By: Donna Gunter | Source: site-reference.com

Recently I had a conversation with a voiceover expert who had paid a good chunk of change to Google for his Adwords campaign. His complaint? He got lots of traffic (and paid Google for lots of clicks) but none of them turned into clients, or even into prospective clients, for that matter. I took a quick look at his website and quickly realized his problem — a major website sin committed by online business owners everywhere. He expected that the visitors to his site would take him up on his invitation to contact him immediately to hire him upon learning about his services.

What’s wrong with that — isn’t that a reasonable call to action? The fallacy in that line of thinking is that unless the visitor has already been searching for exactly the service you offer (and I would estimate that to be 1 in every 100 or so visitors to your site, but it’s probably closer to 1 in every 500), you’re never going to see or hear from that visitor again. Think about it — how often do you buy someone’s services as an impulse purchase? So, if you expect visitors to go immediately from meeting you to hiring you, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

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By: Stoney deGeyter | Source: searchengineguide.com

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of things that can be changed to help improve conversion rates, here is a short list of things that are both quick and easy to change or add to your site. These are in no particular order.

1. Blue and underlined links

I almost made each of these their own item but decided to combine them into one because both can be fixed with a simple CSS change. Let’s attack the underlining first.

There are many ways to make your links stand out, you can bold them, italicize them, make them bigger or change color, etc. But none of these changes will intuitively let your visitors know they are looking at a link. That’s why underlining your links is so important. Underlined text on a web page is the universal sign of a hyperlink to another page or area of the site. This is also why you should not underline any text other than links, it causes confusion!

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By: Jeff Wuorio | Source: microsoft.com

A Web log, or blog, can be a boon to your business. But now comes the inevitable question: How do you get started?

Here are seven tips to get your Web log up and blogging.

1. Identify your audience. A basic precept of any business is just as essential with your blog. It’s critical to pinpoint your audience and, in the process, decide what you’re going to say that will make them read what you write. "It’s really a process of elimination —what’s not being covered by someone else?" says Scott Allen, co-author of the upcoming book "The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Using Online Social Networks." "What’s your unique spin? If you don’t have an original voice, why is anybody going to read it?"

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