Do you have a website? Do you have a Google Webmasters account? If not, you need one!  This document outlines how to sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and explains a few of the basics.

Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters and sign up for an account.

You will see the Home page.  Scroll down and click the “Add a site” button, and add your website address.  Then, under “sites” click on the domain you just created.

You will now see the dashboard.  It is an overview of several tools:  Top search queries, Crawl errors, links to your site, keywords, sitemaps – you can click “More” under any section to see more information.

When you are done exploring the dashboard, look to the left.  There are 4 main navigation sections: Site Configuration, Your site on the Web, Diagnostics, and Labs.

First, click the + sign next to Site Configuration and go to  Settings.  You can see the current crawl settings and change them here.

Now, click the + sign next to Diagnostics.  Here, you will find HTML Suggestions.  Here, you can get a good look at how many pages that are indexed have duplicate meta descriptions, duplicate title tags, etc. It’s a good idea to look at this section often and see what can be fixed when you notice new items have appeared.

Last, click the + sign next to Labs.  When you use the “Fetch as Googlebot” tool, and enter any page from your site, Googlebot will show you exactly how it sees that page.  Click on the word “Success” next to any fetched page to see the results.

Under Site Performance, you will see a performance overview of your site.  It takes several days for this page to update after it takes a reading, you may have to give it a week in between updates.  Scroll down and you will see it offers page speed suggestions for improving your website load time.

If you have any questions about the other sections in Google Webmasters that I did not discuss, submit them here!

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Jessica Franke is the owner of Green Web Design, a full service Website Design, Web Hosting, Domain Registrar, and Online Marketing firm.  She is also the owner of 50 States Classifieds, and has been providing Free Classifieds online since 2002.  For more articles written by Jessica Franke, visit her blog.

Do you have an eCommerce website with low traffic?  Are you struggling to try and get more traffic and more customers?  I can help!

I have been designing websites since 1995. In addition, I have over a decade of experience with online advertising and marketing. I have many references available upon request.  I also made this website (50StatesClassifieds.com), among other things.

When you are looking for a way to promote your website, it’s important to remember a few simple things.  Don’t fall for an online marketing company that cold calls you, begging you to hire them.  What kind of online marketing company needs to cold call people? One that isn’t very good at online  marketing!

My results speak for themselves. I don’t need to cold call thousands of people who may not even have a website or sell their products online. Instead, I market my website appropriately online, and website owners who need my online marketing services contact me.  100% of my business comes from word of mouth and from my online marketing campaigns.

If you want a way to market your web business that does not involve cold calling or other unsolicited sales tactics, I can help!  Let me get your website into shape and market it for you!

Online Marketing Services

Have I mentioned I love Google?  What other search engine takes the time to make their webmasters make useful, high quality videos for other webmasters?  In this video, Google’s Eric Higgins shares some very easy to implement tips for webmasters whose websites utilize the PHP programming language.  Thanks Eric!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sibg0T3wKs4

For more information:

http://code.google.com/speed

If you have tons of social networking profiles and need to keep them all straight, this site is for you.

http://www.dandyid.org

DandyID serves as a single reference point to your Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn & over 250 other services!

If you’re like me and have at least 100 different social networking profiles, then you *need* this. What it basically does is shows you a huge list of social networking sites. You enter in your user id for each site and it automatically creates a page that links to all of your profiles in one handy spot.

As if that isn’t cool enough, you can then create a widget for your blog, website, etc. that you can use to link to your profiles easily.

There are several different widgets and styles, but this is my favorite:

I noticed that it didn’t have startupnation listed, but I was able to easily and quickly suggest the site to them.

It will probably take me 2 weeks to finish entering all of my different profiles, but with the handy widget that automatically updates (above) I can just enter them once at DandyID – no need to update this, or any other page when I am done!

I’m actually pretty impressed.

I have been updating 50 States Classifieds tonight and have added some great new features!

In addition to our Free Classifieds services, now members can also create a public profile. A public profile is a great way to list your shipping terms, your physical store location if you have one, or other pertinent information about your business, services, or products.

Register for an account and post a free ad today!

Social Networking Websites that we enjoy. If you decide to sign up, add us to your friends list!

• Myspace
  
• YouTube
  
• StumbleUpon
• Del.icio.us
• Care2
• Digg
• Faves
• LinkedIn
• Squidoo
• Change.org
• Xing
  
• Yahoo Mash
• Ryze
  
• Rapleaf
• Direct Matches
• Urban Melt
• Startup Nation
• The Bubbler
• Orkut
  
• Twitter

Written by Jessica Franke, Owner, Green Web Design & Internet Consulting

If you’re a small business owner with a website, you’ve likely spent at least a little of your time wondering how to increase your online traffic and sales. You may have heard or read about things like SEO, SEM, SMO, PPC, CPC, and other possibly confusing terms. Today, I will be discussing each of these briefly, and hopefully helping to “de-mystify” them for you.

Organic Search

When you search for something in a search engine and click on a result that has not been paid for, that is called an Organic listing.

Paid Inclusion

Some search engines and directories offer paid inclusion services, where a website owner can pay to guarantee that their website will show up in search results. A higher ranking can typically be obtained by paying more than the other advertisers.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay Per Click is just that: you pay a set amount of money each time a person clicks on your ad. The cost of each click is called the Cost Per Click (CPC). As a PPC advertiser, you bid on keywords that you hope your target market will type in when they are looking for related products and services. The more competitive the keyword(s) are, the higher the CPC for that term. Generally, PPC advertising will not affect your actual search engine ranking. When you stop paying, you stop showing up in search results.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Internet Marketing which is intended to make a website more visible in the organic search engine results is called SEM. Methods employed by SEM professionals may include, but are not limited to: SEO, PPC, Search Engine Submission, and Paid Inclusion.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The most basic definition of SEO is that it is the process of optimizing your website to conform to certain standards in order to make it more attractive to the search engines. The purpose of SEO is to make a website rank better in organic search engine listings over time, without the need for nonstop paid advertising. Unlike PPC, the results are not instant; it may take anywhere from 6 months to a 1 year to organically show up for your most competitive search terms. For this reason, most SEO is a long term commitment. Most SEO companies will also need to adjust the meta tags, alt tags, and text on your website as part of their services.

There are many different ways to rise to the top of the organic search results, and most SEO companies have developed their own method over time. Because the search engines constantly change their algorithms, truly effective SEO professionals are constantly studying the search engines and updating their methodologies.

There is one major distinction you should make when hiring an SEO company. Generally, “white hat” SEO companies follow Google’s webmaster guidelines and take great care not to do anything which may be considered “spam” by the search engines. On the other hand, “black hat” SEO companies use methods that don’t always conform to what is considered acceptable by the search engines.

Methods used by white hat SEO companies may include, but are not limited to:

Creating or Updating Meta Tags (title, description, keywords, etc); Keyword Research to find out what people type in when searching for websites like yours; Creating or updating the content on your website to include keyword-rich text; writing professionally edited blog entries on your companys’ behalf; and finding other websites to link to yours.

Social Media Optimization (SMO)

Thousands of social networking websites like Myspace, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Del.ici.ous, and YouTube allow users to upload, watch, and rate content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Social networking itself is a form of social media, which uses the “wisdom of crowds” assumption to decide what is popular. Blogging and RSS feeds are also popular types of social media.

The aim of SMO is to generate publicity for a website or company using social media outlets such as those mentioned above. For this reason, when doing SMO, it is wise to add “digg this”, “bookmark this”, “stumble this” and other buttons or widgets to your website to make it easy for others to bookmark you. SMO is often used as part of a comprehensive SEO plan.

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Jessica Franke has been designing websites for over 13 years. She is a website designer and Online  Marketing specialist, among many other things.