Should more websites equal more hassle?

Any web entrepreneur or internet marketer who has decided to pursue their goals by traveling down the road of developing a large number of niche websites - rather than focusing all their attention on one or two supersites - eventually faces this dilemma. Is the web design software you've chosen capable of managing 50, 100 or more websites with ease, or is it going to make the task of managing and updating your portfolio of websites too much to handle?

Unfortunately, many niche marketers are well down the road before this problem begins to have a significant impact on their productivity. They may already have 10 or 20 websites up and running before they begin to notice that a problem may be looming. Once they do, another question rapidly comes to mind, "Should I keep going, or switch all my sites over to some other software now?"
There isn't one simple, catch-all solution. The software you choose, will be determined as much by your need to build and manage a large number of websites as by how you intend to maintain them going forward. Converting your existing sites over to another application is probably a task best outsourced. Stick to what you're good at.

If you expect to continue to maintain your growing portfolio by yourself, then software such as XSitePro is more than up to the task. It is cheaper than the likes of Dreamweaver and has a far less daunting learning curve. The included templates are not all that inspiring, but there are some better ones available to buy and it is relatively easy to modify template graphics to suit your needs.
Managing a large number of sites in XSitePro is quite easy. The software can keep track of your Adsense details as well as multiple affiliate accounts, making it ideal for internet marketers. Any changes to a site can be published with just a mouse click. The built in SEO tools and reporting functions are very useful and can save a lot of time and costly errors.

The growing popularity of Web 2.0 and social bookmarking sites, however, puts XSitePro at a disadvantage as it is not built to design sites with the required functionality. Wordpress and Joomla stand out in this arena, and have the added benefit of making collaboration and user created content very easy, but managing a large number of Wordpress or Joomla sites would be a chore.
Blogging is another area that XSitePro is not equipped for. But if blogging is your thing, then there is another cheap, even free, solution to managing a lot of websites that is worth considering ... Blogger. Although Wordpress has become the blogging tool of choice for many internet marketers, Blogger allows you to create unlimited blogs for free, host them for free and manage them all from one place, your Blogger Dashboard. If you have your own hosting account you can host your blogs there and still manage them all from your Dashboard.

Of course, the easiest, if not the cheapest way to manage a large number of websites is to pay someone else to do it!

How Google Can Help You improve Your Search Rankings

Search Engine Ranking is the most essential ingredient for free traffic. Every body knows that search engine optimization, quality back links and original content are the key ingredients for good search engine rankings. Whether it is a niche one is competing in or a highly competitive keyword, these are a must.

Search Engine Optimization is a highly competitive keyword and a search in Google brings up 93 million search results (93,400,000 to be precise). Sites compete with each other to bring the best search engine optimization services. There are those who guarantee results though not always with legal means.

Ask anyone in which search engine they would like to rank at the top. Eight out of ten would vote for Google. This does not come as a surprise because Google gets most of the search engine visitors. So if Google gives the search engine optimization tips, what could be better than hearing it right from the horse's mouth? Yes, Google has a whole lot of tools to help us with search engine optimization and they are absolutely free.

To use this facility one needs to first to set up an account with Google after which one can go to www.google.com/webmasters. Once here, the "webmaster help" section needs to be selected. From there one can go to the "webmaster guidelines" section where Google gives guidelines on design, content, quality and other technicalities. Once a website is ready, its URL can be submitted at http://www.google.com/addurl.html (this is a very slow process as it may take at least six weeks for the website to be crawled)

A Google Sitemap is a very effective tool to enable Google to study the structure of the website and increase the number of pages indexed. A Google Sitemap maker tool can be downloaded for free at www.sitemapbuider.net. It’s an excellent tool and a Sitemap is created within minutes. Once a Sitemap is submitted Google searches for the Sitemap and displays a message after checking the Sitemap. If there are any errors it will indicate as to what those errors are and the same can be rectified and the Sitemap can be resubmitted.

Google also outlines the various do's and don'ts of search engine optimization. Some black hat tricks like link farming, cloaking, doorway pages are a strict no-no. One can also find an abundance of information on creating Google friendly sites.

So with Google on ones side, the chances of a good search engine ranking increases. With these tools one does not require expensive search engine optimization tools to increase search engine rankings.