Online Promotion: You Need To Treat Your Website Like An Employee

You Need To Treat Your Website Like An Employee - Here's 5 Ways To Do It

Written by Mike Cheney

People often come to me in a state of crisis and say their website isn't working. Usually they're in a cold sweat:

"Mike, give me some practical things I can do to get more sales from my website!"

You want practical advice? Stop treating your website like an object in your business and start treating it like an employee. Most businesses treat their website like a physical item in their business - such as a filing cabinet for example. Just take Mr. Smith from ABC Ltd.:

"Everyone else has got a filing cabinet so I thought we'd better get one. I'm not very interested in cabinets myself but people seem to think they get you more customers. It looks quite neat though - I made sure my face is on repparttar front of it."

Very good. How much business do you get from it?

"Business? Oh I don't know - I haven't even looked at it for a year or so. It's been a waste of money. We paid a company to build it and it doesn't work."

Right, I see. Have you updated it regularly and promoted it extensively?

"What? No - it went live and that was it, nothing's happened. I thought repparttar 124798 phone would be ringing off repparttar 124799 hook. Come and have a look at it anyway, it's over here in repparttar 124800 corner - gathering dust."

How to Use Your Google API Key as Your Secret Weapon: Part One

Written by Tinu Abayomi-Paul

Just over a year ago, Google.com began to provide access to its’ web search API to programmers and developers. This provided them with a way to utilize repparttar

optimum resources of Google’s database of listings. At first, there were few practical applications that would help repparttar 124797

average webmaster.

However, there are now plenty of ways that any site owner with an API key can benefit from these innovative programs, and web applications - and since repparttar 124798 licensing of repparttar 124799 API restricts repparttar 124800 creation of tools for commercial use, these resources will not cost you anything but some well-invested time. In repparttar 124801 next few minutes, you’ll learn how to use this information to your advantage.

Let’s back up a moment and get some of repparttar 124802 terminology out of repparttar 124803 way. This won’t be a tech-guru explanation- more like an oversimplification to give you a basic idea in layperson’s terms.

An API means application programmer interface. Basically, repparttar 124804 Google API gives programmers access to Google’s database of listings, which they can then use to create web applications. When you get an API key it simply gives you repparttar 124805 ability to access repparttar 124806 interface repparttar 124807 programs are based on. Therefore, your key will allow you to plug into repparttar 124808 application they’ve created, for a pre-determined number of queries.

So now you can harness repparttar 124809 power of Google’s database to your site’s advantage.

How?

First, get a Google API key.

The myriad of ways sites are using Google API keys are astounding. Some of them require you to provide your own API key to use them. You can get it at no charge here:

http://www.google.com/apis/

Your queries are limited to 1000 per day. But that’s more than enough for most web site owners. For some of repparttar 124810 tools, you won’t even need it, as repparttar 124811 developers seem to be allowing you to run tools using their own keys.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a software genius for this key to be useful to you. Developers have already built tools for you to use, all you’ll have to do is find repparttar 124812 sites where their online applications are housed, and if necessary, plug in your key. Think of it as a universal password. You’ll get repparttar 124813 key via email, then all you’ll need to do is cut and paste it in repparttar 124814 box provided. Which brings us to repparttar 124815 next piece in repparttar 124816 puzzle.

There are literally hundreds of places you can use repparttar 124817 Google API key.

Some people have developed plug-ins you can use with database-driven sites. Many have developed tools that will help you increase or study your present rankings in Google, resulting in more targeted traffic to your site. My favorite tool helps you study countless different pieces of data found through Google via email, automating hours of research. But we’ll come back to that later.

Cont'd on page 2 ==>