebook network looks like. If you do a lot of business on Facebook, you probably already know about Marketplace. If not, give this one a miss.
Postings: 3/5. You need a Facebook account, which most people already have.
Back-Links: 0/5. Don’t exist - Again, Facebook is a closed network and cannot be indexed by search engines, so forget SEO if you decide to use Marketplace to market listings.
Notes: If you’re big into online social marketing, Marketplace will be useful for you. For everyone else that is trying to drive the most traffic for the least amount of time and money, Marketplace should be at the bottom of your list.

Sam Prochazka manages Realpagemaker, a company that has been building Realtor and real estate websites exclusively since 2002.

When you are undertaking some major new endeavor–entrepreneurial, artistic, whatever–that you want to share with family, friends, or heck, maybe even the whole world, the first thing to do in our electronic culture is to create your own website!

Having your own website is crucial these days. Whenever you see an advertisement in any form–a billboard, a quick television stint, or a preview before a movie begins, you will see ninety-nine percent of the time a reference website to learn more about the product, good, or service featured in the ad!

You need a website for the same reason: to give people a reference whenever they ask about what’s going on with you. Of course, many hosting domains that you can use free of charge have fairly long site addresses, but to whatever extent you are able, try to make it short, simple, and memorable.

If that is not possible, you could create your own business cards with the full URL printed upon each of them, along with your name and perhaps a little about what people can expect to find on the site.

Now, more times than not, the expense for such business cards will come out of your own pocket, but first of all, a decent supply of the perforated shiny paper and some ink from your printer shouldn’t be too costly, and second of all, most office software includes easy templates for designing your own cards, even including a place for the URL.

Plus, you can easily add advertisements to your website, particularly the type that are relevant to the topic of your site. Many companies pay you for each hit the ads receive, whether or not your visitors become solid clientele for the advertisers. Don’t expect this to pay your bills, but it can help offset costs, like those from producing business cards.

No matter the subject of your website, you should try to include varying types of media. People get bored easily, so when you have text, be sure to break it up into small paragraphs. Include pictures, sound, animations, and even videos. These will capture the interest of your visitors.

If you don’t feel too technically savvy, consider either enlisting the help of someone who is (but then you might have to pay them), or investigate using a CMS–a Content Management System that will help you create, edit, and publish a website of virtually any kind.

Some of these are even usable free of charge, like Joomla and others. Even if you know your way around the web, component systems can still be useful to you. But no matter how you decide to go about it, there’s no reason to wait! Start building your website today.

CMS Market(http://www.cmsmarket.com/) is a Joomla Extensions Directory ,Template Directory and CMS Market. Art Gib is a freelance writer.

Many companies in this time of crisis with the economy are doing everything they can to stay afloat. They need something that is going to put their name out there and attract new revenue. It can be hard for some companies because ever since they have been in business, they have sold the same type of product. They may be getting under sold or they may even be selling something that people do not really need anymore. In this day in age companies need to start focusing on what the average family can afford and what they need.

Many types of business advertising try to reach a certain group of people or targeted customers. If they are selling a certain beauty product, they need to focus on women. If they are selling school supplies, they need to focus on children and college students. With college students you can definitely sell a lot of small versions of housing decorations because this will be their first time living on their own. They will want to make their dorm room into a small, little apartment. There are many ways to catch a certain demographic, you just need the right product.

In many cases, business advertising saves companies from going bankrupt. It brings companies back to life and therefore saves many, many jobs. There are other ways to get your product and that is using the most popular method in today’s society, the Internet. If you have a product that you want to get out there, you need to make a really great website and make sure everyone knows about it. Put ads on popular chatting websites. That way your product is on websites that people are on a couple times a day. There are many ways to reach your demographic as long as you try to think the way they do.

The trick to business advertising is knowing what people want, or better yet, what people need. If they need something they will buy it. Make them think that they need something even if they do not. It can be a little tricky but for those companies that do everything they can to succeed, they deserve everything they get. A great company that has survived many hardships and that are still around making money are probably the best companies. They know how to sell a product and make it look appealing.

If you’re interesting in promoting your business online take a look at one of the largest Australian business directories, eMow.

If you are a small business owner who has an Internet presence — and really, if you are a small business owner, you should have an Internet presence — then you should seriously check in to using an online directory to help maximize the traffic driven to your website and, as a result, your profits. You may be wondering how an online directory can actually help you, and if so, it would first help to understand just what exactly an online directory is. An online business directory is just as the name implies: an Internet directory (think phone book) of businesses and services within any given area that provides results based on keyword searches for specific goods and services. The directory is separated in to categories and those categories also have sub-categories for more a accurate classification of any given business website.

Now that you know exactly what an online directory is, you can more easily ascertain just how it can help your business website increase traffic which will ultimately lead to higher sales and sales revenue for your bottom line — and after all, that is the primary reason people go in to business. In order for you to be able to maximize the impact placing your website link (or links) in an online directory is going to have, you need to first determine which directory is going to be the best for you. There are a number of different types from local to regional and even international, so you will need to determine which market you will fare the best in. For most businesses, this is often going to be the regional business directory.

Once you have decided which type of directory you wish to be located in, then you should take a careful look at all the categories presented — for most people being able to locate their links in multiple categories bumps them to the first page when relevant searches are conducted because they have the greatest directory exposure — and choose accordingly. By selecting service specific categories and sub-categories for your business website, you laying the foundation for millions of potential customers to be taken to a search page that contains an easily clickable link to your designated homepage. With careful and deliberate placement on your part, the online directory can really help you build your business significantly. Why not list your business on one today!

If you’re interesting in promoting your business online take a look at one of the largest Australian business directories, eMow.

It used to be that when someone looked for a particular business and/or service, they searched through the telephone directory and/or yellow pages. The modern consumer today often turns to an online business directory as opposed to the phone book. Using an online business directory listing can increase your website’s exposure to a large demographic. More people will be able to find your business and its products or services as more traffic comes to your website. These potential customers are looking specifically for something you offer and they performed an Internet search based on industry, product, or keyword. This is just one more way that using an online business directory increases visibility.

An online business directory can be accessed by nearly anyone, from anywhere. With the increased use of and access to wireless Internet, people can be searching a directory from home, work, at school, or even with their cell phone. Online directories are quick and convenient, making them the preferred method of finding a business by consumers worldwide. Your business directory listing adds legitimacy to your business. In a general Internet search, there is little difference between the sites that are displayed on the results page. When someone uses a directory, their perception of the listed companies is that they are professional and recommended.

There are many online business directories available. Some are free while others charge a fee. You certainly do not need to sign up with each of them. You may want to start with a free, local directory and expand from there. However, the cost of signing up with a business directory that charges a fee may be well worth it. This is because many of these directories have added graphics and features, and research shows that potential customers tend to be drawn to colorful listings and ones that make it easy for them to quickly figure out what exactly you sell and how to contact you.

The benefits of utilizing an online business directory make it an absolute necessity for modern-day businesses looking for ways to expand and attract new customers. When you consider the cost of using an online business directory in comparison to more traditional forms of advertising, you will undoubtedly find that it is quite inexpensive. Also, as opposed to regular printed forms of media advertising, with an online business directory, you can make changes to your listing as often as you see necessary. Clearly it makes sense to utilize the benefits of listing your business with at least one, if not several, online business directories.

If you’re interesting in promoting your business online take a look at one of the largest Australian business directories, eMow.

In today’s economic climate, it’s very likely that your business is going through some struggles. There’s hardly a company that hasn’t been affected in one way or another. It’s more important than ever to achieve business promotion while still staying on budget. With so many tools available, where do you even start? How do you know what to pay attention to and what to put at the bottom of the priority list? Knowing the basics of advertising can help your business stay solvent even in tough economic times.

A golden rule of advertising in to stay positive! Negativity makes your business look bad. People want to do business with companies that are positive and upbeat, so make sure your business promotion reflects that. Also, any mention of your competitors, even in a negative fashion, gives them free advertising. A potential customer is just as likely to remember their company name as your own and that is not what you want. Positive advertising equals good customer service in the eyes of a potential customer or client. Make sure all your ads include pertinent information, including the services your company offers and any contact information. You’d hate to have a customer be impressed and then not know how to get in touch with you.

It’s easy to get carried away with the many tools available today. There’s print ads, television, radio, Internet and more. When considering the business promotion of your company, where do you even start? It’s a good idea to list your services in the yellow pages and a good web directory to begin with. Using a reputable and well researched business directory will help you to achieve high rankings in search engines. Work closely with the sales professionals. You want to achieve the best results possible for the lowest cost to you. It may also be helpful to do some radio spots. These are generally much cheaper than television and can give you great name recognition. Later when a potential customer sees you in a directory, they will be much more likely to be drawn to your ad over others.

Whatever methods you use, be consistent! The effects of your advertising dollars aren’t a one time deal. Each exposure to your company and what it has to offer makes an impression on potential customers and increases their likelihood of using your services. And, most importantly, make a budget and stick to it! Even if your advertising is top notch, if you’ve overspent, you will have negated all the efforts you’ve made and will be back to square one. In these tough economic times, you should use every advantage you can get to keep your business successful.

If you’re interesting in promoting your business online take a look at one of the largest Australian business directories, eMow.

Using links directories to build one way links to your website is the most effective way to get the kind of traffic that you want, if you know how to use them. Search engines don’t just check for keywords anymore. They look at the number, site ranking, and quality of the sites that have established a one way link to your website. That information is analyzed in a fraction of a second and the search engine then sorts and ranks your website along with others that have similar information.

Link directories can help you to distinguish yourself from the pack and to boost your page ranking by increasing your link popularity. It’s pretty simple, really. Just like the winning candidate in an election is the one who gets the most votes, the website that gets the top spot on the search results will be the one who has the highest number of the equivalent of internet votes - quality one-way links.

If a site has linked to yours, it’s as if the webmaster is giving a vote of approval to your web page. If that webpage is part of a quality, high-ranking website, that gives the search engines confidence about your website and it will boost your search engine rankings. At the same time, if you only have one-way links from low-ranking websites, or if you have very few links in total, don’t expect that you’ll see your ratings rise significantly or at all, since those links won’t be as impressive to the search engines.

Link directories, then, are an excellent way to go out and get your own ‘votes.’ A link directory is a website that contains catalogued lists of websites by category. Users pick a main topic or category, then navigate through sub-categories of information until they find the exact topic they are looking for. They then choose from the list of website links that the link directory provides.

Link directory traffic could be more productive overall if you get enough of it. Why? Because a visitor who arrives from a one way link on a link directory has already sorted through the different categories and sub-categories of websites to get to the list of links where yours was found. So instead of just typing in ‘organic gardening’ and getting websites on a wide array of topics related to organic gardening, the visitor from a link directory has already determined the kind of information they want on organic gardening.

Do they want instructions? Products? Historical information? Facts on benefits of organic foods? If they get to your site from a keyword search, there’s a chance you won’t have exactly what they want. But a quality, well-ranked and well-maintained link directory is more likely to deliver a higher percentage of targeted traffic to your website. This is another reason you want to choose your link directories carefully. Not all of them will sort and maintain their links as regularly as others.

There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of free link directories online. There are also pay link directories. If you pay a fee, your link may be ‘featured’in a category. But there might be dozens of featured sites, so it might not prove a benefit. Free one way links are so plentiful on the internet that you really don’t need to pay for them unless you feel you simply must be featured on one or two particular link directories.

Jean Asta is a full-time writer & management analyst for clients on several continents. The best way to optimize your gambling website is to add your URL &/or submit your articles to www.e-Casino Directory.com (a links & free articles directory ); where you’ll be able to gain valuable gambling related backlinks which are relevant to your site.

A links directory offers website owners the chance to build quality one way links that will help increase their website’s popularity. A links directory is a website that is designed to help people find what they are looking for on the web. Search engines allow a visitor to input keywords that they think the website they are looking for would have. They then browse through the results pages, looking for one that mentions what they are looking for. If none of the sites seem to be exactly right, the searcher might add or change the keywords they are trying, and could continue doing so until they luck upon your website.

A links directory helps a searcher to find your site in a different way. Instead of using keywords to search, the person navigates through a series of categories and sub-categories to find the needed information. So if she is looking for graduate school programs in business in New York, for example, she might start with the category of Education, then a sub-category like higher education, then New York State, and then universities. If a graduate school sub-category exists too, she can continue looking specifically for business programs. This links directory has then helped the searcher to identify a series of websites that are very likely to have what she wants. A good links directory will allow a user to get to the same information by a number of different pathways in the directory.

How do link directories help your page ranking, though? There’s one simple reason, the more links you have out there, the more likely someone will see one of the links. So you will probably get some ‘random’ or ‘curious’ visitors to your site just by having a higher quantity of links. But there is a better reason to use link directories. If you post your website on a links directory, you have created a one way link to your site.

The more one way links out there on the web that lead back to your website, the higher the search engines will rank your site. This is because search engines take the one way links as evidence that other websites liked your site enough to link to it. If enough high-ranked, quality sites have one way links to yours, search engines will take that as evidence that you also have a good site. Although it might seem that you should only add links on highly ranked link directories, the search engines would consider this to be ‘unnatural.’ So feel free to add some links on lower ranked link directories as well as the top ones. Especially if they are ‘niche’ links directories that focus on websites related to your subject or field instead of trying to cover every category.

Of course, none of this will work if your site doesn’t have the content to deliver on the promises all those one way links are making. Whatever the topic is that you are covering, be sure that you have lots of high quality, relevant, informative content that will keep the reader on your page once they get there. If you don’t, they might click on a link to your site but they won’t stick around very long if they don’t have the impression that your site might just have what they need.

Jean Asta is a full-time writer & management analyst for clients on several continents. The best way to optimize your gambling website is to add your URL &/or submit your articles to www.e-Casino Directory.com (a links & free articles directory ); where you’ll be able to gain valuable gambling related backlinks which are relevant to your site.

A casino directory is an important tool in the gambling portal webmaster’s arsenal. Online gambling is an incredibly competitive business, so online casinos will pay you for bringing new customers to their site. A gambling portal site is the most common way to do so, but getting visitors to the portal is often challenging. This is where casino directories can come in handy.

Let’s say you have developed a gambling portal website. A keyword search related to online blackjack tournaments has led the visitor to your site. You provide interesting content for them on a variety of different online casinos, and they then link to one or more of the casinos from your portal. When they sign up for a site, you earn a commission. So the key to your success is getting targeted, interested visitors to your website and then keeping them there until they find information that leads them to trying one of the casinos you mention.

The problem with this approach is that you will be using the same keywords as every other gambling portal, and it will be very difficult to compete for a good page ranking through keywords alone. Your better option is to drive targeted traffic to your website through a combination of keyword usage and other strategies. The most effective of these is to build a network of quality, relevant inbound links to your site.

However, inbound links, also called backlinks, take time and patience to build because you only want quality links in order to boost your search engine ranking. Building inbound links sounds easier than it is, mainly because your competitors may have already tapped several resources. Another challenge is that it can be difficult to get other sites to link to a site with gambling content. But if you are creative and persistent, you can gradually build a quality network of inbound links.

A casino directory is a fantastic way to build these kinds of links. You can post your site in every category that is relevant. That way anyone looking for information on games, strategies, or any other category of information that you cover will find a link to your site. The search engines will recognize these links and count them towards increasing your page ranking.

But don’t let the plan backfire. Be careful that you don’t build links in categories that you don’t address. For example, if none of the casinos on your gambling portal accept American players, then don’t post your site in that category. These poor quality backlinks will not help your ranking and they might actually damage it.

If the casino directories you choose also allow you to post gambling articles, you should consider it. Providing information that is helpful to someone on a free articles directory might convince the reader that you will have more helpful information on your website, so they’ll click your link. These inbound links will drive up your search engine ranking and increase the likelihood that the visitor is actually going to be interested in registering with one of the online casinos you cover. Of course, once they are on your gambling portal site, good gambling articles can also help to keep them there, browsing until they are intrigued enough to try for themselves. Concentrate on providing information that your readers will find informative, useful, and relevant, and you will see your page ranking rise.

Jean Asta is a full-time writer & management analyst for clients on several continents. The best way to optimize your gambling website is to add your URL &/or submit your articles to www.e-Casino Directory.com (a links & free articles directory ); where you’ll be able to gain valuable gambling related backlinks which are relevant to your site.

Every business needs customers. Each customer will need a service at one time or another, hopefully yours. Your job as a business is to help your customers find you so you can offer them the best service possible. Once a good relationship is established, repeat customers are always less costly. One amazing tool available today for business advertising is the World Wide Web. The Internet offers a broad customer base for a very low cost.

Using a web directory is a fantastic place to start plugging your business. Be sure to research each directory that specializes in business advertising. Because of the nature of the Internet, services such as this come and go at amazing speeds. Look for a well known directory with good reviews. After you’ve found one or more suitable directories, you’ll need to work on your listing. A quality listing should include basic information like your business name, address, phone number and email. You don’t want to lose a customer because they prefer email contact and your listing doesn’t have that option available. It’s also extremely helpful to include a link to your website. This is most likely what the customer is looking for in the first place and they are apt to click away if you neglect to include this crucial item in your listing. If you don’t have a website, a simple one is easy and inexpensive to create. Even if all it includes is a few pages with basic information, it will be helpful in drawing customers in.

When deciding which directory is best for you, consider what your customer base is. Do you have an online, product oriented business that draws customers world wide? Is your business service oriented and runs on a more local customer base? This is an important consideration. Some business advertising directories are very broad and pull in customers from all over. If that isn’t the customer base you are looking for, investigate more local directories. Regional directories will generate more location specific results and increase the chances of your business matching with the needs of a particular consumer. Some broader directories also offer the option for a searcher to input their specific location, so be on the lookout for those as well.

You only have one chance to impress a new customer. Each happy customer will most likely share their positive experience with friends and family and further increase your success as a business. The first impression that web advertising creates can be an important part of your advertising picture.

If you’re interesting in promoting your business online take a look at one of the largest Australian business directories, eMow.