The 'Secret' To Website Success Revealed by David Holmes

The 'Secret' To Website Success Revealed by David Holmes

You work long hours everyday and sometimes feel like you've accomplished
nothing. It can be as thankless as doing the dishes. Your website is free for everyone, but it's not free to you.

There are people that for whatever reason will see what you're selling, by pass your link and go straight to the company. They just hate to see you make a profit off a sale to them. It doesn't save them money or anything, they just don't want to be a source for your income. This happens more than others think, and there's nothing you can do about it. For $87 you know of
at least 18 'gurus' who will solve this problem for you, but logic makes you hang on to your money. Scams are very where.

Everyone who knows you're trying to make money on the net is spamming you to death with get rich
schemes, get more traffic schemes, get people to buy your stuff schemes. Confusion sets in. You keep wondering what the best ways are to get people to your site is, to get them to buy something, to get them to sign up for your newsletter, to get then to want to return. So you work more at optimizing keywords, content, and graphics in hopes to sucking up to the mighty search engines, because no self proclaimed 'guru' is going to get rich off you.

Finally some traffic comes. But your sales conversion is still under 1% and no one is signing up for your newsletter. You put up a mini poll at the suggestion of some website 'guru' but no one participates. Same with a forum or Yahoo club. You spend hours tracking your visitors page views trying to give them what they want, then realize that people are just taking and taking without leaving any compensation for your work. You begin to resent the people who just take for granted that everything on the web just got there somehow. Of course you were like that too. Now that you have a website you will never surf the web the same way again. NEVER!


You check your sales stats and hope you can keep your site going for another few months on nothing. You think about trying to build new sites to support your main site, which by now has become the love of your life. You even go without essentials to pay the bandwidth so more people can come and take your stuff for free. You suspect you're crazy.

You threaten to start a porn or gambling site just for the money, but dismiss those thoughts rather quickly now that you realize there is no such thing as free money on the net, or anywhere in the world. And you don't want to start all over again. Besides, your heart just isn't in it. It's in your main site.

And the 'Super Gurus', (who you now know by name), are offering to sell you there secrets for a mere $200. But common sense tells you there is no secret. So you go back to work pruning and rearranging your site over and over.

Cool. Now your rank on google is going up. That's great. You get a few letters from people telling you how they love your site. Just enough pats on the back to keep you going, but not enough to pay your bills. You're not even breaking even. Just before you throw in the towel you read where 90% of websites fail because they give up within the first year. After a year you read that 90% of websites fail because they quit before 2 years. So you go back to work.

You call it work even though you're not getting paid. You start to wonder if you've got nothing more than a very expensive hobby, or worse an addiction! And round and round you go, not realizing that you're learning everyday. And you make up your mind to never quit. You find yourself wanting to hug everyone who spends a few minutes on your site. You are proud of your accomplishments, so you go back to work and wonder how long or if ever you will make money doing something you love so much.

And that is the secret. There. I gave it to you for free. Did you miss it? I'll say it again. The secret is you love what you're doing. You love your site. You constantly read about how to make it better. You never give up.

For someone like that, time is on your side. You will eventually succeed, but success is secondary if you are doing something you love.

You've seen sites that are obviously ghost houses. So badly neglected with broken links and out of date information. That's a failure. You spend everyday doing something to your site. If you don't know what to do, there's always an HTML validator that will tell you a million things that are wrong with your site. There's websites and newsletters giving away free information.

You'll read something that makes you run to your site and change something. It's always getting better. Everyday is a day to improve something. Everyday is aday to get just one more person to land on your site. You are blessed if you love your site and are teachable. Those that think they know it all can't be taught anything, because they think they already know it. In fact, tonight throw a party for yourself. You have are a wonderful asset to the world wide net and you already are a success. Celebrate, then tomorrow go back to work.

About the Author
Webmaster/owner of Beatles Number 9
http://beatlesnumber9.com

Can Newbies Repair Their Search Engine Listing? by Francisco Aloy

Can Newbies Repair Their Search Engine Listing? by Francisco Aloy

So, you got a big surprise last night, didn't you? You went
to search for your Website and it wasn't there anymore!
Where did it go? Did you have to use double quotes just to
find it? Not a pleasant feeling, I bet!

Let's face it: having your website de-listed or sent all the
way back to the start of the line isn't a joking matter! All
those months of hard work just gone down the drain! Poof !!

Is there a way out of this seemingly mortal blow to your
website; can you repair your Search Engine Listing? Yes
there is!
If your mistake was one of the dumb mistakes we all make on
account of lack of experience, there is a solution.

Don't think the Search Engines are stone monoliths; you can
talk to them! However, the first thing you have to do is be
calm and deliberate your next moves as you repair the damage
to your Search Engine listing.

Here are some pointers to look for the source of your Search
Engine troubles:

(a) Go back to the nearest specific date your website was
doing well with the Search Engines.

(b) Think of any changes you've done to your Website since
then and make a list.

(c) Have you created any other websites/blogs/message boards
with a very close or identical name?

(d) Have you done any tweaking to your Meta tags or website
content?

(e) Have you used any artificial web page or content
enhancement technology?

Once you revise your list and eliminate any obvious reasons
for trouble, keep on going looking for any others sources of
problems. By all means, do a thorough inspection and don't
leave a stone unturned. Repair and revise is the thing!

Go back to the basics and do your homework; don't put too
much stake on much of the (mis)information you find floating
around the Web. You also have to consider that Search Engine
technology is an evolving thing and what worked two years
ago, won't necessarily work today. Make sure your sources of
information are fresh and relevant.

Here are published guidelines on what some of the big Search
Engines take into consideration for a good listing:

Yahoo:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/deletions-05.html

With their resent Natural language initiative, it's clear
Yahoo wants web pages that are very readable. Be careful not
to let "keyword loading" affect the easy readability of your
website.

MSN:
http://beta.search.msn.co.in/docs/siteowner.aspx

Google:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Once you've done all that you can think of to clean-up your
Website, contact the Search Engines and offer them an
explanation while asking for a review of your Website.

Keep it short and businesslike and ask any pertinent
questions. Consider the SE staff is composed of people just
like you. We all make mistakes! Believe me, they have many
years of experience dealing with Newbies; they can also spot
a slick operator.

You might have to wait some time depending on their schedule for
crawling your neck of the Web. Look at your server logs to
see an average time between SE crawling.


A note of caution:

I don't see why in the world a Newbie would deal with
technology that artificially enhances web pages. There are
plenty in the market extolling their virtues. I've done
research on many of them and consider them only useful in
the hands of an experienced Webmaster.

If you MUST use any of them, build a dummy website to test
all your ideas before you build your dream website. I've
heard of folks with much more experience getting their site
banned for using some of the artificial enhancement
technologies.

If you follow the above guides, you will repair your Search
Engine listing. Your Website will return to its former
Search Engine friendly ranking. Keep your eyes open for the
next time and do your best not to make any more mistakes.
Take a deep breath and move on, that much wiser for the
experience.

by Francisco Aloy

(C)2005 Francisco Aloy
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About the Author
Francisco Aloy is the creator of The
Newbie Business Guide. Discover the
marketing punch of original content.
For more of Mr. Aloy's articles, visit:
http://www.newbie-business-guide.com