Posted by Admin on December 1st, 2006 — Posted in Promotion
By Gregg Hall
Many people think the Internet and the web are the same thing. In fact, the Internet is simply a global network of computers – the web runs on top of the Internet, and makes it useful for us. So how does the web work?
The Invention of the Web.
The web was invented by a man named Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 – that’s 20 years after the start of the Internet. People had been trying to work out effective ways of sending information around on the Internet for a while at that point (email was invented in 1971, for example), but there hadn’t been any systems that had really harnessed the net’s potential.
The web changed everything. Berners-Lee’s big idea was to apply the idea of links to the Internet: the web would be a mass of pages that you could move between by clicking on links. He came up with a format for these pages (HTML), and wrote the first web browser to view them with, as well as the first web server for sending them to other people’s web browsers.
Links might not seem like much now, but at the time they were revolutionary. Imagine what the web would be like if you had to keep typing long addresses every time you wanted to move from one page to the next, or using long numbered menu systems that work differently from one site to the next. Without the web, having Internet access would be pretty useless.
Servers and Browsers.
Any time you use a web browser (like Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox), you’re using the web. How? Well, it works like this:
1. You open your web browser, and it goes to your home page. From there, you can click links to other websites, or to other parts of the same website. If your home page is a search engine, then you can type in a search and click links in the search results. If you know the address of a site you want to go to, you can type it in, and then click more links from there to keep going.
2. Each time you click a link, your browser looks at two things about it: the name of the web server it links to, and the name of the page it links to on that server. For example, the address ‘http://www.example.com/mypage.html’ tells the web browser to get the page called mypage.html from the server at www.example.com, using HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). This server is a real computer, connected to the Internet, that has the page you want to read stored on its hard disk.
3. To find out where this server is, your web browser looks it up using DNS (Domain Name System), which turns the text address into a number. This IP (Internet Protocol) address consists of four numbers between 0 and 255 – it looks like a phone number. The Internet is set up to make it easy to find a server anywhere in the world once you know its IP address, and it can easily find the quickest route from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) to the server, and establish communication. This whole process, from DNS lookup to connection, will often take much less than a second.
4. Your web browser then sends an HTTP request to that web server, and the web server responds by sending back the HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) code for that page. Your web browser turns this code into a page that you can view. From there, you can click more links to start the process over again.
Of course, all this is quite simplified: modern browsers and servers send around much more than HTML code. You can use the web to download anything now, from pictures to programs, but it all works in basically the same way.
If something goes wrong somewhere in this process, then you’ll get an error: ‘the page cannot be displayed’, for example, usually means that the server’s name was wrong, or that it doesn’t have the page you wanted. You might also see errors saying that the server is currently too busy with other people’s requests to respond, or that the page you wanted has moved. In each case, the best thing to do is to follow the instructions on the error page, which usually means checking the address and trying again.
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Posted by Admin on November 28th, 2006 — Posted in Promotion
By Christopher J Enders
Internet marketing promotion serves two main purposes: 1) Driving traffic to a website; 2) Ensuring that the traffic is targeted traffic.
It is really crucial that your promotional efforts fulfill both of these purposes. Without traffic, a website is nothing more than a piece of art that is taking up space on the World Wide Web.
Like an incredible, decked out building that is vacant, it is simply decoration that accomplishes nothing. On the other hand, a website that has loads of traffic and tons of unique visitors per day is no more effective than the website that has no traffic if the traffic visiting the website is not targeted traffic.
Thus, if either of the two main purposes of internet marketing promotion is not fulfilled, your business likely will not benefit from your promotion efforts.
In order to drive traffic to a website, getting the website listed in the search engines, either through search engine optimization or through pay-per-click advertising is pretty important.
Search engine marketing is undoubtedly one of the most effective forms of internet marketing promotion in existence. The majority of internet users who seek information via the internet us the search engines to gather information, so a search engine listing can be extremely fruitful in driving traffic to your website.
In order for that traffic to be targeted, your search engine marketing campaigns have to be carefully designed.
Keyword
research to determine the popularity of certain keywords and keyword phrases among your target audience is essential to designing an effective search engine marketing strategy.
Using
the right keywords for your target audience will increase your website’s potential for receiving targeted traffic. The titles of your web pages and their descriptions that show up in search engine results also play a large role in getting internet users to click-through to your website and to view what you are offering or displaying on your website.
In addition to search engine marketing, there are other internet marketing promotion techniques that have potential for driving qualified traffic to your website. These include:
- Link exchanges
- Banner advertising
- Publishing of expert articles
- Email marketing
- Starting your own affiliate program
- Listing your website in directories
- Listing your website in portals
- Buying advertisements in ezines
- Participating in newsgroups and online forums
- Using shopping bots
In addition to these internet marketing promotion ideas, you can also attract visitors to your website through more traditional marketing methods.
For instance, you can issue press releases to gain media exposure; place classified advertisements in newspapers or industry-related magazines; deliver advertisements or coupons through direct mail; advertise on radio stations or television stations; engage in telemarketing; put up billboards; participate in trade shows; or even hold seminars in which you share your expertise and promote your internet business.
There are many different ways to drive traffic to your website. Opening your mind to the possibilities of both online and offline advertising for the purpose of driving qualified, targeted traffic to your website is the first step to devising an internet marketing promotion strategy that will be wildly successful.
Both modern internet marketing tactics and traditional marketing methods can be used to promote your internet-based business.
Conducting market research to clearly define your target market and to learn about the characteristics of your target market is crucial to successfully promoting any business through marketing or advertising efforts.
For some people, designing and administering their marketing program for their internet business is something they can do themselves.
Others may benefit from professional services from expert marketers who know how to market an internet-based business using both state-of-the-art and traditional marketing methods.
Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope, fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing advice you’re getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing, or a website owner who wants to make more money from your website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your internet business at http://BiznessTips.com
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