So you want to become a webmaster?

Webmastering is a complex job with more to it that one would expect. There are many different skill sets which are required to run a successful website, from writing content to designing graphics, or marketing the content on your website. In addition to this, the backend of the website must be taken care of by a web developer and a database administrator, which keeps the website online and bug free for the visitor. Juggling all of these tasks can be nearly impossible for one person, so when it comes to running a website, a dedicated team usually holds the title “webmaster”, instead of one single person.

While all of these skill sets can help make a great webmaster, rarely does one single webmaster have the ability to do all of them. Instead, a webmaster can focus on a few different areas, such as providing content and marketing said content, while outsourcing the other aspects to freelancers or independent contractors, or even forming a team of like-minded individuals who would like to work on the website. This can help save you time and money, as you can hire someone who is more knowledgeable than you in order to get the website online and keep it online. While outsourcing is definitely an option, if you’ll be running a website for any length of time, its wise to at least familiarize yourself with coding languages and backend databases such as PHP and MySQL. Learning basic HTML and CSS will also be a huge advantage.

By learning the languages and being able to code your own websites, you’ll lessen your reliance on others, meaning you’ll have a smaller overhead cost and can get things done at your pace and to your liking. While being webmaster doesn’t require you to excel in all of these areas, you should definitely have at least basic knowledge in order to keep your website running. Many webmasters today are self taught, with tons of resources being available on the internet for learning how to use programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Dreamworks, and other programs which are valuable for scripting and creating graphics for your website. There are also numerous websites dedicated to helping newbies run their own website, this includes Google’s webmaster tools. Important thing to remember is you don’t have to know everything to become a webmaster, but one thing is guaranteed is you will learn and continue to learn new things everyday in your journey as a Webmaster/Marketer/ Internet Entrepreneur.

Setting up a Google Account
To access the Google tools, you’ll need to set up a Google Account. There are a few different ways to set up an account with Google, including signing up directly to access any of Google’s webmaster tools described below. To set up a general Google account, all you need is an email address. Although you could manage your access to the various Google tools using different accounts, it makes sense to keep everything together under one account.

If you don’t have any form of an existing account (such as Gmail, Picasa, iGoogle) with Google, you can go to their Accounts page and set one up. You simply enter your email address and a password to get started. After you’ve submitted your account information to Google, they will send you a verification email with a link that you need to follow to verify that you own the email address you used to set up the account.

Google Analytics
Google Analytics allows webmasters to monitor traffic patterns on their websites. Setting up your website with Analytics is normally very simple. You sign up for an Analytics account, insert a tracking code into your website header, and watch the stats start rolling in.

Google Webmasters
Google Webmasters serves a few purposes. It is a community for webmasters to learn what Google expects from their websites in order for them to receive high search rankings. It’s also a way for webmasters and Google to communicate regarding their relationship. Webmasters can submit sitemaps to Google to help with indexing their sites. They can also configure settings to give Google recommendations on how to index their sites. Google provides through their Webmasters tool helpful information regarding links it recognizes pointing to a webmasters website. The Webmasters tool also provides information about keyword searches for which the webmaster’s site ranks highly and clickthrough stats related to those high ranking keyword terms.

Google Sitemaps
Google Sitemaps provides a way for webmasters to help Google index their sites correctly. You may have noticed when doing searches on Google that there are some results that show up on the results page, but when you click on the link to visit the site, the page doesn’t have the same information as was presented in the search results. Sometimes the page is gone altogether. Why does this happen? Because Google has the ominous task of trying to index billions of web pages, keeping their contents as fresh as possible. Obviously they’re not perfect. They need help from website owners.
Sitemaps is Google’s way of asking for help indexing your site, which in turn helps your site. In the control panel for Sitemaps, Google suggests that submitting a map of your website will “…tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover.” Sitemaps has been integrated with the Webmasters setup, so you can submit your site’s map by logging in to your Webmasters account.

Google Base
Google Base is a handy tool for websites that sell products. Webmasters can create product feeds representing what they have available in their online store, and submit those feeds to Google Base. Google displays the products to people who use its product search module, and oftentimes products listed in Google Base are included with regular web searches. Using Google Base is just one more way store owners can get their products in front of potential customers.

Google Website Optimizer
Google Website Optimizer is an analytical tool that webmasters can use to determine the best way of presenting content to their visitors. Using Website Optimizer, a webmaster can run experiments to see which version of a page is more successful at accomplishing a goal such as generating a lead , a sale, or some other action.

Conclusion
Google’s tools have made it increasingly easier for website owners and webmasters to understand what is required of their websites in order to achieve success along the most dominant search engine. Understanding and using these tools will certainly benefit your SEO and overall website promotion goals

There are a lot of people out there who have had success with their own methods of performing SEO and who regularly produce information for us all to read. The successful people in the world of SEO have one thing in common. They are all extremely passionate about the subject. It is this passion that drives them forward with second guessing the ranking factors that are updated regularly by the search engines. Whilst SEO isn’t an exact science the SEO world and the experts have reported quite extensively various consistencies in ranking factors and it is these consistencies that the whole industry has been built upon.

I need to mention quite quickly that SEO isn’t a quick process unless you have an extremely niche idea that nobody else has had before. There are no set timescales or secret formulas that lead to top rankings and anybody telling you otherwise are probably doing something that isn’t ethical and should be avoided at all costs. If you look at it logically if it were as easy as simply doing x y z then why share the knowledge when they could keep it for themselves and optimise their own websites for financial gains only.

After looking at hundreds of SEO articles and attending many conferences it is fair to say that the one thing that overrides anything else is quality content. If you can ensure that your website content is original and interesting to your market you stand a real chance of ranking well. The reason for this is the search engines reward quality content and the better the content the more chance you have of people linking to you. I’m not going to go into detail on how to optimise your website here as there are thousands of articles out there that can guide you on this subject.

What I will say is that after top quality content and quality inbound links to your website this is where people’s opinions differ on the subject, and it is really difficult to decide who to believe. Going back to an earlier point why should you believe them in the first place as if they have the answer why are they sharing it with you? The fact is, unless you are the person who decides who ranks where and why, you are never really going to know how to truly optimise your website.

As a result if you are going to optimise your own website you need to be prepared to put the time in as you will need to read as many different article, blog post and attend as many conferences and webinars as humanly possible on a continuous if not daily basis so you can hear other people’s ideas on the subject and keep up with the latest trends. Then to be successful you need to perform your own testing and come up with your own theories based on your findings and everything else you have read and listened to. It’s a long continuous sometimes frustrating journey SEO and for this reason only the passionate are successful.

For larger gains, the sites need to go for SEO or Search Engine Optimization through which the site’s contents are optimized according to the search engine requirements. This technique helps your site appear one among the top few sites prompting the user to visit your site. It is a continuous process and must not stop, for the day it stops, site ranking deterioration starts.

SEO or Paid Advertising?

Also, there are a good number of sites seen on the right as ’sponsored links’. These are paid advertisements meaning that the websites pay to remain visible there.

Now, who would like to go for a paid technique when he can get similar advantages for free. Some extra work needs to be done for appearing in the simple listing but still that has been found ok with most site owners. Additionally, it has been found that users searching for any product or services rarely go towards the paid listing.

There have been too many sites paying to remain among the top paid listings. But rarely any has got the advantage that following the standard SEO technique can bring. Off page optimization, a part of the complete SEO process also increases the popularity of the site. And this boosts better ‘visitor to customer’ conversion rate. Visitors have already been somewhat educated about the products before actually visiting the site. It surely has some positive influence over them and thus the site.

Every website needs SEO. With so many websites cropping up over the internet every now and then, demand for a good SEO service has also increased. Further, as the site owners keep looking for a cheap service, SEO India companies are found to be in greater demand than any other. Moreover, as the SEO professionals in India are also well versed in their profession of raising a site’s ranking.

Whatever choice you make, you have to again make similar investment – effort or money. So, make an intelligent choice after knowing your resources and requirements.

SEO Step #1: Increasing your page rank you need to make sure your website is setup to be SEO friendly. SEO simply means Search Engine Optimization. The content on your website needs to include the use of keywords which are connected to your online business and products or services which you provide. These keywords could be found within common written content found on your site or in blog posts within your news area.

SEO Step #2: Find other sites you can associate with. Every time a website links to your site, this will boost the page rank of your site within all the search engines like MSN. So if you want to create much more traffic for your site it follows that you must find other sites which you could associate with.

SEO Step #3: Sign up to lots of social networks and start advertising your online business or website with them. The more subscribers you assemble and the more your websites name and web link appears within social networks, the greater the chance that you will boost your page rank.

^Overview:

Google uses its Internet search technology to serve advertisements based on website content, the user’s geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google’s targeted advertisement system may enroll through AdWords. AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the advertisements are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the advertisements is often relevant to the website.

The use of proxy is allowed but if you use a proxy to enter your adsense account your account will be disabled. It has been seen lately that you can use proxies for logins, but sign up must be from a real computer. Proxies like hidemyass, armyproxy, schoolproxy, etc., can be used after signup.

Many websites use AdSense to monetize their content. AdSense has been particularly important for delivering advertising revenue to small websites that do not have the resources for developing advertising sales programs and sales people. To fill a website with advertisements that are relevant to the topics discussed, webmasters implement a brief script on the websites’ pages. Websites that are content-rich have been very successful with this advertising program, as noted in a number of publisher case studies on the AdSense website.

Some webmasters invest significant effort into maximizing their own AdSense income. They do this in three ways:[citation needed]

1. They use a wide range of traffic-generating techniques, including but not limited to online advertising.
2. They build valuable content on their websites that attracts AdSense advertisements, which pay out the most when they are clicked.
3. They use text content on their websites that encourages visitors to click on advertisements. Note that Google prohibits webmasters from using phrases like “Click on my AdSense ads” to increase click rates. The phrases accepted are “Sponsored Links” and “Advertisements”.

The source of all AdSense income is the AdWords program, which in turn has a complex pricing model based on a Vickrey second price auction. AdSense commands an advertiser to submit a sealed bid (i.e., a bid not observable by competitors). Additionally, for any given click received, advertisers only pay one bid increment above the second-highest bid.

Consider the following scenario:

• You install Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5 on a computer that is running Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2.
• You host some Portable Document Format (PDF) documents on an IIS Web site on this computer.
• You have a client computer that has the Adobe PDF Reader plug-in enabled on a Web browser.
• You use this Web browser to open one of the PDF documents that is hosted on the IIS Web site.

In this scenario, you cannot open the PDF document. Additionally, the Web browser may stop responding.

Note

• You may still be able to open other PDF documents on this IIS Web site when this issue occurs.
• This issue does not affect all versions of the Adobe PDF Reader plug-in.

But what the IIS7.5 bug cause the problem like above?

This issue occurs because of a design change in IIS 7.5.

When you try to open a PDF document on an IIS Web site, the Adobe PDF Reader plug-in sends a request that includes multiple byte ranges to IIS 7.5. If the union of the multiple byte ranges is a single byte range, the response from IIS 7.5 contains the byte ranges merged into a single byte range (also known as a merged byte-range request). The response to this single byte range does not include the multipart/byteranges content type. However, the multipart/byteranges content type is expected to be included in a response to a merged byte-range request. This behavior causes the Adobe PDF Reader plug-in to handle the response incorrectly. Therefore, the PDF document cannot be opened.

Note The multipart/byteranges content type is included in a regular multiple byte-ranges response.

But how to fix it? I find the answer in the Microsoft KB.  They give us a Hotfix below:

http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=979543&kbln=en-us

I test it in the server, that’s ok, no problem. The PDF issue fixed! Thanks.

Here are features below:

Some features:

• Advanced Canonical URLs
• Fine tune Page Navigational Links
• Built-in API so other plugins/themes can access and extend functionality
• ONLY plugin to provide SEO Integration for WP e-Commerce sites
• Nonce Security
• Support for CMS-style WordPress installations
• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
• Generates META tags automatically
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs
• For beginners, you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
• For advanced users, you can fine-tune everything
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
• Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.

Here is the URL of the tools, you can just try it!

http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/all-in-one-seo-pack.zip

Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

We said A-Z and we meant it. Here are 26 sure-fire ways to increase web traffic and site visitors to your website. Use some or all of them, and let us know which ones worked best for you.

1. Optimize your site (SEO).
   Win on the search engines when people search for keyword phrases related to your products or services.
   (More about search engine optimization.)
2. Get your site listed in directories.
   Submit your site to all the major web directories. This will generate traffic directly from the directories themselves and will also help to improve your link popularity. That helps you win on Google!
   (More about web directories.)
3. Get listed in search engines.
   Submit your site to all the major search engines.
   (More about search engines.)
4. Get links to your site.
   Get people with complimentary sites to link to yours. You offer rental kayaks on the beach. Ask the local restaurant owners to link to you, and offer to link to them. Ask the local tour guides, the real estate agents, the night clubs, and everyone else. Links lead to clicks onto your website and help to improve your search engine rankings.
5. Buy links to your site.
   Buy text links on other websites. That means more spiders stopping by, more people clicking through, and better search engine rankings.
6. Buy banner ads.
   Buy banner ads on other websites. It helps to build brand recognition.
7. Participate in a banner exchange program.
   It won’t cost you anything, and will lead to a few extra visitors. Plus, you’re spreading your brand all over the place.
8. Participate in a WebRing.
   Connect your site with other sites in your niche.
9. Pay for clicks to your site.
   Pay for clicks or inclusion on the search engines so that people will see your site in the sponsored links section of the search results when they search for keyword phrases related to your products or services.
   (More about pay per click.)
10. Set up an affiliate marketing program.
    With affiliate marketing, you can either pay per click, pay per lead generated, pay per sale, or pay per customer acquired.
11. Use smart public relations (PR).
    Get news coverage of your business and your site. Approach online and traditional media. This will often lead to others placing links pointing to your website, which leads to more clicks and also to improved search engine rankings.
12. Use E-mail marketing.
    Ugly, but effective for the cost. Blast out your special offers, but be nice about it.
13. Use off-line marketing.
    Promote your site. Put your url on all your license plates. Paint it on your car. Buy newspaper and yellow pages ads with your url. Put up flyers and stickers. Sponsor a little league team. Do anything and everything to spread the word about your website around your city.
14. Run regular promotions.
    Stage regular giveaways and spread the word about it.
15. Get published.
    Write articles for publication on other websites. The author profile will link to your site. The article will show that you’re an expert.
16. Publish yourself.
    Write articles for your own site regularly. This will help you to win on the search engines and gives your visitors a reason to come back over and over.
17. Ask for reviews.
    Ask for reviews of your self-published articles on other webmasters’ websites. Ask for reviews of your website, your products, your software, your services. These will usually include links to your articles.
18. Write briefs.
    Write daily or weekly news briefs focusing in on your industry or specialty area. This keeps your site “fresh” in the eyes of the major search engines and helps you to spread a wide net when fishing for top search engine positions.
19. Create a newsletter.
    Ask your visitors to sign up for your newsletter, and encourage them to send it along to people they know. Send a newsletter regularly with teasers or lead-ins to your in-depth new articles or with special offers and the latest products.
20. Post in chat rooms.
    Become active in bulletin boards and chat rooms focusing on your industry. Leave inciteful comments, and people will click on your profile, then visit your site.
21. Give away free stuff.
    Offer something people want at your site. Give them a reason to come back and get more. Offer free downloads and update them regularly. Offer coupons or discounts. Content content content.
22. Give awards for excellent sites in your niche.
    This builds more links back to your site and establishes you as a credible reviewer, an expert in your space.
23. Run a contest and promote it.
    Photo contests, essay contests, goofy contests, random drawings, anything. Example: Messiest Garage in America contest on OfftheFloor.com.
24. Join your local business organizations.
    Chambers of Commerce and other organizations will often add your site to their member directory. That’s an added advantage over the obvious business-building and networking opportunities.
25. Create an RSS feed.
    Give people another way to interact with your content.
26. Be accessible.
    Build your site so that it is accessible to all browsers and to PocketPC and Palm Pilot users. Don’t forget, people with disabilities buy things too. Make your site Section 508 complaint. Your competition probably hasn’t.