Tuesday, 15 September 2015

The 5 Best Ways to Get Free Website Promotion

The thing to remember about free website promotion is that nothing is ever truly free. If you don’t spend money promoting your website, you’re going to have to spend time. So why waste time trying to market your website using methods that will only bring you minuscule returns, if any? If you're prepared to work on them, these five free website promotion techniques 
Businessman works on computer - Reza Estakhrian/ Stone/ Getty images

1. Work on website SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimizationand it's the best thing since sliced bread for promoting your website because it's easy to learn and apply the basics to your own website(s).
Through working on website SEO, you can improve the page rankings of your web pages and drive more traffic to your site. And isn't that the ultimate goal? Get started with my 7 Basic Rules of Search Engine Optimization.


Tip: If you are using non-text content on your web page(s), such as photos, image maps or JavaScript, include text in the ALT tag so the search engines have something they can read.
2. Reciprocal linking.
Having other people put a link to your site on their site is a great way to get free website promotion. 
Be aware though that getting inbound links to your website is not a numbers game; it's the quality of the links that really matters. So you want to focus your linking efforts on relevant quality sites. 
3. Write articles.
The basic theory of article marketing is that you write an article and then offer it for free to various websites, blogs, magazines etc.
Your article, of course, ends with a resource box or 'blurb' that promotes you and your website.
The beauty of this website promotion strategy is that if you get your articles published on popular, long-lived websites or in well-known magazines, they can be sitting there promoting your website for a long, long time with no further effort on your part.
However, there are catches. First, you have to be able to write well on a topic or topics that other people will want to read and/or publish. Second, you have to find the quality places for your articles to be published and persuade the people making the decisions to publish them.
Tip: Find the websites or magazines you want to be published on first, and then spend some time reading the content to see what type of material they might want and if there are any obvious holes in their content that you could cover. Then tailor your material to that particular site or magazine's needs.
4. Use social media.
Social media isn't just a great place to connect with friends and family; it's also a great place to promote your website and/or business as so many people are using it. For instance, a Nielsen study found that Internet users spend 21.3% of their time on social networking sites while PQ Media found the average U.S. Internet user spends around 33 hours per month on the Internet and about 8 of those hours on social media (5 Social Media Tips for Finding and Engaging Your Target Audience: New Research, Social Media Examiner).
Participating in social media can be a great way to get free website promotion as it can give you high visibility at low cost. To successfully market your website using social media, though, you’ll need a plan. Learn How to Create a Social Media Plan for your small business.
Tip: Different social media attracts different types of people. Before investing time in using a particular social media and building up a group of followers, make sure you've chosen the right social media for your marketing purposes. See how to pick the social media that's the best fit with your business.
5. Create/present quality content.
This is the catch – none of the techniques above are going to work very well for you if you don’t have quality content on your site – the kind of content that other people want to read and promote on their own blogs/websites and on social media.
So somewhere on your website, you need to have a blog and/or articles presenting content that is relevant to your target market.
Where will you get such content? Basically, you are either going to write it yourself or get someone else to write it. The "someone else" might be staff, hired writers or guest bloggers. Which approach you choose depends on your budget as well as your time and talents.
Writing your own blog can be a very effective way to market a website because by blogging about your subject, you'll get the chance to become an active member of the blogging community, building a web of relationships and links. And of course, your blog will be keyword rich, increasing your Search Engine Optimization.
Tip: Most blogs include the facility to make comments on posts. When you're reading another blog that's relevant to your topic, take the time to comment on a post (making sure that your comment says something that's equally relevant). It's another opportunity to promote yourself and your website for free – while getting known in the blogging community.
Consistency is Key
These are not the only ways to get free website promotion of course. But these are the best, and if you select several of these and concentrate on doing them consistently over a period of time, they'll yield the return in increased site traffic that you're looking for.

Saturday, 30 March 2013

New York magazine's new iPad app looks to define the future of print + digital publishing


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Timed with the magazine's 45th anniversary, New York is set to launch a newly redesigned iPad app that takes full advantage of Apple's iOS platform, and could serve as the new standard bearer for print magazines on tablets.
AppleInsider was given an early hands-on look at the revamped New York magazine for iPad this week at the publication's New York City headquarters. While New York has had an iPad edition available to subscribers for years, NYmag.com General Manager Michael Silberman admitted the previous software hadn't used Apple's tablet to its full potential.

That's why in 2012, they partnered with developer The Wonderfactory to build a new iOS Newsstand application based on Bonnier's Mag+ digital publishing platform. The result is New York's completely revamped software, which is scheduled to hit the App Store April 1, with a few twists that make it a standout experience for the iPad.The defining feature of New York's new app is the "window shade," which allows users to quickly jump between the magazine and the latest news.

Upon launching the new application, readers will see a unique user interface designed to give iPad users easy access to both the latest news, as well as a version of the latest issue of New York, tweaked specifically to take advantage of the iPad's form factor and display.

This split design is accomplished by a movable bar — a UI element referred to internally as the "window shade" — that divides the page into an upper half, featuring the latest news curated from NYmag.com, and a lower half, which offers access to the weekly magazine issue. Users simply drag the bar up or down to choose which material they wish to read, and the bar can be quickly pulled to the other side of the screen to switch.
The idea, Silberman explained while demonstrating the application, is to keep readers engaged withNew York's content on a daily basis. While the print magazine and its digital counterpart are published weekly, users can also use the same app to stay up to date with the latest exclusive Web content that supplements the print edition.

That's not to say the "Latest News" portion of the app is simply an embedded version of NYmag.com. Select stories from the magazine's website, as well as excerpts from the full magazine, are curated and presented with a new look designed just for the app, and five days' worth of stories are also downloaded for offline reading.

"We want users to come to the app many times throughout the day for our unique take on news, politics, entertainment, fashion and food," Silberman said. "The most successful apps serve users on their own schedule, not tied to a weekly or monthly magazine publishing cycle. The app is especially tailored to meet the content consumption needs, habits and expectations of today's tablet audience."

The ad-supported content will be available to anyone who downloads the free app from Apple's iOS Newsstand. The hope of Silberman and others is that the quality of the free content will encourage readers to slide the app's window shade up to access the bottom half of the app — and subscribe to the weekly edition.

Those who do subscribe will find that the digital reproduction of the weekly publication has also been redesigned for the iPad. Unlike some other magazines, which essentially present themselves as page-by-page PDF file scans, each issue of New York will be tweaked and redesigned for an ideal tablet reading experience."The most successful apps serve users on their own schedule, not tied to a weekly or monthly magazine publishing cycle." -NYmag.com General Manager Michael Silberman

In demonstrating a recent issue to AppleInsider, Silberman showed how everything from the magazine's cover to articles and regular features within were changed in varying ways from print to iPad. Flipping to the left and right brings up individual articles within the magazine, and from there users can scroll down to dive deeper into the page.

Content can also be modified to work even better on the iPad than in print, if need be. Silberman said New York plans to have the iPad version of all of its restaurant reviews include controllable 360-degree photographs that will give readers a feel for the location. Some stories will also have embedded video, and that content will not be available on the magazine's website, remaining exclusive to the iPad.

The magazine also recently consolidated its weekly "To Do" section, an acknowledgement of the fact that most users simply go to the Web if they want to find an exhaustive list of upcoming events. But in the iPad app, the weekly "To Do" list is accompanied by a special search box that lets readers find more options right within the digital magazine.

In another example of changes from print to iPad, an article in one issue about former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was merely a small sidebar in the print edition. But the ability to enhance the content on the iPad with larger graphics and interactivity led to a full-page item in the digital copy.

Other features include a quick "scrub" option at the bottom of the screen that shows thumbnails of pages throughout the issue, while a top menu features a quick table of contents. The digital edition demonstrated to AppleInsider on a third-generation iPad with Retina display was more responsive than many other laggy magazines and newspapers currently available on Newsstand.

New York also worked with their development team to reduce the size of individual magazine issues. These can still be a relatively hefty download at 300-plus-megabytes, but that can be less than half the size of issues provided by some other magazine apps.

When the updated New York magazine application launches in Newsstand April 1, it will come with the April 8 annual edition marking the publication's 45-year anniversary since its first issue dated April 8, 1968. Recurring monthly subscriptions through Apple's Newsstand will cost $1.99 per month, or $19.99 per year, while a print and digital option will also be available to readers for an additional $10.


This Is By Far The Easiest Way To Fix Email Overload



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E-mail overload is a huge problem. 
In fact, the average employee wastes the equivalent of 73 days a year on email, reportsMcKinsey Global Institute ,and others argue that email is actually bad for your health.
A service called SaneBox wants to solve that problem, for a monthly fee. 
SaneBox is a web-based app that scans your inbox and determines what messages are important to you based on your reading habits. Messages that you aren't likely to open right away are filtered into a separate folder.
We've been using SaneBox for two weeks and our inbox has already gone down from 1,200 messages to 200.

What's great about SaneBox:

You don't have to do much.
After you set everything up, SaneBox's robots scan your inbox from the cloud and determine what is and isn't important. The software can guess what topics you're likely to read.
The less-important emails are filtered into a "Sane Later" folder for you to process in bulk. The more you use SaneBox, the better you can train it to know exactly which emails are important.
Besides sorting emails, SaneBox is packed with features that enhance the service and make it even more useful. One of our favorites is called SaneBlackHole, which lets you quickly unsubscribe from email lists by blacklisting those email addresses.
SaneBox works with major email services like Gmail and Yahoo. After it scans your inbox, you just access those service like normal. (The filtering folders are created automatically).

What's not so great:

The biggest negative with the service is training yourself to check your SaneLater folder. If you're not in the habit, there's a chance you could miss an important email. 
SaneBox also costs money, unlike the new free email app Mailbox for iPhone. (Although unlike Mailbox, SaneBox is completely automated).

How much does it cost?

SaneBox offers consumer and business pricing tiers for the service.
  • For $2.04 per month, the service will manage one email account, and let you send five messages to a "RemindMe" folder that will resend the message to you at a later date. You can also send up to five email attachments to your Dropbox account.
  • The $5.79 per month tier will manage two email accounts, send 250 RemindMe's per month, and automatically send 250 attachments to Dropbox.
  • The most expensive plan costs $19.54 per month and manages three email accounts, sends an unlimited amount of RemindMe's, and will forward an unlimited amount of attachment's to your Dropbox account.
Check out our tour of SaneBox to see how it works. 

Spring clean and revive your PC


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Many folks bring themselves and their homes out of the winter doldrums with a frenzy of spring cleaning and organizing. One area of your house you might neglect, however, is your computer.
Fortunately, cleaning and de-cluttering your PC is easy to do and doesn’t take much time. It'll prolong the life of your machine and help you get more work done faster.
That means you can spend more time outside, enjoying the longer, warmer days!
Clean that hardwareYour PC has collected some dust bunnies since its last cleaning. These trap heat and shorten the life of your system.
There there's your keyboard, which probably has a fair amount of bread and potato chip crumbs lodged between the keys. Don't even get me started on the germs your keyboard, mouse and touchpad collect!
Time for some do-it-yourself detailing.
First, turn off your computer or laptop and unplug it. If your keyboard and mouse are wired, unplug them from the computer. If they're wireless, shut them off and remove the batteries.
A few blasts of compressed air should take care of any dust on the keyboard and debris stuck between keys. Next, swab your keyboard and mouse with bleach-free disinfecting wipes to remove grime. You can also use cotton swabs dipped in isopropyl alcohol for a deep clean between the keys.
For your monitor screen, use a soft, slightly damp lint-free cloth. Don't use cleaners that contain ammonia.
If you're confident enough to open up the inside of a PC desktop case, now's a good time to remove dust buildup on the case fans, air vents, motherboard and CPU heatsink and fan. On a laptop, blow compressed air into the intakes along the side.
Zap those virusesIn addition to compromising your privacy, spyware and viruses bog down your PC's performance.
Scan your machine with reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs to combat this threat. If you need anti-virus software and spyware remover, visit my Security Center for free programs. Run the scans and remove any threats that pop up.
Remember to update your security programs often so you can stay protected from emerging threats. Weekly scans help, too.
Free up and optimize hard disk spaceWindows uses free hard disk space for extra memory. A hard drive that's nearly full will slow down your computer.
First, get rid of temporary Internet and Windows files with the free program CCleaner.
Two more free programs help. Grab Revo Uninstaller to thoroughly remove any programs you don't use anymore. Zap trial software and other unwanted bloatware with PC Decrapifier.
Still bumping up against your hard drive's storage limit? Consider moving your photo, video or music library to an external drive. Use a free disk-visualizing program such as WinDirStat to see what other applications and files are taking up the most space.
If your PC or laptop has a conventional hard drive - not a solid-state drive - it can benefit from defragmenting. In Start>>Control Panel, run Disk Defragmenter (Optimize Drives in Windows 8) to consolidate fragmented files and folders and speed up reading and writing to the disk. Also run the Error Checking utility, which scans the drive for bad sectors and file system errors.
Update Windows softwareThe second Tuesday of every month is sort of a holiday for Windows users. It's called Patch Tuesday, and it's the day Microsoft releases updates for Windows. Other tech companies often release patches to coincide with this date, too.
These updates help you keep drivers and service packs up to date. They also fix security holes in Windows and programs like Office and Internet Explorer, which hackers can exploit by sneaking malware onto your PC.
Go to Start>>Control Panel>>All Programs>>Windows Update. It will tell you what updates need to be installed on your computer. Make sure you click the "Check for updates" link to see if the computer is up to date.
If you haven't done so, turn on automatic updates so you get hassle-free protection in the future. You can do this by clicking "Change settings" and choosing "Install updates automatically" in the drop down menu.
Copyright 2013, WestStar Multimedia Entertainment. All rights reserved.
Kim Komando hosts the nation's largest talk radio show about consumer electronics, computers and the Internet. To get the podcast, watch the show or find the station nearest you, visit: www.komando.com/listen. To subscribe to Kim's free email newsletters, sign-up at: www.komando.com/newsletters.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/03/30/spring-clean-and-revive-your-pc/#ixzz2P5BkEC5e

Exclusive: Lowest prices anywhere on over a dozen MacBook Pro Retina configurations

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In addition to the one-off deals on some of Apple's MacBook Pro with Retina display configurations, AppleInsider is proud to once again team up with MacMall to offer readers unbeatable prices on roughly 15 MacBook Pro with Retina configurations, some of which have been slashed by over $815 from MSRP pricing that was effective just last week.

When using the links in our price guides (also below) and then manually applying AppleInsider's exclusive 3% coupon code APPINSDRMWB38717 in the promo code field that reveals itself on MacMalls MacBook Pro (and MacBook Air) pages and then manually clicking the "Apply" link, readers can save hundreds of dollars on their purchases over Apple's standard pricing.

For instance, a 2.9GHz 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display, 8GB of memory, and a 256GB flash drive, comes to just $1,697.49 with the added 3% discount ($501 savings), while a 2.6GHz 15" MacBook Pro with Retina display, 8GB of memory and a 512GB flash drive comes in at $2,327.98 ($471 savings).

The discounts become even steeper when stepping up to models with 16GB of RAM and flash drives ranging in size from 512GB to 768GB. As an example, a fully-loaded 2.5GHz 13" MacBook Pro with 8GB of memory and a 768GB flash drive sells for $2,182.49 ($816 savings) with the coupon, while a fully-loaded 2.7GHz 15" MacBook Pro with 16GB of memory and a 768GB flash drive comes in at $3,199 ($550 savings).

AppleInsider's Mac Price Guides will continue to track any price adjustments as Apple and its partners move to regain momentum in Mac sales that it lost during the most recent holiday quarter. 

Please note that models highlighted in green indicate slightly revised models introduced Wednesday that have not yet made it to stores and are available for pre-order only. They're expected to begin shipping from MacMall by early next week at the latest, and the reseller works off first-come, first-serve through online pre-orders.

MacBook Pro
MacBook Pro
AppleAmazonMacMallmacconnectionB&H Photo & Video
Discount
2.5GHz 13" (4GB/500GB HDD)$1,199.00$1,129.98$1,096.08*sold out$1,074.95$124.05
2.5GHz 13" (8GB/500GB HDD)$1,299.00n/a$1,212.49*n/an/a$86.51
2.9GHz 13" (8GB/750GB HDD)$1,499.00$1,399.00$1,357.02*$1,499.00$1,374.00$141.98
2.9GHz 13" (8GB/1TB HDD)$1,599.00n/a$1,546.18*n/a$1,559.00$52.82
2.9GHz 13" (8GB/256GB SSD)$1,899.00n/a$1,745.99*n/a$1,799.00$153.01
2.3GHz 15" (4GB/500GB HDD)$1,799.00$1,709.97$1,658.66*$1,649.00$1,659.00$150.00
2.3GHz 15" (4GB/750GB HDD)$1,899.00n/a$1,837.18*n/an/a$61.82
2.3GHz 15" (4/750/ANTI-GLARE)$2,149.00n/an/an/a$2,149.00$0.00
2.6GHz 15" (8GB/750GB HDD)$2,199.00n/an/a$2,049.00$1,999.99$199.01
2.7GHz 15" (8GB/750GB HDD)$2,599.00n/asold outn/an/a$82.82
13-inch MacBook Pro (MBP) with Retina display
2.5GHz 13" MBP (8GB,128GB)$1,699.00$1,449.98$1,406.48*$1,299.00$1,366.06$400.00
2.6GHz 13" MBP (8GB,256GB)$1,699.00$1,679.98$1,629.58*$1,649.00$1,666.06$69.42
2.5GHz 13" MBP (8GB,256GB)$1,999.00$1,499.99$1,499.99$1,499.00$1,514.57$500.00
2.9GHz 13" MBP (8GB,256GB)$2,199.00n/a$1,599.99sold out$1,749.95$599.01
2.5GHz 13" MBP (8GB,512GB)$2,499.00n/a$1,699.99sold out$1,899.95$799.01
2.9GHz 13" MBP (8GB,512GB)$2,699.00n/a$1,849.99sold out$2,049.00$849.01
2.5GHz 13" MBP (8GB,768GB)$2,999.00n/a$2,133.99*sold out$2,249.95$865.01
2.9GHz 13" MBP (8GB,768GB)$3,199.00n/a$2,279.49*sold outsold out$919.51
15-inch MacBook Pro (MBP) with Retina display
2.3GHz 15" MBP (8GB, 256GB)$2,199.00$1,944.99$1,899.99sold out$1,899.00$299.01
2.4GHz 15" MBP (8GB, 256GB)$2,199.00$2,159.99$2,114.54*$2,199.00$2,153.53$84.46
2.3GHz 15" MBP (16GB, 256GB)$2,399.00n/a$2,182.49*sold outsold out$216.51
2.6GHz 15" MBP (8GB, 512GB)$2,799.00$2,299.99$2,299.99sold out$2,299.00$499.01
2.7GHz 15" MBP (16GB, 512GB)$2,799.00$2,779.99$2,696.58*$2,799.00$2,779.99$102.42
2.7GHz 15" MBP (8GB, 512GB)$3,049.00n/a$2,327.99*sold outsold out$721.01
2.6GHz 15" MBP (16GB, 512GB)$2,999.00n/a$2,399.99sold outsold out$599.01
2.7GHz 15" MBP (16GB, 768GB)$3,199.00n/a$2,849.99sold outsold out$349.01

MacBook Pro
MacBook Air
AppleAmazonMacMallmacconnectionB&H Photo & Video
Discount
 
11" Air (1.70GHz/4GB,/64GB)$999.00$939.94$911.73*$999.00$939.00$87.27
11" Air (1.70GHz/4GB/128GB)$1,099.00$1,035.97$1,004.88*$1,099.00$1,035.98$94.10
13" Air (1.80GHz/4GB/128GB)$1,199.00$1,099.99$1,066.99*$1,199.00$1,099.00$132.01
13" Air (1.80GHz/8GB/128GB)$1,299.00n/a$1,231.89*n/a$1,269.99$67.11
11" Air (2.00GHz 8GB/128GB)$1,349.00n/a$1,303.68*n/a$1,349.00$45.32
13" Air (1.80GHz/4GB/256GB)$1,499.00$1,319.99$1,347.33*$1,399.00$1,319.95$179.01
11" Air (2.00GHz /4GB/256GB)$1,549.00n/aon ordern/a$1,449.00$100.00
11" Air (2.00GHz/8GB/256GB)$1,699.00n/a$1,552.89*n/a$1,569.99$146.11