The Title tag is the line of text that appears in the top line of your web browser and the first line that most people see when they search for anything on Google.

Title tags work two ways to drive traffic to your website…one being the critical seo that Google needs to determine how and where it will list you, and the second being the interest it generates to your audience that find that link on Google to make them want to click it.

Get this nice balance perfected and you could not just be looking at a page one Google success, but also driving more web traffic than any other listing on that page.

So lets look at 9 interesting tips on title tagging success…

1. Don’t use the Domain Name or Business name in the Title Tag
Many people believe you need the domain name in the title tag. Maybe if you are a huge corporate company and people know you than this will work well..if they are searching for your company.
But if you are a  florist business in New York, than your title should reflect this and not so much on your domain name.

For instance, as the example below, if you search for ‘New York Florist’, this is one of the first results out of a possible 18.8 million results….

There is no mention of the business name in the title tag, but the search term I used is in the description.
It is also in the description as well, which gives Google a great indication of  where it should be positioned when someone searches for the terms’New York florist or ‘New York flowers’.

So you will see their business name is not mentioned in the title or description at all!

2. The Homepage should not be called the Home Page!
Many newbies to the web like to call their first page their homepage to let others know it is the homepage. The problem with this is it has no relevance to the product or services you provide, and people won’t be searching for the term ‘homepage’ when they search for your products.
So as tip number 1, name the title to reflect your business services or products, not the name of the page.

 3. Always use Keywords in the title tag
As in the example of the florist screenshot, the main reason that particular florist business comes up on the first page of Google over the other millions of florists on Google is fairly simple..they used the right combination of keywords in their title and description. Not too many keywords to spam the title, but also not too little, ensuring a good keyword density.
In fact, if you have one particular niche you are promoting, providing your keywords in the title and the description match the content that is on your homepage well, you almost can’t fail in getting a great result on Google.

4. Don’t make the Title too long
Remember, the title is purely to give Google, and the visitor a brief single line introduction as to what you do. More than 70 characters is too long for Google, and if you need more than 70 characters you are probably adding too many non-related words in your title. Keep it under 70 characters and straight to the point.

5. And don’t make the Title too short!
As mentioned above, you have 70 characters to introduce your website to the world. Use them. Think of it like a handshake when you first meet someone.. “Don’t just say “Hi”, give a bit of a short spiel so they know what you do.

6 The first few words of your title need to make an impression.
When you’re on Google you look just like all the other listings, so make sure your description is interesting enough to stand out from the crowd, so they click your’s even over another site above your listing.
Briefly add into your Title and description a few points that make you stand out from the crowd. The New York florist for example is “the number 1 florist in New York offering nationwide same day delivery”. Thats what people want! You’ll get the visitors to your site.

7. Don’t just add your business name to the title.
Unless people are directly looking for your business name, don’t add it unless you have room left at the end of the 70 characters. Your services or products are probably most likely what they are looking for when it comes to attracting new business.

8. Keep away from a spammy Title.
We’ve all seen them before..a title tag full of keywords. Not only does this look ugly on a website, but on Google’s page it just gets lost into the page design, and Google doesn’t favour spammy titles either.
As mentioned above, the title is an introduction of what you do. You wouldn’t repeat yourself constantly to a person in the first meeting with them, so avoid it on your website.

9. Don’t forget the importance of your location if it’s important.
Many small local businesses find great success on Google if they add their location to the title tag. Such as the New York Florist, if they used the term ‘USA Florist’ they would probably just get lost in the Google crowd, but as people are often looking for a local  service, especially when it’s flowers, adding your site or suburb into your Title and description can make a huge difference when people search for you.

Add these handy tips into your web page titles and you’ll see your site’s results improve dramatically in no time!

So imagine if you could tap into this goldmine yourself and start your very own online retail store and compete with the big retailers on the same level!

It’s actually much easier, and cheaper, than you think.

In three simple steps you can have an online business up and running within a few days.

You don’t even need to buy any products for your online store

Here is my simple 3 step guide to creating your own online retail business:

Step 1: Getting started with a domain name and hosting:

Like any retail store, you need ‘office’ space. In the online world this is web hosting. You also need your business ‘name’, which is a domain name.

Probably the cheapest and easiest way to get this started is to visit our friends at Hostgator who can set your web hosting up for around $7.95 per month. This comes with a free domain name.
You will also need a shopping cart for your products, and for this instance we will be using WordPress, which is a free software package. Hostgator offer a free ’1 click’ install of WordPress on your hosting package so the software can be literally up and running a few minutes after you sign up with Hosthgator.

Once you have done this the next thing you need to do is create your online store:

Step 3: Creating an online store – the easy way! 
Usually running any business online you need to update the products pricing, arrange postage and handling and even buy and stock the products, which is all very expensive and time consuming.

But there is a much easier way to run an online retail store, without buying any products and it only requires a few minutes a day or even per week to manage.

Datafeedr is an online subscription service which connects to retail affiliate companies, and feeds their product data directly through to your online store.
This means that you simply select the affiliated companies you want to sell for, select the products you want to sell and then with a click of a button all the product information including product images, descriptions and the latest prices are all on your website, and they update automatically!
So you don’t need to update anything manually if you don’t want to, apart from reviewing possible new products you would like to sell.

Sign up with Datafeedr and all the instruction videos and support are readily available for you to start your own site instantly.

Step 3: Find the products you want to sell:

One of the biggest concerns for online shoppers is knocking if the products they are purchasing are genuine. The great thing about using Datafeedr and affiliate businesses is that your customers are buying direct from leading brand companies, but each time they make a sale through your affiliate link you make a commission. These commissions usually range from around 6% to 50%, so making money online is very easy, and you don’t have to do anything!

Datafeedr lists all the companies it works with, and the affiliates you need to sign up with first to make it work.
Signing up with affiliate retail companies is totally free, which provides you with your unique sales link, which you enter into your Datafeedr account. When this link is clicked on your website and a sale is made you receive the sales commission. Simple!

The recommended affiliates to sign up with include:
Commission Junction
Commission Monster
Share A Sale

To view a site I have created myself using Datafeedr and Hostgator, check out Shoppalot:  www.Shoppalot.com

Here’s a quick small screenshot too:

Shoppalot took just a couple of days to create and started earning an income within days!

So if you are looking for a new business venture without the costs or time required, creating your own online affiliate-based business might be the solution for you!

For those not familiar with QR codes, the QR code is a type of scanning code that can be read on mobile devices with a camera installed, and a QR code reader.

There are a number of great QR code readers available totally free on the iTunes store for the iPhone.

The way the QR code works is very simple:
You simply go to a website such as http://qrcode.kaywa.com
or search Google for ‘QR Code Generator”, and you will find sites that allow you to generate and download a QR code for free for your needs.

QR Codes can be set up to share your contact details, web address, physical business location or even links to your Twitter or Facebook pages.

But what many people are slowly learning is that QR codes can play a very important role in the marketing and promotion of your business, and there are ways many people may not have yet though of.

 Here is my top 7 ways QR Codes can be used:

Business Cards
Probably the most obvious way a QR code can be used is adding it to your business card, allowing people to simply scan your card to either add your contact detail to their contacts on their phone, or just to access your website.

Real Estate
Real Estates are the perfect market to use QR codes, yet not many have caught on to this yet.

Most real estates have their properties listed online on their own website, or even a larger real estate directory such as RealEstate.com.au but unless you are visiting the website you don’t really know which properties are available, and the larger directories you might need to scroll for pages until you find the right property.

QR codes can make this much easier. For instance, if the Agent created a QR code for each of his properties and added them to his press ads o or flyers people can simply scan it and their phone can show them where the property is on the website or even on a Google Map.
Or better still, the Agent could add the QR code to his property signage and as people drive past to view the property they can scan the QR code, providing them with information of the property, even the inspection times and the Agent’s contact details, or just set it up to instantly phone the Agent!

Restaurants,Cafes & Hotels
Restaurants and Cafe’s can print a QR code on their menus, Napkins or drink coasters, which can provide the customer with access to their menu online, or just their contact details.
You could also set it up to link directly to their Facebook page, making it easy to share and like the establishment.

Markets
Even the small local markets can benefit from QR codes! Say for instance you are selling a necklace at the markets and the person loves it but may not have the money on them. Rather than lose a sale, you could have a QR code set up for the product so the buyer can scan it, taking them to your online store or even just to send you an email of interest on that particular product, allowing them to purchase it at a later time.

Social Media
Just about everyone now has a Facebook or Twitter account, but the only problem with social media sites such as Twitter or Youtube is that they have a static background that cannot be clicked. If you are receiving heavy traffic then this background area is prime marketing space. Adding a QR code can turn your static page into an active
link to your website, latest specials, etc.

An example of how this can work can be viewed here:
http://www.twitter.com/innercityhotels

Add your QR code to your Facebook profile page can do the same for you.

Press Advertising

Traditional press advertising is dead in terms of tracing it’s effectiveness. You really don’t know how many people even look at your ad or make a call to action if they did read it.

But if you were to add a QR code to your advertisement, especially a special offer, you could send the viewer to a specific page on your website which you can easily track through your website statistics, and monitor the success of your campaign easily.
This is also a handy way to grow your mailing list of subscribers, as you could easily direct them to an online form from their mobile device, capturing their details for future marketing.

Affiliate Marketing
If you sell other people’s products online you can ramp up your sales using QR codes, by adding them to anything…whether it is any of the things mentioned above, or to brochures, thirst, websites etc.

for instance if you were an affiliate of iTunes or the App store, you can create the link to go directly to your affiliate link and then direct them automatically to the link in the iTunes store. You make a sale directly from the link! How easy is that!
This is just a few handy ways to use the QR code, but I am sure you can think of a bunch more once you start embracing them!

Author: Chris Bourke
Chris Bourke is a web developer at Devision Design, and also an online business and social media coach at WebSEOCoach
Follow Chris on Twitter:  twitter/webseocoach

Add An Optin Form with a “lightbox” (a popup with the background darkened, so that all your visitor sees is your Optin Offer, so they either have to subscribe or dismiss your form in order to see the page underneath…)

Have a Footer Bar or Header Bar Opt-In Form — especially if you want to attract the visitor’s attention, but not hit them with an “in your face” popup requiring them to take action

Display hidden content: Rarely seen outside of expensive WordPress membership software, but you can have it — get your visitors salivating to see more, and show it to them after they’ve opted in.

Subscribe on commenting: Get the ideal subscribers — those folks already commenting on your blog … this makes it super simple for them to do — all they have to do is click a checkbox…

Subscribe on registration: Not something most blogs offer, but if you offer user registration, why not make it so it adds them to your email list (the one of your choosing, of course!)

Put a “Subscribe” Box In All Your Posts: Hey, a sweet, quiet, simple request for them to signup to your email list to get more … you just gave them great content, show them how to keep getting more…

Put a “Subscribe” Box In Particular Posts…(shhhh…remember the “Get The Rest Of This” from the Optin statistics above? He split a great post into two, kept the first half in the post and the second half in a pdf. The visitor had to opt-in to the subscribe form in the post to get the second half.)

Create a “Cascade” of Exit Popups…under precise “fighter pilot” control…each popup with its own content, each sending the user to a unique URL…and you can add the “cascade” to all your pages or any of your pages…you choose…!

Put Your “Subscribe” Form anywhere you want on your WordPress blog…

Mix’n’Match all of the above to your heart’s content…

And Of Course…

Does everything that you would expect…

• Unlimited Optins: Have As Many Optin forms as you need or want, of whatever type you’d like (This means NOT just as many forms as you’d like, but as many different email lists as you’d like!)
• Works With ANY Email Service Provider: Aweber, GetResponse, Mailchimp, Turbo AutoResponder, Google Feedburner…or even software you’ve rolled on your own …
• Compatible With All Modern Browsers: whether you, or your visitor, use Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or the latest version of Firefox — or Opera or Safari…

And Not Just That…

Also get…

• Facebook Connectivity — .tempt your visitor with an offer and add a facebook connect button. The visitor clicks this button to connect with you, and they are automagically added to your email list. How cool is that?
• Analytics! — And, no, not a bunch of statistics that you need to have a Ph.D. to figure out. Something simple yet useful — see how well each of your subscribe forms is doing so you can quickly take action on any poor performers — and leverage your best performers…
• “Smorgasbord” flexibility — you can add popups and forms just about anywhere — your imagination is the limit.
  • Want a particular popup on just the posts in one category? DONE!
  • Want it add a webpage to your popup? DONE!
  • Want to add a countdown timer and have the popup disappear when it reaches zero? DONE!

And … there’s even more ….?

So…what are we talking about?

The “All-In-One”, Swiss Army Knife, Smorgabord Optin And Popup Plugin For Your WordPress Blogs:

WPSubscribers

Create an unlimited number of subscribe forms	Working with any opt-in email marketing service
Compatible with all modern web browsers	Build a Lightbox Subscription Form with ease
Have your subscribe form in the footer bar	Embed Subscribe Form inside your Post content
WPSubscribers Can Now Integrate With FaceBook Up to now, 500 million people all around the world are actively using Facebook to stay connected with their friends and the people around them. These people have all verified names and e-mail addresses that would be your greatest opt-in list opportunity. WPSubscribers can add a Facebook Connect button to anywhere in your website that allows visitor to be subscribed to your mailing list in seconds!   Want to see live example? Please click here. This post example uses a custom design popup + Facebook connect button, they’re all created by WPSubscribers plugin.  CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE AND TEST DRIVE WP SUBSCRIBER FREE TODAY!

While currently only available to a limited number of people for trial purposes, the Google+ experience is showing a lot of potential to take on Facebook, with a lot of features that Facebook users have been asking for a long time.

A more modern approach to social media, such as real-time video hangouts, and a much simpler, easy to use and way less clunky design, Google Plus allows users to navigate around the new network much easier than Facebook.

But will it be enough to attract the followers that Facebook currently has?

Only time will tell.

The advantage for Google though is it integrates well with all the current Google Apps and keeps the same feel throughout all their applications, which overall means it has a lot more functionality than Facebook as an entire business and social tool, rather than just a social network.

Learn more about Google +
https://plus.google.com/

Web developers have usually had to substitute the nice animation work for a javascript transition animation instead, which while still visually nice, lacks the functionality that Flash does.

But there is now finally a solution!

Google have now launched Swiffy…an online app which allows you to convert your Flash SWF files into HTML5 and then load into your website, which will then finally run perfectly on iPads and iPhones.

Simply go to the Google Swiffy page and upload your Flash SWF file, and it will convert the file for you in just a few seconds!

Swiffy currently supports SWF 8 and ActionScript 2.0, and the output will work in all Webkit browsers, including Chrome and Mobile Safari.

Web developers rejoice!

Author: Chris Bourke of WebSEOCoach.com

Keeping the domain name short:

Make sure you keep your domain name short and significant. Try to keep it under 10-13 characters, and make it very easy for a user to remember and associate with your website. The more creative and different you are, the easier it will be for people to remember it. Make sure it is unique, so that it is not confused with another website.

Domain name already taken?

If you find that your domain name is taken, you can always try to switch the “.com” to “.net” or “.co”. This usually works while you want to get the desired name. If you are still unable to get the required name, use your imagination and get creative. For example: www.the(website name).com or www.my(website name).com, etc.

You can even give it an acronym if needed. If your domain name has already been taken, there are several ways of finding out when the registration will expire. You can always contact the person through the contact i.d provided and ask them if they would be willing to sell. If you find the ideal domain name in “.com”, and “.in”, do not hesitate to purchase both. You do not want anyone else using your website’s name in the future.

Domain Name Registration:

Before you start to register, do a search on the web for “Domain Name Registration”. You can see several deals online, this will help you narrow down your choices. After that just click on the link and proceed.

Your Registrar:

Find a company who can act as your registrar.

You can find several on the web, after that all you need to do is check for availability. With a little bit of research you can easily find out more about which companies will help you Register Domain Names. You no longer need to shell out a huge amount of money for domain registration; there are so many companies in the market offering these services, and you can easily end up with a good bargain. Make sure that you purchase as soon as you find an availability. If you wait too long for the perfect deal, your domain name will slip right through your fingers.

The new Lujure Facebook Business page creator lets you easily build your own professional pages and upload them with all the tools to create the ulimate Facebook page

 
All it takes is just a little knowledge of what is possible to do in Facebook and away you go. For instance did you know you can offer exclusive one-time offers by setting up an initial entry page, and if someone ‘likes’ your page they will be taken to an alternative welcome page with your special offer. Or did you know you can add video, shopping carts, blog feeds, like twitter feeds, Flash animated photo galleries, Mailing list forms, Google maps and even Paypal payment buttons directly into your Business page, allowing people to purchase directly from within your Facebook page!

Facebook also provides you with great demographics enabling you to learn more about your visitors and followers, including their age, location, and main keywords that attracted them to you, helping you plan future online marketing campaigns to your targeted audience.

Here is a quick snapshot of Facebook demographics.

So if you aren’t using Facebook for creating a unique customer base and business community you are most likely missing out on a lot of business opportunites. Check out Lujure and try the totally free demo and create your own Facebook business page – Click here to visit their website

Online retail shopping has become big business!

But the great thing about online retail websites is you don’t have to have millions of dollars to create an online shopping website. You don’t even need any products!

Setting up your own retail website similar to Amazon is now easy and very affordable, and the great thing about it is you can earn up to 70% of the value of the purchase. You only need to make a handful of sales a day to make more than your average office job would pay, and the best thing about online store is it keeps making money while you sleep, you don’t have to spend every hour of the day slaving over a hot computer, and the money is in your account before you arrange the dispatch of the product.

This sort of online retail sales is called ‘Dropshopping‘

The way dropshipping works is you first sign up with a Dropshipper who stocks the products you want to sell, and they will provide you with a wholesale price for the products. You then upload these products to your website and you can then charge whatever you want for the products.

When someone visits your website and purchases the product, usually through Ebay, you then pass the order to the dropshipper once the payment has cleared, and then you pay the dropshipper before he dispatches it directly to your customer.

There is no handling of the product yourself, and the dropshipper usually sends out the product with your business name on the package.

Sounds simple right? Well it is!

HERE ARE THE THREE STEPS TO SETTING UP YOUR OWN DROPSHIPPING WEBSITE:

1 First, find your dropshipper.
This can often be hard to find the products you want, but Professional Dropshippers such as SaleHoo offer over 8000 categorized suppliers, so finding a dropshipper that has your products is easy and they offer high quality genuine brand name products.

SaleHoo charge a small annual fee to join, but for the return you get back from your website, and the hours you would waste otherwise looking for quality dropshippers yourself, it is well worth the price.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT SALEHOO

2. Set up your website hosting and domain name
To set up your website you will first need a domain name and web hosting. Godaddy are one of the most affordable sites for purchasing domain names, and offers tools to help you find a great domain name to suit you online business. Then sign up for your website hosting.

Hostgator is one of the quickest and easiest hosting providers to get up and running with, offering great online support, and a simple 1-click setup of Wordress, so no tricky uploading and configuration is required. You are literally up and running in a matter of minutes!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW HOSTGATOR WEB HOSTING

3. Creating your online store.
If you want to create a professional looking online store you should invest in Shopperpress.

Shopperpress is a WordPress-based shopping cart theme which offers all the bells and Whistles of the big professional shopping cart systems, but for a fraction of the price. Shopperpress comes with a great range of pre-designed themes to suit most common retail niches, or you can edit it to create your own design.

As it is based on WordPress, Shopperpress ranks extremely well on the search engines, so getting on the top of the search engines is easy, driving more traffic to your website than most other shopping cart applications.

CLICK HERE FOR FULL DETAILS ON SHOPPERPRESS

Once your website is in place, simple go to your Salehoo account, search the products you want to promote and add them into your website and you are in business!

Author: Chris Bourke of Devision Design and WebSEOCoach.com

By regularly posting to your blog, it can realistically achieve this result for you, which a standard website might not. The SEO benefits of a blog are enormous! The deference between a normal website and a blog is that most websites usually only have a few pages of content, so they are limited to a number of words per page, and many of these words may not directly benefit your rankings on the search engines. Also, most websites are rarely updated or added to, and if Google doesn’t see regular things happening to your website they will begin to push it down in relevance to websites that regularly refresh and add the related content on their site. Adding a blog means that you have the opportunity to add fresh keyword-rich content that you want to rank for in the search results, and you are giving Google fresh content to entice them to boost you up the ladder. Blog software such as WordPress is designed for news releases, so if set up correctly , it is possible to literally see your new content on the first page of Google within a matter of a few minutes. And if your content is good you can easily remain on the top of Google’s first page for months. You won’t even get this kind of result with paid search engine optimisation on a standard site!

There are a few things to keep in mind when blogging with WordPress:

Make sure you add the SEO tools into your blog for maximum results.

The ones I recommend are:

Ultimate SEO
The ultimate all in one SEO plugin, which helps create your keywords, metatags, and much more.

Google XML Image Map
The Google map lists all the images within your website and creates a map which Google then read. This helps them determine placement for your listing.

Google XMP Sitemap
The Google XML sitemap is probably the most important single tool for any website that wants to be found on the search engines. The sitemap lays out a structure of your website or blog so that Google can follow through all the links.

Every time a new page is added, deleted or moved or even renamed, Google will be notified and the changes placed on the search engines.

Always make sure you have your Permalinks set up correctly.
Permalinks turn the standard WordPress coded page names into search engine friendly text strings. (Have a look at the name of this page you are reading for an example of what I mean.

1 Click  Retweet
The 1 Click plugin is designed to work with LinksAlpha.
LinksAlpha is a free online service which will automatically post every blog post on your blog to your linked Facebook,Twitter and many other social media bookmarking networks, so each time you add a new message you spread your post much further. When writing your blogposts/articles, make sure you add approximately 5 to 10 major related keywords to each average length page.

The more non-related keywords you add the more you will weaken your keyword density.

Try adding longer phrases (called ‘long tail keywords’ as this can help you rank well. The longer the keyphrase gets, the fewer instances of it will be indexed in the search engines, giving you a prime position at the top.

Always make sure you have a title that is similar to what people would be entering into a Google search. The closer you are to specific searches, the closer you will be to attracting your target audience instead of just random searches.

When adding images always name them related to the product. Blog images pick up very well in Google Images, and provide a direct link back to your webpage. Also ensure you have ‘tagged’ your image in WordPress. remember, the more density your overall pages have the better Google can precisely list you.

Tags in WordPress are similar to keywords, and create additional pages for you in the sitemap, interlinking related pages within your website through common shared tags. This creates a roadmap for Google to drive through and work out where they should place you but also how relevant your site is to them. If they love you they will put you to the top.

There is no real hard work to getting a top listing on Google. Without you Google have no business, so they really have made it as easy as possible, if you make it easy for them to work with your content.
 

Avoid Duplicate Content

The one downfall of blogging is that many bloggers tend to get lazy. No one likes having to try and write interesting content all the time, so many bloggers use someone else’s content they have found or purchased and add it to their own blog.

This is called ‘Duplicate Content’, and Google HATE it! It is the aim for all major search engines to try and provide original content throughout their searches so people don’t keep finding the same content over and over again.

Google have a system so that whoever had the content first gets the top spot, and others are either pushed down or pushes right off the search engines altogether, so always use fresh content on your website or blog.

So before you rush off and build another website, think seriously about adding or building your website in a blog format. The extra traffic you will receive will have you wondering why you didn’t invest in it earlier!

Author: Chris Bourke or Devision Design and Web SEO Coach
Chris is also the author of Ultimate Cash Blog – How to make an income from blogging.