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Ask any business person who’s website is at the top of the
search engines if his/her site is making money, and the answer
is almost always “yes”.
An example is Glenn Canady, the author of “Gorilla Marketing”
who employed only one of these strategies, and it made him over
$1 million dollars.
The fact is, search engines can get you an enormous amount of
traffic, and it’s traffic to your sites that’s free. However, in
order to ethically and effectively market in the search engines,
you need to use strategies that actually work.
Below are three different ways to effectively, and ethically,
raise your rankings in the search engines. I’ve included seven
different resources that you can use that will help you
implement these strategies, and do it quickly and easily so that
you can begin to see an increase in your traffic almost
immediately.
1. Optimize your site. To make sure that you are properly
targeting your market, you need to make sure that you are
marketing using the right keywords. This means optimizing your
site to make sure that the keywords you have on your site are
the keywords that your site is actually optimized for.
There are two tools that you can use to help you with search
engine optimization:
a. Search Engine Optimization Fast Start Ebook -
http://www.seoresearchlabs.com/seo-book.php – will teach you
simple and effective techniques for optimmizing your site. This
ebook is now in its 4th edition, is completely up to date, and
is one of the best ebooks I’ve seen on search engine
optimization.
b. Web CEO – http://www.smallbusinesshowto.com/search.html -
This is a complete search engine optimization suite that offers
10 different tools to help you optimize your site for the search
engines. It offers the most comprehensive, and step by step, set
of instructions I’ve ever seen with any software package.
According to the instructions, you can get started in one hour.
The free version of this software will work for most, and it
also includes a $97 search engine optimization course as part of
the package.
2. Develop a linking strategy. One factor that influences how
well you are ranked in the search engines is linking. The more
inbound links that you have pointing to your site, the higher
you will be ranked in the search engines.
For each link that you have pointing back to you, that’s another
opportunity for your potential customer to find you. With
credibility being such a big problem on the internet, to have
someone recommend you increases your chance of making the sale.
To help you develop an effective strategy, I recommend that you
read “Linking Matters” – http://www.linkingmatters.com/. This
ebook shows you how to develop an effective linking strategy for
your site, and do it very quickly.
3. Develop a content strategy. The truth is, “Content is King”.
Most people online are looking for information. The more
information that you provide for your customers, and the more
valuable it is, the more likely you will make the sale.
Below are three different ways to develop content for your site.
The first and most effective strategy are articles.
Articles actually work for you in several ways.
a. Brands you as an expert so that customers come to you. b.
Provides valuable content to your potential customers. c. Builds
a relationship between you and your potential customers. d.
Creates a viral marketing strategy for your site. e. Builds a
linking strategy for you every time a webmaster publishes one of
your articles.
No other strategy that I have employed has brought me more
business than this one.
To find sites that accept articles, go here:
http://www.jogena.com. This is one of the sites that I use
because it’s one of the oldest, and most reputable sites online
for finding information on ezines. Unfortunately, there’s no
search, but everything is done by category, and the information
is comprehensive, so you will locate rather quickly what you are
looking for.
However, if the thought of writing your own content gives you
nightmares, there’s a way around this.
You can use public domain information. Public domain information
is information that is free to use because it’s in the public
arena, or the copyright has expired.
To help you easily locate this information, I recommend that you
download the public domain toolbar. You can get it at the Public
Domain Forum – http://www.publicdomainforum.com/forum. You have
to register for an account to get the toolbar, but both the
forum account and the toolbar are free. The toolbar is a very
comprehensive resource of public domain sources.
The third content strategy you need to consider is blogging.
What a blog does is allows you to create search engine friendly
content on your topic of interest. Combine this with an RSS
feed, which the search engines love, and you have a winning
strategy.
Not only will it help you build content for the search engines,
but it can also help you raise your traffic and sales.
Here is a comprehensive ecourse that you can take that will
drastically reduce your learning curve, as well as provide you
with the resources you need to implement this strategy.
http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/blogging-course.htm
Finally, to keep abreast of what’s happening with search
engines, you need to subscribe to Search Engine Watch -
http://www.searchenginewatch.com. This site offers tons of
resources, news, and a newsletter on search engine optimization.
Apply one, or all, of these search engine resources to your
search engine strategy, and you can expect a major increase in
your traffic and sales to your site.
About the author:
Jinger Jarrett is a freelance writer and internet marketer
living in Alpharetta, Georgia. You can find out how to create
your own traffic virus to your site, as well as get all her best
free newsletters, reports, ebooks, software, and tools when you
visit her blog at http://www.askjinger.com
Successful Internet Marketing without a budget.Lee MunsonDarren Cronian, aka wwhhomes, runs a highly successful website, http://www.holiday-rentals.uk.com, without the benefit of a marketing budget. Here’s how…….
Below are his answers to questions we put to him on June 25th, 2005.
You are successfully promoting Worldwide Holiday Homes, without a marketing budget. Is this a decision you took out of necessity or choice?
Certainly out of necessity – I dream of the day when I can spend thousands of pounds on marketing my business.
When I first had the idea of the business I had no business plan, I hadn’t designed a website before, and I’d certainly never heard of the term SEO, never mind what is stood for. All I did know was that I would submit this website to Google, and within days thousands of visitors would be visiting my site.. (I’m being serious!) that’s how innocent I was.
It could be argued that someone who looks to promote a site without any kind of budget is either ill-prepared or lacks faith in the product or service they are offering. What are your feelings about this?
I would agree with you – the idea came to me when my parents bought a holiday home in Spain, and I had never thought about building a business before, I was ill prepared and to some degree, I lacked belief that the website and services were going to be successful, and if it wasn’t for my own dedication to succeed the business wouldn’t be in the position that it is in today.
Trying to promote your site without spending any money must be extremely difficult. What do you consider to be your biggest challenge in terms of marketing?
I cannot explain how difficult it is – I see my competitors spending thousands (if not millions) on PPC campaigns, television and radio advertisements, etc and sometimes that can be soul destroying, and you do think ‘What am I doing wrong?’ but these companies have a work force that are dedicated on building and running the company – whilst I’m running the business by myself, in my living room.
The biggest challenge with marketing is persuading clients (villa owners) that I can offer them a service, which is good value for money, has great support and customer care – unfortunately, the sector I am working within, the travel industry, has thousands of companies, and many of them have let owners down, and in my opinion made life very difficult for genuine businesses.
The other challenge I face is making sure that the website is regularly visited by holidaymakers – without the traffic from the likes of Google, Yahoo and MSN the business would not exist – fair enough you could say that about 99% of online companies, but the owners who advertise their villas, etc. rely on enquiries from holidaymakers, and if I’m not providing owners with enquiries, I’m failing them and the business.
Do you feel that having no marketing budget restrains your site from moving forward and competing with the leaders in your industry?
It certainly does – I want to be respected by the travel industry, and I want everyone to know who Worldwide Holiday Homes are – when someone is looking to rent a villa I want them to say “oh let’s go to Worldwide Holiday Homes”. Without a marketing budget, I don’t have the funds to pay for a PR company to raise the profile of the business and I think long term this will affect the business unless I increase the revenue to the business.
To be able to compete with those webmasters who have large sums of money available for promotion do you feel you need to think smarter or work harder?
Both think smarter and work harder. My working week is working around 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, it doesn’t give me much time for a social life, but if I put the hard work in now, in years to come that hard work will come to fruition. The great thing about webmaster forums like Digitalpoint.com is that you can learn from other webmasters, and all of the experience and knowledge I have gained running this business has been from more experienced webmasters and search engine specialists.
If you are not spending money then presumably you are relying on SEO skills to promote your site. What areas of Search Engine Optimisation have you spent time on and which have generated the most successful results?
I certainly am relying on SEO skills to promote the website and have focused more on researching keywords which holidaymakers are using to find the type of holiday accommodation the portfolio has available, as well as working on various linking strategies to get the website and it’s pages ranking well.
Initially I thought specific keywords would bring in thousands of holidaymakers every week – the keyword ‘holiday rentals’ I thought would be an excellent keyword to get ranked on the first page – I found after spending a good few months optimising the website for this keyword that it brings in a few referrals a day… lesson learned there.
What proportion of your internet traffic is direct referral from search engine queries?
I would say 90% of the traffic is from search queries from search engines and directories – with the other 10% from links, and forum posts. I feel I’m in a position now to attempt to bring in more visitors by spending revenue on marketing the website through other means – I do have sleepless nights thinking what I would do if Google was to stop sending me holidaymakers.
What would you consider to be your best, zero cost, marketing success?
Good question – search engine optimisation on a number of pages with some very competitive keywords – obviously I don’t want to give my competitors the opportunity of outranking me, so I’d prefer not to divulge the keyword terms. Also, I submitted a few press releases to www.prweb.com and found myself speaking to two editors of a regional newspaper, and an online travel magazine, both these articles brought in a good level of traffic for a few weeks after… and it was free.
Your site has featured in UK papers (The Yorkshire Evening Post). How did you manage to gain such press coverage?
The business was featured in the Yorkshire Evening Post under the business section, simply because one of the editors had heard about me setting up this business and thought it would be a really good story for other small business owners (or people thinking about setting up a business). Word of mouth is and will always be the best form of marketing – I spoke to a guy in the pub, who knew an editor at the newspaper and the rest is history.
Now that you are obviously experiencing some success are you tempted to invest your profits into marketing in order to move your site up to the next level?
Yes, in the past couple of weeks I have started to look for quality websites to promote my business and website on, the problem with advertising is that you don’t know how effective it is going to be, and with a tight marketing budget you can’t afford to make any mistakes.
Finally, do you have any other areas of free promotion that you are looking to exploit in the near future?
Yes, I’m actually writing my first e-book, and will obviously continue on optimising the website and writing press releases and travel articles. I believe that networking (word of mouth) is a big part of promoting your business, and you won’t believe how many new clients I have received by simply taking a taxi ride and telling the driver all about my business (without boring him!) and handing them my business card. I’m also a member of www.ecademy.com which is paid or free membership, and enables you to meet and network with people of the same interests, this has been a great place to pick up ideas and again promote my business.
About the author:
Lee Munson is the webmaster for http://www.info-sales.co.uka webmaster resource site offering lists of free directories and article submission sites.
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Tags: Brand, Internet Marketing, keywords, market, marketer, Marketing, Optimisation, optimize, promo, Promotion, Search, Search Engine, Search Engine, search engine optimization, SEO, submission
