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 

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.

Apple updates Find My Friends with improved location-based alerts

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The ugly tan leather and stitching is still there, but Apple has a new feature for its Find My Friends app that users will find pretty useful. Apple just updated Find My Friends so that users can setup up geofences and receive a notification once a friend leaves a designated area. Users have always been able to create location-based alerts, but Find My Friends 2.1 now lets users adjust the sensitivity of an alert by setting an exact distance threshold. The old system used a fixed zone that alerted you when someone was in your area, but now you can set your own radiuses to alert you about more specific things – like if a friend is in your neighborhood. Parents will probably get the most out of Find My Friends as a tool to keep tabs on kids. But it can be useful when you’re out on the town with friends and want to know when people leave, or if your significant other is on the way over and you need to clean your place up in a hurry. The free update is available in the App Store right now. -->

Security Microsoft Fixes Critical Internet Explorer Flaws

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This month's Patch Tuesday round of Microsoft software updates will fix a pair of critical Internet Explorer flaws that put every current consumer version of Windows at risk of being attacked.

"Generally, when Microsoft patches IE, the patch is delivered as a single bulletin," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle in San Francisco.
"The planned delivery of two separate IE bulletins has my 'Spidey' senses on alert," he said. "I'm sure other IT security teams are wondering exactly what kind of IE valentine we're going to get."
All supported versions of Internet Explorer, from IE 6 on Windows XP to IE 10 on Windows 8 and the tablet-only Windows RT.

Browsers have become the target of choice for malware writers, who embed hidden code in corrupted websites to infect visiting computers via drive-by downloads.

Other critical patches in this month's round include two for Windows XP, one of which also affects Vista, and another for Microsoft Exchange Server, the enterprise software that runs email in companies.

Microsoft never says exactly what's being patched before it pushes out its updates, which normally come on the second Tuesday of every month. (The highest-priority flaws get fixed in emergency "out of cycle" updates.)

We'll have more information about what's being specifically patched once Microsoft pushes out the update tomorrow (Feb. 12).

Seven other flaws being patched are deemed "important" by Microsoft.

"Hackers could phish users and then leverage 7, 8 and 9 to get system-level control of their machines," said Alex Horan, senior product manager at Boston's CORE Security. "That is essentially a worst-case scenario and a potential knockout punch for security personnel."Four of those patches — bulletins 7, 8, 9 and 11 according to Microsoft's pre-release documentation — involve privilege escalation, in which a user or process with limited abilities can be bumped up to administrator level, with power to make changes to the system.

Home and small-business users of Windows should enable automatic updates in Windows Update, which is found under Control Panel. Larger enterprises usually choose to implement their patches manually.

Bio-batteries will soon be reality

LONDON: Bio-batteries have now taken a giant leap towards becoming a reality. British scientists have made an important breakthrough in the quest to generate clean electricity from bacteria. The study has found for the first time that it is possible for bacteria to lie directly on the surface of a metal or mineral and transfer electrical charge through their cell membranes. This means that it is possible to tether bacteria directly to electrodes - bringing scientists a step closer to creating efficient microbial fuel cells or bio-batteries.Researchers from the University of East Angliaare working with a marine bacteria called Shewanella oneidensis. They created a synthetic version of this bacteria using just the proteins thought to shuttle the electrons from the inside of the microbe to the rock. They inserted these proteins into the small capsules of lipid membranes such as the ones that make up a bacterial membrane. 
Then they tested how well electrons travelled between an electron donor on the inside and an iron-bearing mineral on the outside. Lead researcher Dr Tom Clarke said "We knew that bacteria can transfer electricity into metals and minerals, and that the interaction depends on special proteins on the surface of the bacteria. But it was not been clear whether these proteins do this directly or indirectly through an unknown mediator in the environment." "Our research shows that these proteins can directly touch the mineral surface and produce an electric current, meaning that is possible for the bacteria to lie on the surface of a metal or mineral and conduct electricity through their cell membranes. This is the first time that we have been able to actually look at how the components of a bacterial cell membrane are able to interact with different substances , and understand how differences in metal and mineral interactions can occur on the surface of a cell." Dr Clarke added "These bacteria show great potential as microbial fuel cells, where electricity can be generated from the breakdown of domestic or agricultural waste products. Another possibility is to use these bacteria as miniature factories on the surface of an electrode, where chemicals reactions take place inside the cell using electrical power supplied by the electrode through these proteins."Share your views

South Australian first to get OneTab smartphone app to pay for hotel tab

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SMARTPHONES can now be used to set and settle food and drinks tabs at key hotels and pubs around South Australia.

South Australians will be the first to give the Australian-first system a go.

OneTab is described as a convenient, fast and secure mobile payment system that allows you to set up, track and pay for food and bar tabs on your night out - eliminating the need to for patrons to ever hand their credit card over a bar and also protects hotels from stolen or fraudulent cards or cards with inadequate balances.

Tess Wheeler, 22, said she loved the new app, which was easy to use and quick.

"Often, I leave the pub and I have forgotten to sign off and collect my card," she said. "The app just helps with not having to think about returning the next morning to tidy things up."

The app is free to download and integrates with the point-of-sale system of the venue.

All patrons need to do is find their venue on the app - and there are ten hotels and pubs in Adelaide that will have this system, including the Robin Hood Hotel - open a tab, set a credit limit, once the card balance is verified, a code is generated, which needs to be shown to the bartender.

They can then order as normal; when ready to move on, just click pay.

OneTab, developed by Queensland-based Paul Wyatt and Scott Cross, is linked to SA-based national hotel point-of-sales solutions provider H&L Australia.

Mr Wyatt said OneTab helps boost credit card security.

"We just thought there had to be a better, safer way to deal with opening a bar tab and after a year of working out how to commercialise the concept, here we are," he said.

Burt Admiraal, director of H&L Australia, said the OneTab concept was simple, effective and free.

"Using credit cards as security for bar tabs really does cause issues on both sides of the bar."

Mr Wyatt said, "OneTab takes physical handling of credit cards out of the equation so you can close your tab from anywhere without waiting for staff and puts an end to leaving your card behind.

"You approve all purchases added to your tab in real time and receipts can be sent directly to your email."

Mr Admiraal said South Australia was chosen for the launch to target the key "smartphone savvy" demographic.

There is a similar application available in the US called TabbedOut.

HOW IT WORKS

• Download the free app from http://www.onetab.com.au/

• Find your nearest OneTab venue. You can search manually or find the nearest venue based on location.

• Open your tab

• Show your unique code to the bartender

• OneTab integrates with Facebook and Twitter so you can send a call out to friends directly from the app

• Pay your tab
• 
  
• 
  

WHERE IT WORKS

• Robin Hood Hotel, Norwood

• Curious Squire, North Adelaide

• Strathmore Hotel, North Tce

• Woodville Hotel, Woodville

• Alma, Norwood

• Maid and Magpie Hotel, Stepney

• Havelock Hotel, Adelaide

• The Colonist Tavern, Norwood.

• The Goodwood Hotel, Goodwood

• The Brompton Hotel, Brompton

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/south-australian-first-to-get-onetab-smartphone-app-to-pay-for-hotel-tab/story-e6frfro0-1226608019875#ixzz2OtYtanrJ

iPhone 5 hits China, as Apple market share slips

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SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The China release of its iPhone 5 on Friday should win Apple Inc some respite from a recent slide in its share of what is likely already the world's biggest smartphone market, but its longer-term hopes may depend on new technology being tested by China's top telecoms carrier.

Cupertino, California-based Apple has been in talks about a tie-up with China Mobile for four years. A deal with China's biggest carrier is seen as crucial to improve Apple's distribution in a market of 290 million users - which is forecast to double this year.

China is Apple's second-largest and fastest-growing market - it brings in around 15 percent of total revenue - but the company's failure to strike a deal with China Mobile means it is missing out on a large number of phone users. As the China pie grows, Apple's sales increase, but without China Mobile, it's losing ground at a faster rate compared to other brands.

"In absolute terms, this (iPhone 5) launch will certainly result in strong sales for Apple in China. However, in relative terms, I don't believe it will move the needle enough in market share," said Shiv Putcha, a Mumbai-based analyst at Ovum, a global technology consultant.

On Friday, just one person was waiting outside the Apple store in Shanghai's financial district when its doors opened at 9 a.m., a contrast to the launch of the iPhone 4 earlier this year when rowdy crowds pelted a Beijing store with eggs.

China Mobile and Apple initially said they were separated only by a technical issue - as the Chinese carrier runs a different 3G network from most of the world - but that has evolved into a broader and more complex issue of revenue-sharing.

"China Mobile and Apple still have to solve many issues, such as the business model, articles of cooperation and revenue division, but I believe we will reach an agreement eventually," China Mobile CEO Li Yue was reported by Chinese media as saying in Guangzhou last week.

Apple China declined to comment. China Mobile said it had no update to the Apple discussions.

STRONG PRE-ORDERS

Apple's ranking in China's smartphone market slipped to sixth in July-September, according to research firm IDC, but investors, primed to look to China product launches for an uptick in Apple's quarterly sales, have good headline numbers to digest - more than 300,000 iPhones pre-ordered on one carrier alone. But it's the lack of a deal with the No.1 carrier that prevents those numbers being stronger.

The iPhone is currently sold through Apple's seven stores, resellers and through China Unicom and China Telecom - which together have fewer than half the mobile subscribers of bigger rival China Mobile.

"Apple's market share declined because of the transition between the iPhone 4S and 5. Their market share will recover (with the iPhone 5), but if you don't have China Mobile, the significant market share gains will be very difficult," said Huang Leping, an analyst at Nomura in Hong Kong.

TD-LTE: STILL DISTANT

Cutting a deal with a Chinese state-owned carrier may be less optimal than the deals Apple is used to in other markets, and analysts note that China Mobile wouldn't necessarily open the flood gates for Apple.

Ovum's Putcha believes Apple and China Mobile will eventually strike a deal - though this would be for an iPhone running on China Mobile's next-generation network rather than its current 3G network.

Of China Mobile's 704 million subscribers, only 79 million are on its 3G network, and Apple has been reluctant to sign up to China Mobile's under-utilized, homegrown TD-SCDMA technology. "Apple likely doesn't see the return-on-investment in extending themselves for TD-SCDMA," Putcha said.

China Mobile is currently trialing its next-generation network, TD-LTE, which could be of more interest to Apple, but full-scale commercial use - and an iPhone tie-up - could still be years away.

ANDROID THREAT

Meanwhile, rivals are circling, eating away at Apple's smartphone market share. Samsung Electronics, Lenovo Group and little-known Chinese brand Coolpad held the top three slots in the third quarter, according to IDC.

All three have relationships with China Mobile and offer smartphone models at different price points. Apple competes exclusively at the high-end, and even there, rivals are rolling out models with China Mobile. Last week, Nokia said it planned to release its latest Lumia smartphone with China's top carrier, which is also expected to launch Research in Motion's new Blackberry 10, analysts predict.

"The threat will still come more from the Android camp where they have many vendors already working with China Mobile and offering high-end phones," said TZ Wong, a Singapore-based IDC analyst.

While these smartphones don't generate the buzz of a new iPhone, Chinese buyers are not known for their brand loyalty, and this could siphon away users considering an Apple upgrade.

"I've used a Blackberry, Android and iOS and, personally, I want to try the Windows 8," said Andy Huang, a 37-year-old fund manager, who owns most iPad models, an iPhone 4 and a 4S. "I think the Windows 8 is very innovative."

With a China Mobile deal looking some way off, Apple could always boost market share by offering cheaper models - the basic iPhone 5 will cost 5,288 yuan ($850) without a contract - though this appears an unlikely route for a high-end brand.

"If they want to expand market share, probably the only way to do it here dramatically would be to put out a lower cost phone," said Michael Clendenin, managing director at RedTech Advisors. "It's really uncertain if they'd decide to go that route ... Apple's a mystery in that regard."

($1 = 6.2518 Chinese yuan)

(Additional reporting by the Shanghai Newsroom, Jane Lee and Anita Li; Editing by Kazunori Takada and Ian Geoghegan)

Selling flak jackets in the cyberwars

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When the Israeli army and Hamas trade virtual blows in cyberspace, or when hacker groups like Anonymous rise from the digital ether, or when WikiLeaks dumps a trove of classified documents, some see a lawless Internet.

But Matthew Prince, chief executive at CloudFlare, a little-known Internet start-up that serves some of the Web's most controversial characters, sees a business opportunity.

Founded in 2010, CloudFlare markets itself as an Internet intermediary that shields websites from distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks, the crude but effective weapon that hackers use to bludgeon websites until they go dark. The 40-person company claims to route up to 5 percent of all Internet traffic through its global network.

Prince calls his company the "Switzerland" of cyberspace - assiduously neutral and open to all comers. But just as companies like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have faced profound questions about the balance between free speech and openness on the Internet and national security and law enforcement concerns, CloudFlare's business has posed another thorny question: what kinds of services, if any, should an American company be allowed to offer designated terrorists and cyber criminals?

CloudFlare's unusual position at the heart of this debate came to the fore last month, when the Israel Defense Forces sought help from CloudFlare after its website was struck by attackers based in Gaza. The IDF was turning to the same company that provides those services to Hamas and the al-Quds Brigades, according to publicly searchable domain information. Both Hamas and al-Quds, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are designated by the United States as terrorist groups.

Under the USA Patriot Act, U.S. firms are forbidden from providing "material support" to groups deemed foreign terrorist organizations. But what constitutes material support - like many other facets of the law itself - has been subject to intense debate.

CloudFlare's dealings have attracted heated criticism in the blogosphere from both Israelis and Palestinians, but Prince defended his company as a champion of free speech.

"Both sides have an absolute right to tell their story," said Prince, a 38-year old former lawyer. "We're not providing material support for anybody. We're not sending money, or helping people arm themselves."

Prince noted that his company only provides defensive capabilities that enable websites to stay online.

"We can't be sitting in a role where we decide what is good or what is bad based on our own personal biases," he said. "That's a huge slippery slope."

Many U.S. agencies are customers, but so is WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing organization. CloudFlare has consulted for many Wall Street institutions, yet also protects Anonymous, the "hacktivist" group associated with the Occupy movement.

Prince's stance could be tested at a time when some lawmakers in the United States and Europe, armed with evidence that militant groups rely on the Web for critical operations and recruitment purposes, have pressured Internet companies to censor content or cut off customers.

Last month, conservative political lobbies, as well as seven lawmakers led by Ted Poe, a Republican from Texas, urged the FBI to shut down the Hamas Twitter account. The account remains active; Twitter declined to comment.

MATERIAL SUPPORT

Although it has never prosecuted an Internet company under the Patriot Act, the government's use of the material support argument has steadily risen since 2006. Since September 11, 2001, more than 260 cases have been charged under the provision, according to Fordham Law School's Terrorism Trends database.

Catherine Lotrionte, the director of Georgetown University's Institute for Law, Science and Global Security and a former Central Intelligence Agency lawyer, argued that Internet companies should be more closely regulated.

"Material support includes web services," Lotrionte said. "Denying them services makes it more costly for the terrorists. You're cornering them."

But others have warned that an aggressive government approach would have a chilling effect on free speech.

"We're resurrecting the kind of broad-brush approaches we used in the McCarthy era," said David Cole, who represented the Humanitarian Law Project, a non-profit organization that was charged by the Justice Department for teaching law to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is designated by the United States as a terrorist group. The group took its case to the Supreme Court but lost in 2010.

The material support law is vague and ill-crafted, to the point where basic telecom providers, for instance, could be found guilty by association if a terrorist logs onto the Web to plot an attack, Cole said.

In that case, he asked, "Do we really think that AT&T or Google should be held accountable?"

CloudFlare said it has not been contacted about its services by the U.S. government. Spokespeople for Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, told Reuters they contracted a cyber-security company in Gaza that out-sources work to foreign companies, but declined to comment further. The IDF confirmed it had hired CloudFlare, but declined to discuss "internal security" matters.

CloudFlare offers many of its services for free, but the company says websites seeking advanced protection and features can see their bill rise to more than $3,000 a month. Prince declined to discuss the business arrangements with specific customers.

While not yet profitable, CloudFlare has more than doubled its revenue in the past four months, according to Prince, and is picking up 3,000 new customers a day. The company has raked in more than $22 million from venture capital firms including New Enterprise Associates, Venrock and Pelion Venture Partners.

Prince, a Midwestern native with mussed brown hair who holds a law degree from the University of Chicago, said he has a track record of working on the right side of the law.

A decade ago, Prince provided free legal aid to Spamhaus, an international group that tracked email spammers and identity thieves. He went on to create Project Honey Pot, an open source spam-tracking endeavor that turned over findings to police.

Prince's latest company, CloudFlare, has been hailed by groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists for protecting speech. Another client, the World Economic Forum, named CloudFlareamong its 2012 "technology pioneers" for its work. But it also owes its profile to its most controversial customers.

CloudFlare has served 4Chan, the online messaging community that spawned Anonymous. LulzSec, the hacker group best known for targeting Sony Corp, is another customer. And since last May, the company has propped up WikiLeaks after a vigilante hacker group crashed the document repository.

Last year, members of the hacker collective UgNazi, whose exploits include pilfering user account information from eBay and crashing the CIA.gov website, broke into Prince's cell phone and email accounts.

"It was a personal affront," Prince said. "But we never kicked them off either."

Prince said CloudFlare would comply with a valid court order to remove a customer, but that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has never requested a takedown. The company has agreed to turn over information to authorities on "exceedingly rare" occasions, he acknowledged, declining to elaborate.

"Any company that doesn't do that won't be in business long," Prince said. But in an email, he added: "We have a deep and abiding respect for our users' privacy, disclose to our users whenever possible if we are ordered to turn over information and would fight an order that we believed was not proper."

Juliannne Sohn, an FBI spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department lawyer who prosecuted computer crimes, said U.S. law enforcement agencies may in fact prefer that the Web's most wanted are parked behind CloudFlare rather than a foreign service over which they have no jurisdiction.

Federal investigators "want to gather information from as many sources as they can, and they're happy to get it," Sussmann said.

In an era of rampant cyber warfare, Prince acknowledged he is something of a war profiteer, but with a wrinkle.

"We're not selling bullets," he said. "We're selling flak jackets."

(The story corrects paragraph 23 to read "3,000 new customers a day")

(Reporting By Gerry Shih in San Francisco and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; editing by Jonathan Weber and Claudia Parsons)