I’m online.  A lot.  Through my travels on the world wide web I’ve come across some excellent online tools so today I thought I’d share them with you.  All have saved me time, made me more productive, more organized and more profitable.  I use them all so I’m not recommending services that I don’t use myself.  I hope you find the same benefit from using these resources as I have.

Site Build It! I build a lot of websites and audit even more.  I am an SEO/internet marketing consultant and review hundreds of websites a week.  If you are looking to build a website that is designed to be a true business and not just a fancy brochure you will love Site Build It.  The website builder takes you through the entire process of builing a quality website that is designed to be monetized.  If you’ve ever dreamed of owning your own online business, check out SBI.  And then, come to me for the search engine optimization

Evernote:     Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.  Cost: Free or $5/month for premium service.

Jott:     With a simple phone call, Jott Assistant lets you use your voice to capture notes & to-dos, set reminders and appointments, send email and text messages, and post to your favorite web services, all on the go.  Their voice to text transcription service turns your voice notes, messages, and updates into text and sends them where you want.  Jott also connects with Outlook, iPhone, and all your favorite social media platforms.  Jott’s Voicemail transcription service is also a huge time saver.  Voicemails are transcribed and send directly to you through email, text, or both.  Cost is $3.95/month for standard or $12.95/month for Pro.  Go with the Pro, it’s well worth it.

MindJet:     Absolutely the best Mind Mapping software on the web.   An explanation from MindJet’s website:   “Technology for the way your mind works.  Mindjet’s technology for dynamic, visual thinking captures, arranges and relates free-form information in a multi-dimensional space. It goes far beyond an everyday outline or the confines of a sheet of paper. In tech-speak, it’s software that brings thoughts and ideas to life on an intuitive, interactive dashboard. “  If you do any project planning,  brainstorming,  multi-tasking, strategic planning,  note taking,  presentations (the list of uses is infinite) than you’ve got to check this out.  Cost $349.00, includes training, one time fee. No monthly recurring.

Rackspace:     Affordable and reliable email and website hosting. I use them for my websites and email accounts. Costs start at $1/month per email box.

iPhone:     Can’t live without it. So many uses you’d need an entire website to go through them all. Oh wait, there is one:  www.apple.com. Cost is $199.00

TweetLater:     Do you Tweet? Like Twitter but sometimes you don’t have time on a given day to update your business posts as often as you’d like? Try TweetLater and schedule your Tweets to run when you want them to run. Manage multiple Twitter accounts as well.  Cost is free for standard account.

TweetDeck:     More on Twitter.  If you’re like me and enjoy using Twitter to find valuable content and keep up with the goings on of a group of people but can’t stand all the get rich quick, self promoting posers out there that have practically taken over the service than TweetDeck is for you.  Why? Several reasons. But, my top 2 are: the ability to search key phrases to find followers or people to follow that meet your social media strategy criteria and also the ability to build groups of specific followers to save time and categorize your areas of interest. Cost is free. Great service.

TED:     Best educational, insightful and entertaining site on the web. Hands down.

LittleSomething:     Great for staying in touch with or thanking clients, friends, prospects, and anyone else you want to make feel special.  The idea is to send a little something and be remembered. All of the gifts are less than $10 and include shipping.  Easy to use, a great resource for making an impression and staying in touch.

ELance:    The ultimate freelancing website.  Get practically anything done, an amazing resource.  Hire experts to do your work, outsource to companies, consultants and freelance professionals.  Easy to set up an account. Easy to post a project. It’s just easy. Receive bids from numerous freelancers, check out their work, testimonials and prices, and get going on your project… whatever it might be.

Toodledo:     The ultimate To Do list website!  Having a single place where all your to-dos are permanently stored and easily accessible will allow you to relax, knowing that you won’t forget anything.  Toodledo’s hotlist, email and sms reminders, and sortable online to-do list will help you remember to complete tasks on-time.  For those of us who are procrastinators, Toodledo has a special tool that analyzes dates, priorities, time estimates, and other characteristics to create a customized schedule of the best use of your time.  Cost is Free.

There are more, to be sure, but these are the ones I use the most and get the most value.  What I’d really like to know is… what do you use?

Excellent Web Page title advice from Axandra:

Good web page titles can make a huge difference in the number of visitors that your website gets. For that reason, you should check the titles of all web pages of your website now:

* Make sure that the titles of your web pages are descriptive. It should be clear what to expect on the pages.
* If possible, add a call to action and benefits in your web page title.
* Put the most important information at the beginning of the title. Search engines might shorten the title in the search result pages and people might not see the complete text.
* If you’re not a major brand name, avoid your company name in your web page titles.
* Do not use the same title for all of your web pages. This is a mistake that many beginners make.

For small business owners the world over, the Internet has proved to be a tremendous marketing tool for helping them find new customers.  Of course, that only applies if you are a small business owner that has taken advantage of this opportunity.  If you have not, it cannot possibly be due to budget constraints; internet marketing costs a fraction of traditional marketing and delivers much more targeted and measurable results.  The only obstacles to moving forward then, would be lack of knowledge, and time.

The single most important online marketing strategy a local business owner can employ to improve her website’s standing with the search engines and drive more traffic to her site is by encouraging complementary sites to link back to hers.  It does take a bit of time to do this, or you can hire a professional to do it for you for very little money and be sure it’s being done correctly.

Thanks to the World Wide Web, there are no more barriers to entry.  This article will provide you the basics of building links back to your site… so knowledge will no longer be an obstacle either.  Remember, the financial investment is minimal, if anything, and the time it takes to implement these strategies is small investment to make for growing your business in this new world of e-commerce.

A fundamental truth in online marketing: If your have unique quality content then other websites will naturally start linking to your website. Subsequently, the search engines (Google, Yahoo, AOL, others) will give a higher ranking to your website.  This attracts greater targeted traffic and a better prospective customer coming to your website.

Just waiting for others to link to your site is time consuming. Simple actions can be made to speed up the linking process.

Here are the five top strategies for building momentum in actively acquiring links to your site.

1. Optimize Your Website Copy

Make your website copy interesting, informative and interactive. You can divide your articles, or information pages into three sections.

• In the introductory paragraph tell your visitor what you are going to tell them. In other words, give a taste of what the page on your site is about it. Make them want to read more. Hook them right away so they are tuned into your message and curious about what they will learn by reading further.
• In the next two to three paragraphs, tell them what they expected to read after getting an overview in the first paragraph. This is extremely important. Your content must flow naturally and with relevancy from one paragraph to the next.  Also, keep in mind a good sales letter or web copy focuses on only one point at a time. Don’t try to talk about everything and sell the whole store on this one page. If you do, you’ll lose your customer. Keep the writing tight, concise and focused. Respect your reader’s time.
• Finally, sum up with a conclusion. Recommend a solution or specific next steps.

Simple, straightforward language appeals to all. Focus on one or two keywords per page. That’s it. For instance, if you are dealing with home insurance then focus on a one or two keywords related to your home insurance products on one page and if you sell auto insurance talk about that on a completely separate page. Do not combine the two.  Focusing on one idea per page makes your website friendly to Google.

Moreover, keep an eye on what is referred to as your keyword density. Though there is a difference of opinion regarding the keyword density somewhere between 2% and 5% works well.  What that means is the main keywords in your website copy should comprise about 5% of the total website.  If your page copy is 300 words, use your keywords about 15 times.  The placement of the key words is also important. Try to get your keywords used early on, towards the top of the page if possible.  It also helps to make use them in titles, with a bit bigger font and even use bold type face occasionally. Just don’t over do it.

2. Meta Data: Create an Effective Website Meta Title Tag, Meta Description Tag, and Keywords Meta Tag

A definition of Meta Tags: This is a special HTML tag that is used to store information about a Web page but is not displayed in a Web browser. For example, Meta tags provide information such as what program was used to create the page, a description of the page, and keywords that are relevant to the page. Many search engines use the information stored in Meta tags when they index Web pages.

A Meta Title tag is the most important part of any website and is like an ad copy since it is used by Google in its listings. A short, descriptive readable title limited to 10-12 words works best with Google. Use your main keywords in your title tag.

If your Meta Description Tag that tells your potential customers what they want to hear, you will definitely get an added advantage over others in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPS).

Keywords Meta Tags do not have near the impact that they once have but many industry insiders still believe using them help improve your overall search engine rankings.

3. Create Quality Back Links to Your Website

Top TIP:  More important than anything else is how many relevant, complementary websites have a link on their website linking back to yours.  A link from an authoritative site, such as a .edu or .org carry even more weight.  The more “link backs,” the more popular and credible Google will believe your website to be.  Search engine rankings are sometimes referred to as a popularity contest, and to make it simple the more other sites link back to yours, the more popular your site becomes.  Higher search rankings equal more traffic.
4. Use Local Directories Effectively

A website directory is a website that lists hundreds or thousands of subjects, along with links to Web sites about those subjects.  Directories are excellent ways to build quality one way links back to your website.  The Yahoo Directory is the most famous example and the Open Directory is the highest rated free directory submission site.

If your prospective customers are local, make excellent use of local directories. For example, if you are in San Francisco, then go to Google and search for, “directory” + “San Francisco.” A list of all the local directories in San Francisco will be displayed in a few seconds. You could even try searching for, “Dog food ” + “San Francisco,” if you are dealing with dog food.   Submit your website to all suitable directories.  Or, to save time, it is very cost effective to hire a professional internet marketing company to do this for you.  You can get listed in hundreds of directories, both local and national, in a very short time frame.

Another tip:  If you hire out the work, make sure the submissions are being done manually, not automatically.  This is extremely important to improve your chances of having your site accepted to the directory.
5. Create a Proper Site Map and Google Site Map

Site maps are a directory of all your site’s pages with links to every single page and should be updated whenever a new page is added.  Sitemaps are extremely useful for humans and for search engines alike it makes the task of navigating your site simple.   A Google Site Map allows Google to instantly “see” your site and evaluate it. It also works well in getting Google to index (crawl, review) your site faster than it would otherwise.

Using the above strategies yourself or hiring out the work to an internet marketing company will have a dramatic impact on your website.  Increased traffic, greater visibility and more popularity can be yours in a short period of time if you start now and take these strategies one at a time.  The benefits are well worth the time commitment.

With compelling content and the above link building strategies you can make Google, and your customers, fall in love with your website. And after all, isn’t that the whole idea?