Is Credit Card APR All That Counts?

Not all credit cards are born equal. Different cards have different offers, features, and charges, and choosing a card is not as simple as going for the one with the lowest advertised rate. Various types of card are suitable for different types of use, and choosing the right card for you depends on how you plan to use it as well as how low the rate is, or how attractive the introductory offer.

If you intend to use the card mainly as a convenient way of spending and usually clear your balance every month, then the headline interest rate doesn't really matter to you, as you shouldn't be paying any interest at all. Instead, make sure the card you're planning to apply for has a long 'grace period' on interest charges, giving you chance to pay your statement before any interest is applied. Interest free periods should be at least 30 days and are more usually in the 50-60 day range.

This kind of card user can also benefit from a cashback or rewards scheme if the card is regularly used for purchases, and so long as you avoid carrying a balance over you can actually turn a profit from your credit card account.

If, however, you use the card as a kind of short term borrowing, regularly paying off larger purchases over a few months, then a low interest rate is attractive. A cashback feature might seem attractive if you're making larger purchases, but it's rare that a card's cashback rate will be anything like high enough to compensate for a higher interest rate.

If you want to finance a single large purchase and repay it over a year or so, then look for a card with an introductory 0% deal on purchases that lasts long enough to clear your balance before interest kicks in. Introductory deals of up to 12 months are now common.

Many people use a credit card's balance transfer feature to fund longer term borrowing. If this applies to you, then you have a choice between a 0% introductory deal or a long-term low rate. If you can see yourself paying off your transfer in the near future, then a 0% deal with a long introductory period is probably the best way to go. If, however, you'll be repaying your balance over a longer period, then a low balance transfer rate that is fixed for the life of the balance can be a good deal. Many such cards feature a rate much lower than other forms of unsecured finance such as personal loans, and you don't have to worry about finding a new 0% card when the introductory deal ends.

Most people use their card in a mixture of ways, and this is where choosing a card is more complicated. A low balance transfer rate might mean having to pay a high rate on purchases, or a card with a low standard rate might charge higher rates for cash withdrawals. Fortunately, there's a new kind of card that is becoming more widely available, which charges a simple flat rate for all use, whether balance transfers, purchases, or even cash withdrawals.

These cards often feature an attractively low rate, as there are no fancy introductory offers or reward schemes to pay for, and so they can make a very good option for the average card user.



Nicholas Hunt is a contributing writer on financial issues for 1Stop Finance UK where you can compare credit cards and apply for credit cards online.

Lardo di Colonnata : A Tuscan Delicacy

Pork is a staple food of the mountain regions of northern Italy, where it's often said that a well butchered pig should leave 'nothing but the oink' behind. As a pig is typically around 30% fat, thrifty locals had to come up with a way to use and preserve this valuable source of protein, and the result is Lardo.

Lardo di Colonnata, to give it its full name, is a delicacy produced from pork fat in and around the Tuscan mountain town of Colonnata. Happily for fans of cured meat, it's not only a frugal way of preserving pork fat over winter - it's delicious too!

It's made in large vats known as conche, fashioned from marble quarried at the nearby 'white mountain' of Cararra, which are first liberally rubbed with garlic. Next, layers of pork fat, salt, and a special mix of herbs and spices are added until the vats are full. The conche are then sealed with a wooden lid and left in cool mountain caves for 6 months or longer to mature in the clean air.

After the maturation time is over, the conche are opened to reveal a silky-smooth, meltingly tender 'meat' which can be eaten in much the same way as Parma Ham or other prosciutto.

While Lardo is often used to keep roasted meats moist by placing a thin layer over the skin, it is also delicious simply sliced thinly and eaten with bread, olives, and a good extra virgin olive oil as part of an antipasto course. It is not at all tough or greasy, and is well worth trying even if the idea of eating pure fat leaves you a little apprehensive!

Despite the long years of making Lardo in the traditional way, most of the examples that you may find in your local deli or store will have been made in a much more industrial setting, mainly as a result of modern hygiene laws taking precedence over customs and heritage. Gone are the marble conche and the mountain air, replaced by stainless steel and air conditioning.

However, visitors to the area around Colonnata may still be lucky and get hold of Lardo made in the old way that has been proven over the centuries - just don't tell the authorities if you do!



Andrea is a writer for the Recipedia food and drink glossary where you can read about more Italian delicacies such as Bresaola and Balsamic Vinegar.

Get in Control of Your Credit Card Debt

Few people would deny that using credit cards can make day to day life more simple, reducing the need to carry cash and making it easy to shop online and by telephone.

However, spending with plastic can sometimes be a little too easy, as it doesn't always feel like you're actually parting with any cash. This means the temptation is to spend without thinking about the consequences too carefully, until you hear the ominous thud of a huge credit card bill hitting the doormat.

If you've been caught out like this, the size of your card debt may seem overwhelming, but don't panic - there are a few simple steps you can take to start getting your debt back under control.

Try and make a little more than the minimum payments:

The minimum payments required by credit card companies have steadily fallen over the years. Where once it was typical to have to repay a minimum of 5% of your balance every month, it's now common to only have to pay 2.5% or 3%. With repayments this small in proportion to your debt, a large chunk of each payment gets swallowed up in interest charges. Depending on the APR rate of your card, up to 75% of each payment could be 'lost' in this way, meaning that it takes a very long time for your balance to reduce to any great extent.

By trying to repay more than the minimum, even if only by a little, you can speed this process up, and in the long term you'll end up paying much less in interest charges.

Prioritize your card debts:

If you have more than one card with different rates of interest, it makes sense concentrate on the one with the highest interest charges. This means not just the one with the highest interest rate, but the one which actually charges you most each month, which could have a lower rate but a higher balance.

Check your statements to see which card is costing you most in interest each month, and try to focus on repaying this card first by putting any spare cash you have into extra payments while keeping to the minimums on your other cards.

Change your card:

The credit card market is very competitive, and rates have fallen over the last few years. You may be stuck with an old card charging an old rate that is much higher than newer cards. If you can get a new card with a lower rate and transfer your account balance on to it, you could save a lot in interest charges, helping you to bring down your debt. If you can get a card with an introductory rate on balance transfers then all the better - you'll get a few months of interest free credit which you can use to really drive down your balance as 100% of each repayment will be helping to clear your debt.

Debt consolidation:

If getting a cheaper card isn't an option or isn't something you feel happy about, then maybe a consolidation loan would be worth considering. If you take out a loan and use the money to pay off all your card debts, you could benefit from a lower rate as loans are normally quite a bit cheaper than credit cards.

The downside to these loans is that the repayment period might be quite long, and so even though your monthly repayments will hopefully be lower, you'll stay in debt for longer and so end up paying more in interest. Done carefully, however, consolidation can be a sound move if there's little chance of clearing your debt in any other way.

Watch your spending!

All the above strategies for getting your debt under control will only work if you stop getting deeper into debt - and this means stopping spending on your cards. Ideally, you'd cut them up so that you can't use them again, but this might not be realistic as you may need to keep them as a credit option in an emergency. In any case, cutting your spending to an absolute minimum will keeping your repayments as high as possible is the only sure strategy to clearing your debt in the long term.



The author has been writing on financial topics for several years and is currently a contributor to Card Sense UK where visitors can compare UK credit cards.

Credit Card Balance Transfer Fees

The idea of a balance transfer deal was introduced to the UK in the year 2000 by innovative online bank Egg plc, who offered customers a bait of 0% interest for six months on balances they transferred from another credit card.

The feature was an instant hit, and more and more card issuers began to offer similar deals as competition for customers grew more intense. Before long, it seemed that every card available had 0% deals of ever-increasing lengths.

It didn't take long for savvy cardholders to spot a pretty major flaw in the credit industry's thinking though. With so many cards offering 0% deals, what's to stop people from becoming serial balance transferers, moving their debt to a new card as the 0% period expires? And so the game of credit card surfing began.

People began to systematically switch their balances to card after card, and if they were organised enough to make sure their balance was moved off a card before the interest charges kicked in, then they could avoid paying interest on their debt for as long as there were new cards available to apply for. In effect, the credit card industry was collectively extending millions of pounds of interest free credit over an indefinite period - not a situation they either intended or appreciated.

People could take advantages of balance transfers in other ways, too. Some cards allowed a transfer to a bank account rather than another credit card. It was therefore possible to transfer the entire credit limit of a new card to a high interest savings account, leave it there for the length of the 0% deal period, and then clear the card balance and pocket the interest earnings.

All this added up to a major headache for credit card issuers - the tables had been turned, and their customers were now costing millions of pounds every month to support. This had to change, and so it fell to Egg plc to again introduce a new card feature : the balance transfer fee.

In May 2005, Egg announced that all balance transfers would now attract a 'handling fee' of 2% of the amount transferred. The charge would be capped at �50. Other card issuers quickly followed suit, and now most balance transfer deals have such a charge.

So what does this mean for credit card users?

Firstly, before applying for a new balance transfer card, check in the small print whether or not a fee will be imposed. This should be made clear in all advertisements and on the application form, but the credit card industry has a history of subtly hiding unattractive features while accentuating the eye-catching ones, so pay careful attention.

If there is a fee, make sure that there's an upper limit mentioned. While the maximum �50 fee may still, depending on the size of your balance, make it worthwhile to take advantage of the offer, cards with no maximum charge are much less attractive.

To sum up, the balance transfer game isn't as straightforward as it once was. There are still ways to save money by taking the maximum advantage of the offers available, but cardholders need to be more wary than before.



Michael Strauss is an expert writer on consumer credit issues, and is a contributing author for Card Sense UK, where you can read more about balance transfer credit cards and cards without transfer fees.

Can I view my bill at my bank's web site?

In a recent survey respondents said that they would choose a bank based on the ability to pay bills online over the geographic location of the bank. This is a significant shift in consumer behavior in that financial institutions in the past were chosen based on their location or proximity to home. To the business who is a biller this provides a significant opportunity to cut the costs of billing using a billing distribution network.

A billing distribution network gives a biller the opportunity to send a bill to a financial institution. As a biller you may be familiar with bill pay at the bank's web site, but not realize that you can also present a bill to one of your customers at the bank's web site. How can you the biller take advantage of this distribution network?

There are three major companies who offer distribution of bills to a financial institution. These companies will take a data file from you, the biller, and upload it to their network. After a bill is uploaded, those customers who are signed up with the bank's bill pay and presentment service are sent an e.Mail notification stating that the bill is ready to view and pay.

Customers who use their bank's bill pay service may have an automatic payment scheduled which means payment will be sent either when the bill is received or when the bill is due. This is an excellent benefit for customers who never want to be late with their payments and excellent for the biller's receivables.

Distribution of a biller's bill to all corners of the web also has a secondary or "off label" benefit and that is marketing. Millions of people search for e.bills offered using a "pick list" which means they go through several different companies looking for the e.bill from their company. During this search process they will view many different company names including yours.

Another "off label" benefit is the loyalty of customers who use electronic billing services. Surveys have shown that customers who use electronic billing or online billing are significantly more likely to stay with the biller's product or service over a competitor's product or service. The bottom line benefit of this customer is difficult to measure; however, the value of keeping a customer versus replacing that customer with a new one has been proven and validated as a more profitable and less costly.

Finally the savings from postage, print, and paper can not be overstated. When a customer enrolls to receive their bills online they either are told their paper bill will be canceled or given the choice to cancel their paper bill. A biller can save, based on national averages, $.75 per bill when a paper bill is moved to an online bill. This is a significant sum of money for any biller sending 5000 bills or more.

The presentment of a bill online will continue to grow in popularity. At a point in history many people believed that the ATM would not replace the personal touch of the teller, those same people would be the stiffest opponents if ATM machines were removed. Online billing is following the same course as the ATM and as a biller you have the opportunity to ride the wave.



Jeffery Downs is an experienced billing solutions specialist and an expert in B2C and B2B invoicing and EIPP strategies and solutions. He helps companies slash the cost of invoicing by using industry best practices. Learn more at www.bestpracticesystems.com.

Spinal Cord Injury ? The Afterlife

Am I talking about death here? No, I�m talking about life after a spinal cord injury. Why did I phrase the title of this article as I did? Because for many people who suffer a spinal cord injury, their first thoughts after being informed of paralysis, or wheelchairs, or a severed spinal cord, causing the patient to never be able to walk again, is indeed death. �Why did I even live?�



I know that was one of my earliest thoughts after I was able to understand what was going on. Once I regained consciousness from my three days of coma, by awakening to a breathing tube being pulled from my throat, I was advised that I had an accident.



Maybe a few hours later, it�s hard to recall exactly, I began to comprehend the great distress in the doctor�s face and voice as he communicated to me about how my spine was broken in three places and the bone fragments had severed my spinal cord, and as a result I would never be able to walk again. Maybe it was at that time that I first wished myself dead.



Now its twenty-two years later. I�ve had twenty-two years of using a wheelchair for mobility. I�ve had twenty-two years of �Afterlife.� My spinal cord is still severed. I still have paralysis from chest-level down (T-4 to be exact). I have multiple wheelchairs; a basketball wheelchair, a tennis wheelchair, an everyday wheelchair. Over the years I�ve probably had close to 10 different wheelchairs. All of the chairs, all of the catheters, all of the baclofen, all of the leg bags and tubes, all of the paralysis paraphernalia thanks to one moment in time of loosing control of my car, hitting a guardrail, tree, and house, snapping my spine in three places and injuring my spinal cord.



Wouldn�t it have been better if I just didn�t have this kind of after life and experienced the bog finale afterlife instead? Well, I can�t answer that for sure because I have not been able to compare the two side by side. But I can tell you that you can have a life and a rather rewarding and fulfilling life, if you so choose, even after a spinal cord injury.



� Michael E. Hylton, TheWheeledWorld.org, June, 2006

Getting a Credit Card with a Bad Credit Rating

Paying with plastic has become a common part of everyday life, with more people now using credit or debit cards than cash for day to day purchases. The rapid rise of online shopping means that it's almost essential to have some way of paying by card, but people with poor credit ratings have always struggled to get approved for credit cards. It's not impossible though, and there are ways for people with even the most impaired credit histories to enjoy the convenience of plastic.

People with mild credit problems or low incomes will probably not be approved for the most heavily advertised credit cards with the most attractive offers, but many companies operate a policy known as Risk Based Pricing. This basically means that their cards will offer a different interest rate depending on the credit score of the applicant. If your credit rating isn't good enough to be accepted for the card you apply for, you may be offered a different card with similar features but a higher interest rate.

Risk based pricing is a great way for people with some adverse credit history to get a card, but people with more severe problems will need to look elsewhere. Several companies offer a card specifically aimed at people with poor or no credit hostory, and market them as a 'first' or 'starter' card. The idea is to offer a card with a low credit limit and a comparatively high interest rate, as a way of allowing people to being to develop some positive history on their files.

While these cards are poor value in comparison to more mainstream offers, the acceptance rate is very high and by opening an account and keeping up with your repayments, your credit rating will slowly be improved to the point where you may be able to apply for a cheaper card further down the line.

People with more severe credit problems such as bad debt or a previous bankruptcy may find that even these starter cards are out of their reach, which leaves only one real option : prepaid cards. These cards, also known as secured cards, are not in fact credit cards at all as they need to be 'loaded' with funds before you can use them to spend.

After you've credited money to your account, the card can be used like any other Mastercard or Visa, with the important difference that you can only spend money that you have in your account - you can't build up a debt. This means that there is very little risk for the card issuer, and so acceptance is virtually guaranteed. The flipside is that the issuer doesn't earn money by charging interest on your balance, and so they instead impose a variety of different charges on the cardholder ranging from a small percentage of everything you spend using the card to a monthly or yearly administration fee. You may also be charged a considerable sum for even applying for the card, so shop around and check the small print carefully before signing up.

To sum up, no one would deny that a bad credit rating makes it harder to get a credit card or other plastic payment solution, but with a little searching, there are cards of some kind available for nearly everyone.



Nicholas Hunt is a freelance writer currently contributing to the 1Stop Finance personal finance comparison site, where you can read more about credit cards for bad credit and compare credit card deals.

About Basic Bank Accounts

Despite easier than ever access to personal finance services, there are still 3 million adults in the UK today who are completely outside the banking system, and don't have access to a bank account.

Many of these people are unable to get a standard account because they have a poor credit score, either because of past financial difficulties or simply a lack of positive financial history. While high street banks are always keen to deal with people with good credit ratings, they can be cautious about making credit facilities such as overdrafts available to people with sub-prime ratings.

A new kind of bank account was needed if the industry's government prompted goal of increasing financial inclusion was to be met, and Basic Bank Accounts were born.

Basic bank accounts, also known as starter accounts or introductory accounts, are a very simple type of account which offer little in the way of credit or ways for accountholders to get into debt. There is usually no overdraft facility, no cheque book, and no debit card. The accounts simply provide a way for money to be paid in either over the counter or by electronic transfer, and withdrawn by cash machine.

This lack of features means that there is little risk or cost involved for the banks, and so their approval rates are much higher. In fact, about the only people who will have their applications rejected are undischarged bankrupts, or those with a history of fraud or very serious bad debt.

So how can getting a basic bank account benefit you? Firstly, most accounts will let you set up direct debits to pay your bills, and this will save you money as many companies will give you a discount if you pay in this way.

Also, the government is moving towards paying all benefits and pensions direct into bank accounts rather than in the old way over the Post Office counter, and basic bank accounts will let you receive money in this way.

Finally, this kind of account can be a 'stepping stone' into other financial services, helping you to build up a better credit rating, and in the future to take advantage of other services available such as overdrafts and debit or credit cards.

Since they were introduced, basic accounts have been very successful, and there have now been around 5 million accounts opened. Both the government and the banking industry say they are committed to increasing this figure even more over the next few years, until ideally every adult has some form of bank account, and so we can expect to hear a lot more about basic accounts in the near future.



Nicholas Hunt is a contributing writer at 1Stop Finance, and a more detailed version of this article can be found at Basic Bank Accounts Explained.

For And Against Debt Management

Millions of people are finding that their debts are becoming a serious problem, as the effects of years of easily available credit start to bite. There are also many companies who promise to solve all your debt worries, slashing your repayments and clearing your debt completely within a few years. Is this too good to be true?

First, we need to find out exactly what debt management is.

When you sign up with a debt management company, they will take over the servicing of your debts in return for a fee. Instead of having to keep up with all your repayments to many creditors, you can now make a single payment to the management company who will divide it between the companies you owe money to. This in itself can be a great weight off your mind, as the stress of keeping track of your repayments is removed, but a debt management program can offer more than this.

Your manager will contact your creditors and explain that your debts are unsupportable, and try to agree a new repayment schedule that you can better afford. They will also attempt to get the interest payments on your debt frozen, so that more of your money goes towards clearing your debt rather than just keeping on top of it.

In some cases, they may also be able to get previous interest charges cancelled, reducing the total amount you owe, but this will depend on how flexible your creditor is prepared to be. If the alternative to agreeing a more affordable repayment is bankruptcy, when the creditor will get no repayments at all, then most will be happy to negotiate.

So far, so good. Your debts will be reduced, your worries will be eased, and you can look forward to a debt free future. Of course, it isn't that simple, and you need to bear in mind the drawbacks of debt management before embarking on it.

Firstly, entering a program will effectively involve tearing up the credit agreements you've signed with your creditors. Even though you'll be agreeing new terms and sticking to them, this will leave a serious black mark on your credt rating. However, this might not greatly concern you - people with serious debt problems tend to have impaired credit scores already, as payments have usually been missed or debts defaulted on.

More seriously, although some charities will offer debt management at no cost, private companies will charge a fee which can in some cases be a considerable one. Beware of companies promising to solve your problems instantly - they may be trying to take advantage of people when they're vulnerable. Shop around to see what fees you'll be charged before signing up.

To sum up, debt management can offer a solution to heavy debt problems, cutting your repayments and relieving stress, but it has implications for your future credit worthiness, and care needs to be taken in choosing a company or organisation to sign up with.



Nicholas Hunt is a contributing writer for 1Stop Finance, where you can read more about debt management and other ways of coping with debt.

About Dormant Bank Accounts

Banking experts estimate that up to �5bn may be sitting unclaimed in UK bank accounts that have gone 'dormant'. What does this mean, and could you be entitled to a share in this huge amount of idle money?

A bank account goes dormant when, in the words of the British Bankers' Association, a bank and a customer 'lose touch with each other'. What this usually means in practice is that a customer has either passed away or moved house, and the bank haven't been told and are unable to locate the account holder some time later.

If there are no transactions on an account over a period of around 12 months, the bank will write to the account holder at the last known address to ask them if they wish to keep the account open. If no reply is received, then the bank will change the status of the account to 'dormant'. This means that from now on, no statements, chequebooks or other correspondance will be sent out to the customer.

The money in the account will still earn interest at whatever the normal rate of that account is, and the bank will still keep track of the account balance and keep a record of the last known address of the holder.

There are two main reasons for an account being made dormant. The first and most obvious one is to save the banks the administration costs of sending out statements and the like when there is no activity on the account from month to month (other than that initiated by the bank itself, such as interest payments).

The more important reason however is to guard against identity fraud. If a bank continues to send statements to an address when the account holder is no longer there to receive them, it is all too easy for these documents to end up in the hands of fraudsters, who could use the sensitive information they contain to begin a campaign of ID theft.

Most dormant accounts will have very small balances, but some will inevitably contain a substantial sum, often those belonging to someone who has passed away. If you think you may be entitled to money held in a dormant account, you can make a claim by filling in a form available from the bank in question.

You will need to give your reasons for making a claim, such as that the account belonged to a close relative whose estate was passed to you. You will also need to prove your own identity, and your connection to the original account holder if applicable.

If the bank don't agree that you're entitled to take over the account, you have the right to pursue an appeal, where your claim is re-examined. If the appeal fails, you can take your claim to the Financial Ombudsman Service, whose decision is final and binding.



Nicholas Hunt is a contributing writer for Onestop Finance, where you can find more information on bank accounts and unclaimed money.

Personal Loans : Is Early Repayment a Good Use for Spare Cash?

Reducing your overall debt level as much as possible is always a good idea, and is usually recommended as part of a budgeting plan. If you have some spare funds available, you might be tempted to clear your personal loan, as nearly all loan plans allow for full repayment before the term is over. However, there are a few things to bear in mind before deciding whether paying off your loan is the best use of your spare cash.

Firstly, loan providers make their profits by charging interest, and if you clear your loan early then you won't be paying the lender as much interest as you would if your loan went to its full term. Obviously, this means they will make less profit out of you, and so many lenders will write an early repayment penalty into the loan agreement to make sure that the arrangement is still profitable for them if you repay early.

This repayment penalty, also known as a redemption charge or a settlement fee, will often calculated as a percentage of the outstanding balance at the time you clear your loan, and depending on how early on in the repayment schedule you are, this could work out at quite a substantial amount. Check your credit agreement small print to see how much you could be charged, and see if this makes the prospect of early repayment quite as attractive.

If the fee is substantial, you could be better off by putting your spare funds to another more cost-effective use.

Most credit cards and other kinds of debt will charge a higher rate of interest than a personal loan, and so concentrating on reducing these first may be a better use for your money. By clearing your higher-interest debts first, your spare cash will be having the most beneficial effect.

Even if you don't have another debt to clear, you may find that there's a better way to use surplus cash than paying off a loan that features a high settlement fee. Investing in a high interest savings account or bond over the remaining term of your loan may earn you more in interest than the cost of a redemption charge, but when calculating this be sure to take account any taxes you'll have to pay on your investment return.

Finally, don't underestimate the importance of having a little money in reserve. If clearing your loan would leave you with very little spare cash, then an unexpected expense could push you back into the red. If this would mean you had to take out a new loan, then a new deal may work out to be more expensive than keeping your current loan to its original term.

To sum it up, paying off your loan is a commendable aim and to be recommended, but before you do so make sure that any settlement fee doesn't make early repayment uneconomical, that you couldn't better use the money to reduce more expensive debts, and that by clearing your personal loan you won't be leaving yourself too short of money and in danger of going back into the red.



Nick is a contributing author for 1Stop Finance UK, where you can compare personal loans and credit cards.

SEO - Building a Successful Website – The Basics

Content



Content on site is a must. The more pages of relevant content your site provides, the more pages the search engines will index. Index pages equal search engine saturation. The more pages of relevant content you provide on your site, the more of an authority you become to the spiders and bots.



Linking



This is another important way of getting your site seen. By trading links with other relevant sites, you reinforce your sites content, thus making your site "important". The more relevant the links you trade with, the more important your site becomes. If you are a gaming site trading links with a pharmaceutical site, you are not going to appear very relevant to the search engines.



As it sounds trading links is a link swap.. you post my link on your site, I'll post yours on my site. However, there are places you may "purchase" a listing without reciprocation.



Remember, the more friends a person had in high school, the more popular they were. Link exchanges are a similar concept. The more links you have (remember, stay relevant) coming into and going out of your site, the more �popular� your site becomes.



What's your Niche?



Narrow down your topic. �Computers� gives a Google search result (as of this moment) of 1,720,000,000... the chance of being found in that ocean of results is about a good as finding a penny in the Atlantic ocean. Narrow down your topic, get more specific. A search for laptop computers receives a Google result of 106,000,000 - that's better, but still an ocean. Get the picture?



Build your keywords around your niche. If you are aiming your site at light weight laptop computers, build your keywords around that... "Computers" as a keyword isn't going to be very helpful. Get specific.



Articles



Writing articles and listing them on free reprint article sites allows for other web publishers to print your article, with your author byline in-tact. Author byline would include a link(s) to your site(s). This gives "links back" to your site.



Become an Authority in your field. :)



There are also paid article submission sites. The more you pay, the higher in their site your article is placed.



Remember, basically what you are doing is offering your knowledge and free article for a link or advertising for your site.



Blog



A web log (later shorted to just blog) started as an online journal for personal websites, but have begun to infiltrate the online business world. They give a business a quick, easy way to update several times a week, daily, or even several times a day. Search engines like blogs because they are typically updated often. Therefore, they send their spiders to those sites that are most frequently updated.



There are blog directories to which your blog could be listed � free.



Keywords, Site Description, Title



Make sure each page has a relevant page title, relevant keywords and a good over-all description.



Search Engine Smarts



Search engines look for site relevancy. Each page must relate to the site topic/theme. Each individual page must have a specific topic. Where possible, name the page specifically for that topic. If your page is about Light weight Sony laptops, name it accordingly. Ex: http://www.yoursite.com/light-wieght-sony-laptops Note: Hyphens signify to spiders and bots separate words.



Make use of h1, h2, h3 tags header tags within your content pages. Why? This tells the search engine bots and spiders that this is keyword, a relevant topic.



Use title tags in any links and alt tags in all image tags.



Use CSS to style a page - this reduces clutter within the page code making it cleaner for the spiders and bots to navigate the pertinent information. Too much clutter and the spiders and bots are likely to hit the road.



Frames are NOT search engine friendly. They are difficult for spiders and bots to index, because of the way they are put together. If you want to optimize your site, ditch the frames.



Flash - it's flashy, visually fun, appealing to some... but it's a killer in the search engines. Spiders and Bots cannot read flash. If they cannot read your page, how do the index it? Again� when it comes to optimizing your site, if search engines spiders and bots can't read the file, why bother? Just because it looks good? Sure, ok� but if the search engines can�t or won�t spider your page, and you aren�t in the index, no one knows your site is out there, who is going to see it? You have a great looking site sitting there doing nothing.



Splash page - this is the page you come to that has a cool flash file, cute image, etc and says "Enter" (or similar). Re-read the Flash information and ditch the splash page.



WWW or not?



If you type �www.microsoft.com� and �microsoft.com� into your browser window, you get the same page right? We see it's the same page, we know, as site builders they ARE the same page. But search engine bots and spiders DON'T know that. They view with and without www as two different sites.



Why does this matter? If your site is out there on the web with both links, you stand the chance of penalization from certain search engines - they view it as duplicate content. Duplicate content don't typically get indexed, at least, not very high in the rankings.



The work around on this is a redirect, or an .htaccess mod rewrite. Tell your server to point to one page, either with the www, or without it. Ex, point to www.mysite.com and when someone types in mysite.com (less the www) it will automatically add the www to the link.



Is it absolutely necessary to do this? Maybe, maybe not, maybe one day the search engines will be programmed to view with and without www as the same. Until then, do you want to take a chance the search engines dump all your pages because they can't figure out which is the original?



Advertising



How many times have you moved past the first couple of pages when doing a search? Chances are, not very often. Yet, as a site/business owner, it may take forever and a day to get your site to the top 20 in a search engine for any given keyword. Are you ready to get your name out there NOW? Consider advertising on the major search engines. Google has Google Adwords, Yahoo has Yahoo! Search Marketing. Both will get you listing within the first couple pages, depending on your willing bid amount.



Newsletters



Now, you have visitors coming to your site. Is your site sticky enough to keep them coming back?



How many times have you been to a site you liked, wanted to browse more� so you bookmark it, never to return again. Life is busy, we forget. And you lost a visitor and potential customer.



Offer a free newsletter subscription. Entice visitors to join by offering free tips, valuable information, free products, etc. Once a week, or every other week, send out a newsletter to encourage and pull those subscribers to your site. They may turn from a newsletter subscriber to a customer.



Judi Cox is a work at home mom living in the Ohio Valley with her husband and 4 children. Judi�s interests include working websites (two of her websites www.momslittlegarden.com and www.mommamuse.com). She enjoys gardening for fun and for the birds, playing with the kids, reading, website design and promotion.