Different Types of Hard Drive File system Format types.

There are multiple different types of file systems a hard drive or removable media can be formatted. But which format is the best choice to use? It depends on the situation.our Windows system partition must be NTFS. If you have a secondary drive alongside Windows and you plan on installing programs to it, you should probably go ahead and make it NTFS, too.

We will discuss some of the most popular formats out there..

NTFS – NTFS, short for WIndows NT File System, is a propitiatory file system created by Microsoft for its Windows line of opperating system. Initially created for Windows NT 3.1, it has been used for all of its NT line of opperating system; including, Windows NT 3.5, 3.51, 2000 and Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8 as well as Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, Home Server, Home Server 2011 and future desktop and server operating systems.

NTFS

NTFS is the modern file system Windows likes to use. When you install Windows, it formats your system drive with the NTFS file system. NTFS has file size and partition size limits that are so theoretically huge you won’t run up against them. NTFS first appeared in consumer versions of Windows with Windows XP.

Aside from these limitations, NTFS is packed with other modern features. It supports file permissions for security, a change journal that can help quickly recover errors if your computer crashes, shadow copies for backups, encryption, disk quota limits, hard links, and other various features. Many of these are crucial for an operating system drive — especially file permissions.

Your Windows system partition must be NTFS. If you have a secondary drive alongside Windows and you plan on installing programs to it, you should probably go ahead and make it NTFS, too.

However, NTFS just isn’t as compatible with other operating systems. It’ll work with all recent versions of Windows — all the way back to Windows XP — but it has limited compatibility with other operating systems. By default, Mac OS X can only read NTFS drives, not write to them. Some Linux distributions may enable NTFS-writing support, but some may be read-only. None of Sony’s PlayStation consoles support NTFS. Even Microsoft’s own Xbox 360 can’t read NTFS drives, although the new Xbox One can. Other devices are even less likely to support NTFS.

Compatibility: Works with all versions of Windows, but read-only with Mac by default, and may be read-only by default with some Linux distributions. Other devices — with the exception of Microsoft’s Xbox One — probably won’t support NTFS.

Limits: No realistic file-size or partition size limits.

Ideal Use: Use it for your Windows system drive and other internal drives that will just be used with Windows.

As of right now, most Microsoft’s Windows operating systems support the file format (excluding DOS based operating systems like Windows 9x series). Additionally most Linux distributions support it provided by its NTFS-3G driver. Since Mac OS X 10.3, Mac machines are only able to read NTFS drives, though there are builds for the NTFS-3G driver through FUSE that allow the Mac operating system to read and write NTFS drives. People started to notice that Mac OS X 10.6 have the ability to write to NTFS drives, but was disabled since the feature was unstable and lead to kernel panics.

HFS / HFS+ – HFS is a file system created by Apple for use with floppy disks and hard disks on the earlier Mac operating system. Since then, it has been dropped from the Mac operating system starting with Mac OS X 10.6, and replaced with HFS +.

HFS + was introduced with the release of Mac OS 8.1 and has since been used as the main file system for the Mac operating system.

As of right now, HFS + has been able to be read and written in the Mac operating system since Mac OS 8.1. Additionally, Linux has the ability to read and write HFS + partitions up to 2TB; as drives greater than 2TB have been prone to corrupt the HFS + formatted drives in Linux; though attempts to fix it is in place. In Windows Apple has released a read only HFS + driver for Windows XP and higher; though freeware like HFSExplorer has been created to support reading of these formats of drives.

ext / ext2 / ext3 / ext4 – ext, short for extended file system, was created in 1992 as the first file system specifically for Linux. Since then it has been succeeded by ext 2, then ext 3, and ext 4.

exFAT

exFAT was introduced in 2006, and was added to older versions of Windows with updates to Windows XP and Windows Vista.

It’s a file system optimized for flash drives. It’s designed to be a lightweight file system like FAT32 without all NTFS’s extra features and overhead, but without FAT32’s limitations.

Like NTFS, exFAT has very large file size and partition size limits. This means you can store files that are larger than 4 GB apiece on a flash drive or SD card if it’s formatted with exFAT. exFAT is a strict upgrade over FAT32, and should be the best choice for external drives where you want a lightweight file system without FAT32’s file size limits.

exFAT is also more compatible than NTFS. While Mac OS X includes only read-only support for NTFS, Macs offer full read-write support for exFAT. exFAT drives can be accessed on Linux by installing the appropriate software.

While exFAT is compatible with Macs — and will be compatible with some devices that don’t support NTFS, like digital cameras — it still isn’t quite as compatible. Microsoft’s own Xbox 360 doesn’t support it, although the Xbox One does. The PlayStation 3 doesn’t support exFAT drives, although the PlayStation 4 reportedly does. Various other older devices may only support FAT32 instead of exFAT.

Compatibility: Works with all versions of Windows and modern versions of Mac OS X, but requires additional software on Linux. More devices support exFAT than support NTFS, but some — particularly older ones — may only support FAT32.

Limits: No realistic file-size or partition-size limits.

Ideal Use: Use it for USB flash drives and other external drives, especially if you need files of over 4 GB in size. Assuming every device you want to use the drive with supports exFAT, you should format your device with exFAT instead of FAT32.

As of right now, the current file system for Linux, ext 4, only has support for Linux as there is little support for the ext formatted disk for non-Linux operating systems. Currently, ext4 formatted hard drives are not able to be fully read or written on Windows. Current Mac operating systems only allows reading of ext 4 drives.

FAT / FAT 16 / FAT 32  – FAT, short for File Allocation Table, is the most compatible format for storing data. Originally designed in 1970 for floppy drives, it has been used in hard drives, USB flash drives, memory cards, and  Microsoft DOS and Windows operating systems since Windows 1.0 to Windows ME .

FAT32

FAT32 is the oldest file system here. It was introduced all the way back in Windows 95 to replace the older FAT16 file system.

This file system’s age has advantages and disadvantages. Because it’s so old, it’s the de-facto standard. Flash drives you purchase will often come formatted with FAT32 for maximum compatibility across not just modern computers, but other devices like game consoles and anything with a USB port.

Limitations come with that age, however. Individual files on a FAT32 drive can’t be over 4 GB in size — that’s the maximum. A FAT32 partition must also be less than 8 TB, which is less of a limitations — but still a noticeable one if you have a new, high-capacity mechanical drive.

While this file system is okay for USB flash drives and other external media, you won’t want to use this for an internal drive. It lacks the permissions and other security features built into the more modern NTFS file system. Modern versions of Windows can no longer be installed to FAT32, and must be installed onto drives formatted with NTFS.

Compatibility: Works with all versions of Windows, Mac, Linux, game consoles, and practically anything with a USB port.

Limits: 4 GB maximum file size, 8 TB maximum partition size.

Ideal Use: Use it on removable drives for maximum compatibility with the widest range of devices, assuming you don’t have any files 4 GB or larger in size.

Since then, FAT has gone through different variations with FAT 16 and FAT 32. Although it has some advantages, it has its disadvantages. FAT formatted drives do not have built-in mechanisms to prevent newly written files from becoming scattered across the partition; thus de-fragmentation are usually needed to keep the device organized. Additionally, a single file can be at most 4GB and drives can be at most 2TiB.

As of right now, FAT is compatible with almost all operating system and devices.

exFAT – exFAT is a propitiatory file system created by Microsoft for flash drives in situations where NTFS is not feasible due to its data structure overhead or file size limit of FAT 32. exFAT brings to max to 512 TiB, allowing files to be bigger than 4GB, and more features not in FAT formatted drives.  

It also increases the speed with which those files can be accessed. The exFAT file system not only facilitates large files for use of audiovisual media, it enables seamless data portability and an easy interchange between desktop PCs and a variety of electronic devices. A number of companies have integrated the file system into devices such as mobile phones, PCs, and cameras.

NTFS is ideal for internal drives, while exFAT is generally ideal for flash drives. However, you may sometimes need to format an external drive with FAT32 if exFAT isn’t supported on a device you need to use it with.

Right now, exFAT is compatible with Windows XP (with an update KB 955704) Windows Vista SP1, and higher as well as Mac OS X 10.6.5 and higher operating systems. Though exFAT is supported in Windows XP and higher as well as Mac OS X 10.6.5 and higher, other operating system as well as devices have little to no support for the file system.

RAID – RAID, short for redundant array of independent disks, is a category for storage drives, that allow two or more drives that can set fault tolerance (in case a drive fail) and/or performance. Although RAID is rarely used on personal computers, it is used in servers to store data in multiple places to improve performance and redundancy. Unlike other formats RAID requires either a software or a hardware to implement RAID.

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Access Remote Desktops "Jump Clients" Overview

Jump Clients

Access remote desktops, laptops, POS systems, kiosks and servers, even if no one is present to give you control. Jump Clients work regardless of network location.

Secure Remote Access, Regardless of Network Location

Jump Clients let you control remote computers even when you don’t control the remote network.

Just install a Jump Client on each system you need to access. You’ll be able to control it wherever it goes.

With Jump Clients support reps can access the remote systems without requiring the person on the other end of the session to be technical.

Secure Remote Access, Regardless of Network Location

(Jump Clients are a component of Bomgar’s patent-pending Jump Technology.)

Wistia video thumbnail - Feature: Jump Client Management

Jump Clients let you control remote computers even when you don’t control the remote network.

Just install a Jump Client on each system you need to access. You’ll be able to control it wherever it goes.

With Jump Clients support reps can access the remote systems without requiring the person on the other end of the session to be technical.

Multi-Platform Remote Access, Even from Android and iOS Devices

Control Remote Desktops and Servers from an iPad Securely control remote desktops and servers from an iPad

Jump Clients can be installed on Windows, Mac, or Linux computers, as well as Android phones and tablets. You can access them from any platform Bomgar supports.

So not only can the remote systems you're supporting be located anywhere, the support technicians can be, too.

Whether you’re offering support from a laptop, or from an Android or iOS device, you can stay productive while mobile.

Manage and Mass Deploy Jump Clients

Jump Clients can be mass deployed to Windows, Mac and Linux desktops or servers. To help with finding and identifying computers later, you can add a group name and comments when you deploy them.

You can create a default installer. Or you can use mass deployment scripts to pull in variables from other sources to modify the Jump Client parameters during installation.

Integrated Remote Access for Your Systems Management Platform

Jump Clients Enable Remote Access Jump Clients enable remote access regardless of network location

Support organizations can improve service levels, centralize support processes and strengthen compliance by integrating Bomgar with their systems management platform.

Once integrated, Bomgar enables technicians to offer proactive system support to all your Jump Clients directly from your systems management tool.

Bomgar can be launched from the ticket or system record. At the end of the session, Bomgar updates the ticket with details from each Bomgar remote support session, including links to session recordings, file transfer details, work notes, system information and post-session survey results.

Use Schedules to Limit Jump Client Access to Specific Times

There are two options to restrict access to Jump Clients. First, administrators can use time schedules to control periodic access to Jump Clients. Access schedules dictate the windows of time representatives are allowed to access certain Jump Clients.

You can also allow reps to deploy Jump Clients that automatically uninstall after a defined period of time.

Using Jump Client access schedules can protect your client from interruption and help your support organization conform to customers’ support needs . Both schedules and automatic expiration can help satisfy PCI compliance or prevent business users from being interrupted during peak hours.

Wake-On-LAN Support for Jump Clients in a Network

Wake-on-LAN (WOL) Support Wake-on-LAN (WOL) support lets you turn on remote computers

Support organizations can save on power costs by turning computers off after hours. With Bomgar, powering systems on/off can be handled remotely with Wake-on-LAN (WOL) support.

With wake-on-LAN support, you can broadcast Wake-on-LAN (WOL) packets through another Jump Client on the same network. Use of wake-on-LAN depends on user permissions and may not be supported in all environments.

Share Jump Clients Across Support Teams

For scenarios in which multiple groups need to access the same group of desktops, you can share a team’s Jump Clients across support teams and Embassies.

Your group policies determine how members of each team can interact with the remote computer.

Sharing Jump Clients allows you to give both internal reps and vendors access to the same system without complicating team structures.

Use Endpoints to Define How Sessions Begin

When you use Jump Clients to access servers and back end systems, you want to launch right into remote control. No one is present on the other end of a server for you to interrupt. But when you access remote desktops, you may want to display a prompt in case an end-user is present.

Support Session Policies let you define how a session begins based on the endpoint being supported.

With policies at the Jump Client level, you can choose to display a prompt if the remote desktop is one at which an end-user may be present. If the endpoint is a server, you can set the session policy up with no prompt.

Once Connected, Powerful Tools Are at Your Fingertips

When you connect to a remote desktop or server, Bomgar puts powerful tools at your disposal. Tools include:

    Command shell

    File Transfer

    Multi-monitor support

    Privacy screen

    Reboot

    Registry editor

    Scripts

    Special actions

    System information

    UAC elevation

Plus, you can control multiple systems simultaneously for maximum efficiency.

Report on Remote Access Sessions

Bomgar's logging and recording capabilities capture extensive detail about sessions performed through Jump Clients. These reports give administrators critical visibility into support activity.

Reports include IP information, system information, files transferred, chat transcripts, and many other details about the support session. Bomgar can even create video recordings of support sessions.

With Bomgar, you'll replace legacy remote access tools with a complete solution designed for the needs of security-conscious support organizations. Bomgar enables support representatives to access, diagnose, control and fix remote computers and mobile devices. Highlighted features are below.

Remote Control & Screen Sharing - the Core of Support

The core of remote support is seeing and controlling the remote computer. With Bomgar Remote Support, you can see your customer's screen and fully interact with the remote desktop.

Request remote control of multiple computers, view attached monitors, and use advanced screen sharing tools.

Remote Control and Screen Sharing

Customer Tech Support

Use chat support, screen sharing, CRM integration, and skills-based routing to increase support staff productivity. Bomgar Remote Support includes customizable surveys and support portals.

Use Bomgar for Customer Tech Support

Internal IT Support

Access Remote Desktops "Jump Clients" Overview

Perform desktop support and server maintenance securely. Replace RDP, VNC, and other hard-to-audit remote control tools with a cross-platform support tool.

Use Bomgar for Internal IT Support

Help Desk Administration

Help Desk Integrations

Create queues, portals, teams, and policies to standardize technical support services. Manage technicians with integrated identity management and group policies.

Help Desk Administration

Monitor and Audit

Wistia video thumbnail - Demo: Monitor and Audit Remote Support Sessions

Monitor support activity in real time. Track customer satisfaction. Record every remote support session. And collect a detailed audit trail of each interaction.

Auditing Remote Support

Collaboration

Wistia video thumbnail - Demo: Collaborate during Remote Support Sessions

Share sessions between technicians, developers, or even outside vendors so that they can see the issue and troubleshoot together, helping support incidents get resolved faster.

Collaborative Remote Support

Embeddables

Wistia video thumbnail - Bomgar Button Demo

Embedding chat and remote support in your website, desktops, Windows programs, and mobile apps makes it easy for customers and employees to get help.

Embeddables for Remote Support

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Essential WordPress Plugins You Should Know

WordPress offers a ton of features and flexibility, there is still a lot of functionality missing from the core software. The best way to fill in the missing pieces, of course, is to get yourself the right plugins.

wordpress-plugins

Plugins offer all kinds of customization for site admins, however, with almost 40,000 options to choose from it the WordPress Plugin Directory, not to mention all the premium products available, it can be difficult sorting the good from the, well, not so good.

So here’s a collection of free and premium must-haves, the plugins that can help take your site from good to great.

Comment Spam Prevention

Akismet – best guard against comment spam for WordPress blog!

Database and File Backup Plugins

BackUpWordPress – BackUpWordPress will back up your entire site including your database and all your files on a schedule that suits you.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

All in One SEO Pack – Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. Install the all in one seo pack or the “WordPress SEO by Yoast” plugin (you don’t need to install both).

WordPress SEO by Yoast – Yoast’s all in one SEO solution for your WordPress blog: SEO titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs & much more.

Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. The SEO plugins listed above can also do the sitemap for you.

Blog Security Plugin

All In One WP Security & Firewall – The All In One WordPress Security and Firewall is the ultimate security plugin that will take your WordPress site’s security to a whole new level.

BulletProof Security – BulletProof security plugin offers website security protection against: XSS, RFI, CRLF, CSRF, Base64, Code Injection and SQL Injection.

Wordfence Security – The Wordfence WordPress security plugin provides free enterprise-class WordPress security.

Blog Statistics Related

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP – Displays Google Analytics reports in your WordPress Dashboard. Inserts the latest Google Analytics tracking code in your pages.

Google Analytics – Enables Google Analytics on all pages. This one seems to be simple and does the job. However, the developer doesn’t seem to be very responsive.

Google Analytics for WordPress – This plugin used to be really good but since the original developer sold this plugin, it has gone downhill (many users have reported to us that it doesn’t work well anymore). 

WP Statistics – A comprehensive plugin for your WordPress visitor statistics (doesn’t use Google Analytics).

Caching Plugin

W3 Total Cache – The fastest and most complete WordPress performance optimization plugin. After you use the w3 total cache plugin you won’t go back to using WP Super Cache.

WP Super Cache – WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.

RSS Subscription Related

FeedBurner FeedSmith – This plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.

Add to Any: Subscribe Button – Helps readers subscribe to your blog using any feed reader.

Category Specific RSS Menu – A simple WordPress plugin to add category specific RSS subscription menu into your posts, pages, sidebars. Very handy when your blog covers multiple topic from non related subjects. 

• Membership Plugin

Simple Membership Plugin – The simple membership plugin lets you protect your posts and pages so only your members (free or paid) can view the protected content.

WordPress eMember – WP eMember is a feature rich membership plugin that can turn your existing or new WordPress site into a powerful membership site.

Affiliate Related

WP Affiliate Platform – WordPress plugin for affiliate recruitment, management and tracking. This plugin lets you run your own affiliate campaign/program and allows you to reward (pay commission) your affiliates for referred sales.

Software License Management

Software License Manager – This plugin allows you to create a software license management solution for your web applications (WordPress plugins, Themes, PHP based membership script etc.)

Other Very Useful Plugins

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin –  This plugin gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site.

Download Monitor – This plugin is very useful for managing and tracking your digital file downloads. You can track which file is being downloaded how many times and who is downloading them.

Executable PHP Widget – Like the Text widget, but it will take PHP code as well. Very handy for inserting custom ‘php’, ‘html’, ‘javascript’ in the sidebar.

Crayon Syntax Highlighter – A plugin to highlight any code in your posts or pages. very handy if you use example codes in your Blog.

Mailpoet Newsletters – Send newsletters, post notifications or autoresponders from WordPress easily, and beautifully.

WP-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. Allows you to easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page.

EWWW Image Optimizer – The EWWW Image Optimizer is a WordPress plugin that will automatically and losslessly optimize your images as you upload them to your blog.

WP Video Lightbox – The WordPress Video Lightbox plugin allows you to embed videos on a page using lightbox overlay display. This plugin can be used to display images, flash, YouTube, Vimeo, iFrame etc in a nice lightbox overlay.

Contact Forms Related

Contact Form 7 – Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.

Contact Form – The Contact Form plugin allows you to implement a feedback form to a web-page or a post in no time.

Gravity Forms – Build and publish your WordPress forms in just minutes. No drudgery, just quick and easy form-building.

Social Networking

Social Media and Share Icons – Social media plugin which adds social media icons to your website with tons of customization features.

Share This – This is a very useful plugin that allows your visitors to share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.

Fat Free WordPress Social Share Buttons Plugin – This is a very simple and FAT FREE share button plugin that adds Google plus one, Facebook and Twitter share buttons to your blog posts.

For Google Adsense

Simple Google Adsense insertion – Easy to use WordPress plugin to insert Google Adsense to your posts, pages and sidebar.

Google Adsense Plugin – Google AdSense Plugin allows you to set parameters of the ads displaying, such as format (text ad, image, text with an image or link), size, color of the elements in the ad block, rounded corners and the ad block position on the website.

Google Adsense – The AdSense Plugin enables you to easily use Google’s products – including Webmaster Tools – with your WordPress site.

Photo Gallery Plugin

NextGen Gallery – The most popular WordPress photo gallery plugin.

Simple Photo Gallery – If you are looking for an effective, reliable, yet simple to use photo gallery plugin, then check this gallery plugin out.

E-commerce, Paypal Donation and Payment

WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart – is a very easy to use plugin that allows you to sell products or services online in one click from your WordPress blog. Very useful when you want to sell eBooks or digital products from various posts and pages and need a WordPress Shopping Cart solution.

WP Easy Paypal Payment Accept – This is a very easy to use WordPress plugin to Accept donation or Paypal payment for a service or a product in one click. Handy when you are trying to put a customized payment widget on your site (you can add it to the sidebar or a page or a post of your blog).

WordPress eStore – This plugin provides a complete solution to sell products from your site. It is really good for selling digital products securely from your WordPress blog.

WordPress Donations Widget Plugin – The WordPress Donations Widget Plugin allows you to collect donation for a cause from your WordPress powered site.

PayPal for Digital Goods – This plugin allows you to use the PayPal for Digital Goods gateway to accept payment for digital goods. Provides inline checkout of digital goods.

Stripe Payments – A simple and lightweight plugin to accept payment on your site (for a product or service) via the Stripe payment gateway.

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Affiliate Marketing Summit West 2017

During January 15-17, more than 6,000 digital marketers from over 70 countries will gather at the Paris Las Vegas hotel for the performance marketing industry's premier global event, Affiliate Summit West 2017.

These high-level decision makers will come looking for online publishers, traffic sources, retailers, networks, technology firms, digital agencies and other solution providers. And if you're an Affiliate Summit attendee, it could be you that they find.

There is no substitute for being here, demonstrating your solutions and building face-to-face relationships. The top companies and key decision makers in the space come to Affiliate Summit. Show them what you've got and what they're missing.

January 15, 2017 - January 17, 2017

Las Vegas

Paris Las Vegas Hotel

Affiliate Summit West 2017 (#ASW17) is taking place on January 15-17, 2017 at Paris Las Vegas Hotel.
The conference and tradeshow offers attendees:

• three tradeshow areas packed with affiliates, merchants, vendors, networks, technology providers, digital agencies, traffic sources;
• multiple tracks of relevant educational sessions delivered by industry experts;
• a variety of networking events;
• and online tools to help you connect with other attendees before, during and after the event.

Expected Attendance: 6,000+

• Early check-in: January 14, 12:00 PM
• Conference start: January 15, 10:00 AM
• Conference end: January 17, 4:00 PM

 Agenda

The Affiliate Summit West 2017 Agenda is now live and is packed with sessions that will help better understand the evolving landscape of affiliate marketing.
Don't forget that Affiliate Summit offers two pass types: VIP and Networking.
Review the benefits included with each pass type here to ensure that you have purchased the right pass for the sessions and events that you wish to access.

Register

Two pass types are available for Affiliate Summit West 2017 - VIP and Networking.

To help you choose the pass type that is right for you, refer to the Pass Comparison Chart below and then register here.

Registering 5 or more attendees?  Check out our Group Rates at the bottom of this section.

Call 417-2SUMMIT (278-6648) for instructions on booking at group rates below.

Group Rates	Discount
Group rate for 5-9 Passes	20% off
Group rate for 10 or more Passes	25% off

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SEO tips and tricks to promote website

Developing SEO strategies that can drive an immense amount of traffic to your site within a month is not an easy task, especially if you want your site’s visitors to convert into profits. Generating highly targeted traffic or visitors that have the intent of availing the services or products that you are offering is the best way to really earn from your website.

The good news is that there are many ways that you can do to hasten the process of having your site noticed by people who are in need of the information, services or products that you provide. Here are some of the ways that you can do to generate specifically targeted online visitors in under a month.

Target easy to rank long-tail keywords through blog posts

If your site has no blog section yet, then you better start including one. Blogs can benefit your business in so many ways, and consistently driving traffic to your site is one of them. Using long-tail keywords in your blog posts’ titles (eg. How to learn SEO), can extremely help your site’s performance in terms of traffic generation, seeing as this strategy can very much take your blog posts on top of SERPs without further improving them through off-page optimization or link building.

Blog posts can naturally rank on their own basing on its topical relevance as seen by search engines, and taking advantage of low competition keywords will make your pages rank on the top page of SERPs in no time, which means more organic traffic to your site.

Targeting 3 -5 keywords for each page on your site

Creating your pages or blog posts with the intent of ranking for more than 2 keywords is always a smart move, since it will allow your site to draw more relevant traffic along the process. Say, if your site has 15 blog posts or pages on its first month, and each page are targeting 3 different keywords. Doing the math will give you a result of 45 keywords giving you constant traffic within a month.

Doing this strategy is very simple, wherein you just have to use or combine your targeted keywords on your page or post’s title, URL and on the body copy (eg. Top 10 advanced on-page SEO strategies). With the given example of a post title you are able to target 7 keywords that you can use within the body of the content, including:

    Advanced on-page SEO strategies

    On-page SEO strategies

    On-page SEO

    Advanced SEO

    Advanced SEO strategies

    Advanced on-page SEO

    On-page optimization strategies

    On-page SEO techniques

Dofollow blog commenting

Commenting on blogs with the same theme as your site – particularly blogs that allow dofollow attributed links on their comment section – is one of the most effective ways to promoting your site as well as in improving your keywords’ search rankings. This technique has a lot of advantages and can certainly take your campaign a long way, given that this method allows you to acquire relevant backlinks and can possibly build relationships with other bloggers related to your niche.

Networking with other bloggers is extremely beneficial, especially with higher value link placements such as special mentions, in-content links (used as a resource), guest blogging opportunities and sponsored reviews. Anyway, leaving comments on blogs with the use of your keywords as anchor texts can help improve its search rankings in just weeks, particularly if the links that you’ve built are from topically relevant pages and are dofollow attributed.

Guest blog posting

Guest blogging has been known to be a link building method that’s really advantageous in terms of driving relevant traffic, acquiring high quality links, passing through Pagerank and in improving SERP rankings. It’s best to choose blogs that are relevant to your site, have high page ranks and receives a lot of traffic on their site (can be based through Alexa traffic rank).

In choosing the topic to write for guest postings, writing topics that are strictly about the keywords you are aiming at is the most effective way to get most out of this technique, since the link that you’ll be able to build through your author bio will have higher scores basing on its relevance as well as in targeting the audience that will be able to read it.

Forum participation

Forum posting is a good start for any campaign, especially if you choose to participate on high PR and high traffic forum sites. The best way to benefit from this method is to establish an expert or knowledgeable image through this channel, and not just focusing on building links through your signature.

Establishing yourself through forum sites and being genuinely active in participating with the community can bring you targeted visitors and interested clients within a month, so spending 30 minutes a day on 1 or 2 authority forums around your site’s industry is certainly worth it.

Article submission and converting your articles

This link building method has proven its worth over the past decade and is still known to be one of the most effective ways in generating consistent traffic as well as highly relevant links that can boost your search rankings.  The best thing about article marketing is that it’s capable of building solid links as it gets syndicated naturally, particularly if you have written a solid and informative article. Submitting an exceptionally written article to several highly trusted article directories (such as Ezinearticles, Articlesbase, Goarticles, Amazines, and many more) can enhance its chances of getting scraped or used by other sites that are seeking for quality content to be posted, which gives you more extra links and of course, more traffic.

But there’s more to this method than just the traditional article marketing, you can as well convert your articles to other formats for more exposure and external links pointing to your site. Converting your articles to PDF, podcasts, slide/powerpoint presentation and videos, and then submitting them to their respective directories can extremely amplify your site’s traffic in a short period of time, given that these formats have higher chances of ranking high on search engine result pages.

SEO Tips

To optimize your whole site for search engines, you’ll need to follow these basic tips:

Make the website about one thing.

It can be about other stuff, too, but choose one primary topic that is most essential to your message.

This step is important, so you may want to do a little keyword research before choosing a topic.

Mention keywords where they matter most.

Include your “one thing” in the site title, domain name, description, tagline, keywords, blog categories, page titles, and page content.

If you’re on WordPress, you can change a lot of this in the General Settings or through a plugin like All in One SEO Pack.

Link to internal pages on your site.

A lot of content management systems automatically do this, but if yours doesn’t, you’ll want to be intentional about linking to your most important pages directly from your homepage and cross-linking them with each other.

Use a permalink structure that includes keywords.

Some sites have “ugly” permalink structures that use numbers to identify pages.

Don’t do this. It’s bad for SEO and just doesn’t look good.

Use a URL structure that includes text, and make sure you include keywords in your URLs.

So instead of having a page’s URL be this:

    http://yoursite.com/?p=12

It should look more like this:

    http://yoursite.com/coolpage/

Remove anything that slows down your website.

Page load times are important, so get rid of any non-essentials that bog down your website.

These may including music players, large images, flash graphics, and unnecessary plugins.

Use keywords in your images.

Include words that reflect your site topic in the image title, description, and alt attributes.

Also, re-title the file name if it doesn’t reflect your main keywords (e.g. writing-tips.jpg instead of d1234.jpg).

Link to other websites with relevant content.

You can do this by including a blogroll, link list, or resources page on your website.

Of course, do it sparingly, as each outbound link is a “vote” for another site. However, if you do it well and people click your links, this tells search engines you are a trusted authority on your particular topic.

Update your website frequently.

Sites with dynamic content often rank higher than those with static content. That’s why blogs and directories (like Wikipedia) do so well on search engines. They are constantly being updated with new content.

Make sure your website is indexed in search engines.

A lot of search engines will automatically find and index your content, but don’t count on it.

You want to be sure engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are crawling your site, so that people are finding you online. (You can add them directly, if they’re not.)

Have other websites link to you.

This is really, really important, when it comes to SEO. The bummer is that it’s not something you can necessarily control. Other than creating excellent content, the only thing you can do is ask (which occasionally works).

Regardless of what you do, know that inbound links are essential to SEO.

Stop changing your domain name.

The age of your URL is a factor in your site’s search ranking, so be patient.

If you’re launching a new blog every six months, you’ll never see your site get the value it deserves.

Write like a human.

None of the above matters if you create content that sounds like a robot wrote it.

Write great stuff, follow the steps above, have patience, and you’ll see results.

Many of you have already started blogging, but many of these tips can be applied retroactively. And once if you done this, you can start writing regular content.

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