I'd like to share some of my client questions with you today,  perhaps one of these might help you with your own website.

Outgoing Links

One of my clients - Angela - recently asked me an excellent question about outgoing website links.

"When I put a link on my website (so people can visit other websites I recommend) my webpage is 'written over' by the new website. How do I fix this or stop it?"

Great question! If you're using our CMS (Content Management System)or one of our web builders, follow these steps:

• highlight the text you want to attach the link to
• click the icon in the Menu for attaching links (this differs from program to program) and quite often looks like a chain link
• type or paste the url
• look for a Setting which allows you to choose something like 'open in new window', and select it or click it, whatever is required
• click the OK or Save button, whatever is required.

Choosing for a link to 'open in a new window' simply means that once the link is clicked the web visitor's browser software will open up a new browser window and the website will appear there.

The benefit to you is that your website will not be written over (or disappear), and when the visitor closes the OTHER website window, yours will still be visible. Perfect!

If you use HTML, and you're familiar with the "a href" tag, you simply add a little bit of information into the tag like this:

target="_blank"

If I type the < angle tags they may not appear in your email program, so I'll simply type what goes inside the left and right angle brackets:

a href="http://fake-website-name.com" target="_blank"

And that's it!



One easy way to get Incoming Links to your Website

Last week one of my clients (Paul) asked me about getting other websites to link to his website. This is known as getting 'incoming links' to your website.

My best and simplest suggestion to get long-term valuable links is to think of yourself as an expert in your field, and get ready to answer some questions :-)  PS - you don't have to be an expert, just know about your own product or service or info on your own website.

Pop over to http://answers.yahoo.com/

Sign up and create an account - you need to do this so you can answer questions on this site.

Once you've created an account, choose a category in the list down the left side of the page, narrow it down to things you know about. You'll be presented with Questions which need answering;  scroll through until you find one you can answer.

Post your answer, being as helpful as you possibly can, and put your link to one of your website pages as a reference.

Very soon you'll start to get traffic from this link, and when Yahoo shares this info with all the other Yahoo country sites, there will be even more links coming back to your site. This is a wonderful legitimate EASY way to build incoming links, and will also show that you're helpful, which will build trust with people reading your Answers. One day they may become customers :-)


SEO - 2 quick videos

I've had a few questions about how to tell if your site has been optimised with SEO - here are two videos to get your started.

BAWT SEO-01 -  Understanding Search Results & Tags
http://screencast.com/t/YYTosR40HcI

BAWT SEO-02 -  Print your webpage list
http://screencast.com/t/LK8f9GSC



SEO - What is keyword density?

First of all, for those who may not know what this means, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation - which is what search engines use to know how to categorise you for the seach results.

Basically this refers to how many times you use the same keyword or keyword phrase on one page of your website. For example if you use a keyword 5 times on a page with a total of 100 words, then that's 5/100  - or 5% - which means you  have a keyword density of 5%.

Here are two keyword density tools - read their descriptions to work out the best way to use them - you may be pleasantly surprised:

Keyword Cloud 1: http://webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php
Keyword Cloud 2: http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-cloud/

The bottom line is that you should not overdo it with keywords per page - write naturally and they should blend in well with your content.


What's your ONE website challenge?

"The main thing I'd like to be able to do with my website right now is ..."

I've set up a form where you can tell me which one thing you'd like to be able to do with/on your website, and I'll answer those questions in my upcoming Tips. Of course your identiy will be kept absolutely private, and this will help me know what challenges you face. Please pop over to the form to let me know:

Click here to fill in the form >>