BWMagic’s Marketing Tools

……………………………………..
Free for All BWMagic Subscribers
- DATEwise Desktop eCalendar and Planner
Never miss another important Meeting or Birthday
Again! Takes only minutes to Download and Install.
Free Download: Free Desktop Calendar
……………………………………..


BWMagic’s Internet Marketing Newsletter


Are Broken Links Hurting Your Site?

There’s nothing as annoying as finding a great webpage
with lots of good content – but then when you click
a link the dreaded “Page Not Found” pops up or worse yet,
nothing at all pops up.


We have all been there, done that.


However, if those broken links are on your site, then
you do have a problem.

Not only won’t your visitors be pleased, but broken links,
both internal and external, are a real problem for the
search engines. These engines use simple bots/spiders
to crawl/index your content – hitting a broken link is like
going down a dead-end street.

Broken links can stop the indexing of your content
and should be fixed for this reason alone. Besides,
you want a clean site with everything working, if you
want happy repeat visitors to your site.

But there is a larger problem with broken links and it
has everything to do with the “quality” of your site.
As you probably already know, this past year, Google
launched its powerful Panda Update, this Update was
different because for the first time Google was not
just ranking an individual webpage, but your whole
site.

Panda and the countless algorithm changes since have
placed greater emphasis on the OVERALL quality of your
site and how your keywords/pages rank in Google.

So now, more than ever, the quality of your site matters.
Your whole site and not just one or two pages which
rank high.

Broken links are a sign that your site is not maintained
or up to date. If you have 10’s or even 100’s of broken
links – this will bring down the quality of your site,
not to mention, you will have a lot of unhappy campers
visiting your site.


Fix broken links with Xenu!


So you must regularly check your site for broken links
and fix them. One of the best resources I have found is
a free software called “Xenu’s Link Sleuth” and it’s very
easy to use.

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

Just type in your URL and this software will crawl your
site and give you a list of any broken links. Best part,
you can tell this software to only check for internal links or
you can check for both internal and external links on your
site.

It offers up a very comprehensive report which you can use.
Plus, it can also give you a Sitemap to submit to the
search engines.

So improve your site’s quality by fixing any and all broken links
- the search engines will thank you!

Helping People Succeed Online Since 2002!

Kind Regards,
+Titus Hoskins

P.S. These are the Actual web marketing tools which
I use daily to earn a full-time online living:

http://goo.gl/0CBr

Did you find the above information helpful? If so, why not
help spread the word – recommend this content by using
the social bookmark sites below. The SEO Gods will Thank You!

……………………………………..
F’r'e’e for All BWMagic Subscribers
- DATEwise Desktop eCalendar and Planner
Never miss another important Meeting or Birthday
Again! Takes only minutes to Download and Install.
F’r'e’e Download:
http://www.bizwaremagic.com/Free_Desktop_Calendar.htm
……………………………………..

BWMagic’s Internet Marketing News


Increase Traffic & Sales by Using Sitemaps, Breadcrumbs and Keyword Clouds

This week I thought I would give you some basic site design tips
which will make your site more visible to your visitors and the
search engines. Over the years, using these design features have
produced more traffic and sales for me. These may also prove useful
to your site or sites.

Google Sitemaps

Some years back, there was a lot of fuss made about placing a Google Sitemaps
on your site. Such a sitemap would let the search engines quickly find your
content and index it. It was also a way for you as a webmaster to let the
search engines know which content you wanted to be featured most from your site.
This was an XML file which updated automatically on your server as you
added new content.

If you want to know more about Google Sitemaps – try this article I wrote
which also have links to some good sitemaps generators.


http://www.bizwaremagic.com/Google_Sitemaps_Explained.htm

General HTML Sitemap

You don’t hear as much about sitemaps these days but just common sense
says you should have a sitemap – listing all your web pages and major
content – featured on all the pages of your site.

This will make navigation of your site much more easier for your site’s
visitors. Personally I can’t count the number of times I have used a sitemap
to find what I am looking for on a site. Next to an onsite search box,
a sitemap is a very important element of good site design.

Most of my sites are very simple HTML sites with very simple and easy site
navigation. I try to place a link back to my homepage on every page on my site,
never leave your visitors stranded. Another practice which I have always done,
is to place a sitemap link on every page.

For SEO reasons most experts suggest you keep all links on your site no more than
three clicks away from your homepage. I usually design my index page with my main
keywords listed and then break these keywords up into sub-topics.

Usually this follows a simple pattern – these keywords are usually made up of one
or two words, then the sub-topics are usually longer three or four keyword phrases.

For example, you could have a site or domain entitled “CheapVacationsDeals” and
on your index (main homepage) you could have links entitled “honeymoon vacations”
“disney vacations”… then these would have further sub-topics or links going
to “niagara falls honeymoon vacations”, “orlando disney vacations” and so on.

If you’re running an affiliate site it is extremely important to create
content/web pages based upon the keyword phrases surfers are using in the
search engines to find what they’re looking for on the web. Obviously this
will increase your traffic and sales.

Breadcrumbs

On this subject there is another related topic which should be discussed
and that is the use of breadcrumbs in your site design. This is a simple
way of letting your visitors know what topics and sub-topics they’re
using on your site and how they can get back to the home page.

For like in the Hansel and Gretel story, using breadcrumbs is one method
to find your way home. Here its using a linking structure on your site
to help your visitors find what they’re looking for.

Searching different levels of any site can be confusing for your visitors
so providing some direction can be helpful.

home > computers > laptops > gaming laptops

If you want to know more about breadcrumbs and how to use them, here are
a couple of good links:

http://www.devlounge.net/code/css-breadcrumbs-in-5-minutes

Keyword Cloud

And if you’re running a blog related to your site, a common practice is to include
a “keyword cloud” which tells your visitors which keywords are most prominent on
your blog. This is a visual presentation of the keywords on your site and is also
know as a “tag cloud”.

Here’s a nice page which will show you how to use/put a “keyword cloud” on
your WordPress Blog.

http://www.staygolinks.com/easy-wordpress-tag-cloud-page.htm

Hope this email has you thinking about sitemaps, breadcrumbs and
keyword clouds… all ways to make your site more useful and easier
to use. It will also help those all important search engines to
find and index your content faster.

Helping You Succeed Online Since 2002!

Kind Regards,
Titus

http://www.bizwaremagic.com

Did you find the above information helpful? If so, why not
help spread the word – recommend this content by using
the social bookmark sites below. The SEO Gods will Thank You!