Search Engine Secrets – Are Search Engines Killing Your Business?

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Copyright 2005 Denise OBerry

Over half of all US online adults use engines most or every time they are online, according to a recent “How America Searches” study from icrossing. “How America Searches” takes a detailed look at why people turn to engines, which engines have the most loyal users, how well people can distinguish natural and paid results, and other questions.

This kind of information can be incredibly helpful to your business. For example, the vast majority of users (88%) say they use search engines to research specific topics and shopping is the activity of choice for over half (51%).

So what happens if one of those surfers lands on your website from the search engines and they’re doing research for a product or service they’d like to buy? Are they gone in an instant never to return again? That could kill your business.

Maybe not if you have a clever way to capture just who those visitors are. And that is very easy to do. You have only a few seconds to grab the contact details of this visitor. You can accomplish that objective by offering a free report download or newsletter sign up that compels them to give you their contact information in exchange for your valuable freebie.

Once you have those details captured, you have many opportunities to connect with that prospect over and over again.

About the author:
Denise O’Berry helps small business owners take action to grow their business. Find out more at http://www.smallbusinessmatters.com

Search Engine Optimization – Most Common Search Engine Optimization Mistakes

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Most Common Engine Optimization Mistakes

by: GlobalFusion

Understanding exactly what search engines do and what is seems to elude many new website owners when first starting out. The fact is that when youre not familiar enough with the industry to determine fact from fiction can only mean trouble for your website. Could you be making those same mistakes with your site?

Heres a consolidated list of things you most definitely do not want to be doing if you want a high ranking in the search engines. Lets look at the most common optimization mistakes:

Mistake: Overloading of

Trying to a home page for all possible keywords is not a good thing. If you attempt to squeeze in all the keywords on the home page thinking its going to improve your ranking is not true. It will appear that you are spamming the search engines and it will make your rankings even worse since those search engines will single you out. Less can mean a lot more when it comes to search engine optimization in that respect.

Mistake: Untargeted Keywords and Phrases

Choice of keywords in the META keyword tags are very important and its crucial that you use keywords related to your line of work or your business product(s). Targeting such generic words is a waste of time. What you need to do is optimize your site for search terms and phrases that are highly targeted to your precise business. There are numerous software programs or services that can help you to find what people are actually typing into the search engines to find goods and services familiar to yours and concentrate on ranking well for those terms. The more qualified your site visitors are, the more likely you are to convert those visitors into paying customers.

Mistake: Non Utilization of the Title Tag

Most search engines index the content of the title tags and consider it to be one of the most important factors in their relevancy algorithm. What you place in your title can make or break your ranking for particular search terms for various engines. When you dont include your most important search phrases within your title tag, you are overlooking a vital opportunity in your quest for higher search rankings. In other words, give your best information or rather characters at the start of your tag, since search engines give more weight to content at the very beginning of the tags. If you really want to include your company name in your title, put it at the very end of your tag.

Mistake: Duplication of the Header Area

Heres another mistake that many newbies do when it comes to designing their websites. Seeing the same title on every page within that website which means the Meta tags are identical on every page, only the visible content is different. Each page should be optimized for different keywords whether its major or minor and can be an entry point to your site from any search engine. Never repeat the titles or Meta descriptions in your website. Treat each page of your website if it were the most important and optimize it thoroughly. Dont leave the head area without any optimization means. Youll regret it and the search engines will not direct traffic to your website.

Mistake: No Body Text, Too Much Splash and Flash

A very common mistake. Many websites think the more flashier they are with limited text will get them the traffic they need. What you may not know is that without some text, or lack thereof, will not get your site optimized since most search engines cant index images. If you want a web site to rank well in the search engines, you need to give them what they want to see, visible content that is optimized just as well as the invisible content. Most importantly, if you have no content on your main page and only graphics does not say much about your intelligence and looks very unprofessional. The bottom line is simple; a site with no visible content becomes effectively invisible to a search engine and has almost no chance of appearing in the rankings for logical searches.

These are the most common search engine mistakes, of course, in no particular order. If any of this sound familiar to you, dont worry about it since youre not alone. Many website owners will find themselves in at least one or more of these situations. The important thing is that when you do recognize an error within your optimization process, get the correct solution, understand why the changes are needed, then you are better equipped with the correct information and have the capability to reverse the damage.

About The Author

Adam Roper is the founder of GlobalFusion – a Multimedia & Web Development firm based in Sydney, Australia that designs everything from websites to DVDs and Multimedia Kiosks. If you have questions about creating HTML Email Templates or want someone else to do the design work for you, visit our website at: http://www.globalfusion.com.au or shoot us at: info@globalfusion.com.au

Search Engine Marketing Secrets – What Your Car Audio Can Teach You About Marketing

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Stand next to any road, and every so often a young person will go by with the latest rap CD blaring. If it happens to be a cold day, he (it is always a he) may have the windows up. Then, all you will hear is the thud of the overworked bass speaker in the back. After he turns 30, the young driver probably wont even be able to hear that, if he continues this unwarranted assault on his ears.

That big bass bin cant handle the vocal sounds, and the front speakers would melt if they had all those thumps going through them. So the car audio separates out the various frequencies using filters, sending only the bass to the big bins in the back, and only the higher and more delicate sounds to the little speakers at the front. Both, and especially the bass, are then amplified so they are audible in the next county.

Marketers have borrowed the same terminology as a way of looking at how their business treats its customers. graduates will often talk about Filters and Amplifiers almost as if they actually understood them.

Filters

A filter in marketing speak is anything which prevents your customer from doing business with you. Some filters are natural if you provide personal training services for example all of your clients will need to be within easy reach. This natural, geographic filter means that you are unlikely to sell to someone in another country.

Others are contructed. Mercedes Benz dealers the world over have large, bright, glassy establishments. They tend to intimidate anyone who cant afford the prices, acting as a natural, probably intentional, filter.

Filters can also be fairly subtle. If you send out a mailing by post, research shows many are discarded without even being opened. If you have a leaflet delivered, the open an envelope filter is removed, so people cant help reading it, even while they are trying to throw it away.

Amplifiers

An amplifier is anything which increases the ease of doing business with you. Any business which decides to take payment via credit cards, for example, will find the number of people who can do business with them is amplified compared to when only cash was acceptable.

Marketers probably wont admit it, but filters and amplifiers are opposites of the same thing. Removing a filter has an amplifying effect, and vice versa.

I insured my car the other day over the Internet. The first few sites I tried only supported Internet Explorer. That, at least to me, is a filter and I went somewhere a little more Firefox friendly!

Many corporate web sites insist you provide a lot of information before they will send you that free White Paper you are interested in. No doubt that information is required by someone in the business, but it filters out a lot of otherwise interested people who simply wont take the time to fill out the form and inevitably receive all the sales calls afterwards. After all, they cant be sure theyre even a prospect before they read the White Paper!

Apple has potentially filtered out a large portion of their target for iTunes by only accepting credit cards. Most under 18s wont have a credit card, and they are the major buyers of chart music. The Music Store Card is an attempt to turn this filter into an amplifier.

What Filters and Amplifiers Mean to Your Marketing

Importantly, this way of thinking allows you to look at all of your marketing, online and offline, in a critical way to improve your response rates and your sales. Every time you look at any aspect of your business, ask yourself if this filters out customers you want to serve, or if you can amplify the target market by improving the process.

Perhaps you could send postcards or use leaflets instead of putting brochures in envelopes. Dont insist on a customers life history before you will allow them to buy from you. Make your web site informative and easy to use, rather than slick, cutting edge and hard to understand. If you are providing services, make it clear on your site where you are and the distance you will travel. Use local town and county names as to filter out people who will never be able to buy from you, but to amplify the chance of attracting locals.

If you do this consistently, over time you will get your filters and amplifiers to attract profitable customers to you, not send them away to your competitors, never to return.

About The Author

After more than 30 years in the IT industry, Mike Street is a director of FastComm (http://www.fastcomm.net) which specialises in information and tools to help increase sales, including Airlook Email software, the Eye Catcher Video Phone and the online Contact Management system, FastCRM. He is also webmaster of his wife’s Health and Beauty site Zenergie (http://www.zenergie.co.uk).

mike.street@fastcomm.co.uk

Marketing Secrets – 5 Core Skills to Build Before Starting Internet Marketing

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5 Core Skills For Internet
By Stuart Tan

It kinda bugs me that there are people who are constantly writing about the things that do well in . I think thats real silly. People want the real stuff. They want to know the exciting stuff, but they want the truth too.

Why have internet marketers hidden from you, the costs of getting to where they have gotten? Because it is the one thing that separates the real players and the suckers. If you do not know how much time and effort they spent, dont think that internet marketing is a walk in the park.

My business partner was so excited after a conference, he started up a mini-site that was selling a set of products we already had in existence. It was a great plan, except that for the kind of product we put up, he sold the package at a drop dead price of $97. Now, I operate from Singapore, and we know that most of the people who would buy this product would come from the other side of the world. Without verifying the shipping charges, he happily took orders from the internet. The first one had him jumping up and down only to realize that the cost of shipping took about 90% of that $97. We couldnt cover the production costs. Straight away, it was a loss.

But everyone talks about shipping their products as if it were a simple thing. Most people have forgotten completely about the people living on this side of the world and what it takes to sell something. This means that there are a few things that most beginners in internet marketing need to be careful about and learn.

#1 Learn Copywriting.

Copywriting is the most important skill ever to be taught to marketers and business people alike. If you dont have the ability to write your own sales letters, it will be easy for people to tell you to outsource the writing. My advice: DONT. You are letting them develop the skill that you should be building up. No one ever gets to be an expert copywriter overnight. Learn it, and learn it well.

#2 Understand Business Models

There are about 7 or 8 different business models on the internet. Because I need to make sure that people really understand about business per se, Ive put it in the form of a freely downloadable format at http://www.stuarttan.com/affiliate/bizmodel.pdf
Go grab it – no holds barred.

#3 Drive traffic

Ive included a list for those of you newbies out there, the multiple ways to drive traffic over the internet. There are over 100 ways you can use to drive traffic and I would highly recommend you hop over to learn about these. I directly credit people like John Reese, Jeff Johnson and Yanik Silver for their invaluable knowledge that I have gotten from them. If you dont know about them, please begin today! They are great people and I highly recommend that you visit them at www.trafficsecrets.com, www.searchenginevoodoo.com and www.surefiremarketing.com respectively. Download my traffic generation chart on www.stuarttan.com/affiliate/Traffic Boosters.pdf
.

#4 Learn New Internet Technology Fast

You need to be learning really fast. Ive discovered that there are a large number of new internet technologies that keep coming up and they can be very powerful, provided you know how to use them. If you dont know how to use them, it will most definitely be to your disadvantage. For instance, most people still dont know how to use RSS and Blogs. In addition, some people are clueless about XML feeds and how that helps to create massive content sites and increase rankings. You need to learn fast. The only way for you to master your learning is to read about them. I highly recommend that you visit www.stuarttan.com/learning/ for more information that I cant deal with here.

I am going to give you something good, though. If the entire internet marketing world is doing it, DONT. If you just follow, you will not be at the breakthrough point of technology usage. Start innovating and think creatively to solve a problem. Sometimes, even the simplest things can bring about massive profits online!

#5 Keep Relationships Going

Keeping relationships going on the internet is a difficult thing. But it is essential. You need to be able to do autoresponse messages, personalized. However, most people miss the point. Automatic isnt going to build relationships. You need to keep them warm. Call them. Give them ideas. Give them free stuff (learnt this from Yanik). More importantly, ask Jeff Johnsons single most asked question Can I help you?.

Im all for making money but if it is at the expense of friendships and relationships, I think it is going to be really stupid to continue making money. Give yourself a chance to put back, in your heart, what many poor, scammy internet marketers have taken away quality and the desire to help people.

About the author:
Stuart Tan is a motivational and transformational speaker who has focused primarily on the development of personal excellence. As a Licensed NLP Trainer, he was certified by Dr. Richard Bandler in 1997. Stuart also was trained by Robert Dilts and is a Certified NLP Training Consultant. He now runs leading seminars in Malaysia and Singapore. He can be found at www.stuarttan.com

Search Engine Marketing Secrets – Marketing Students: 5 Guidelines for Your Final Paper

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Get motivated! (‘Why do I write this paper?”)

This is a basic question with a not-so-basic answer. In order for a job to be done well and your dissertation paper is, in fact, a job to be performed you should give yourself time to figure out why you will do it and get yourself motivated. No motivation no job quality, any professional can confirm that. Here are some possible answers to the motivational question:

- Because it is a must if you do not do it, you do not graduate;

- Because, if done with responsibility, it is an excellent opportunity to stand out from the crowd and your peers the job gets busier with every day;

- Because you can practice your research skills while being directed and supervised by professionals (eg. your university professors);

- Because it could be a starting point for your career.

We all know the more you think about it, the more answers you can find. Once you have your motivational level raised, you will surely want to start your paper right away.

Choose your subject (“What should I write about?”)

Allow yourself plenty of time to think what subject you would like to pick for your paper. In some cases, your professors already have a list of subjects from where you can choose one but sometimes they would happily accept your own subject, providing it is of interest and you convince them of your reasons. Consider the following, before you go for a subject or another:

- “Marketing” is a broad field which of its aspects do you feel more interested into, and more comfortable discussing about? Do you recall any particular course / chapter / subject that raised your interest at a time?

- Why would your subject be of importance and who would be your auditorium?

- Is your subject researchable? Is there any academic literature base on the subject?

- Do you think you can come up with a personal contribution to the subject?

- Do you see yourself developing that topic further on?

- Can you name at least a couple of persons who can guide you? Would they be willing to do that for you?

Documentation, documentation and… documentation

“Documentation” is a magic key for any successful paper. Student or acknowledged professional, once you made up your mind about the subject of the paper, most of your efforts will be directed (or should be directed) towards documentation. Depending on your subject, on your knowledge and your capabilities, you might want to start with this even 1 2 years prior to raduation date, in order to have enough time to collect and review as much information as possible.

Major information resources: libraries, bookshops, internet, newspapers and magazines (consider subscribing to main specialized magazines in your field!), university printings, company exhibitions and presentations.

Build your paper

You do not have to review the whole documentation before you start to lay the bricks of your paper. Usually, such works are done using the “top-down” strategy, meaning you start with the major lines and then you develop the minor ones. You can compare this strategy with the action of drawing a tree: you might want first to draw the tree trunk, then the major branches, you will draw then some smaller branches growing from the big ones, and at the end you draw the leaves and flowers.

Therefore, once you are clear with the subject and the basics of your paper the trunk of the tree, you can start organizing your chapters the major branches. Generally, you wont have less than 3 main chapters and more than 6 7: remember your paper has to offer a valuable content but in the same time it has some space limits (for example you could be told not to exceed 70 pages including the appendix and graphics).

As you go on with your documentation, you will probably feel the need to reorganize the chapters and subchapters several times this is the way of any good writing, so don’t be afraid of doing it as long as you stick to your subject and your chapters are part of a whole, “flowing” one from each other. Consult with you supervisor for any major changes, and ask directions if you feel the documentation is overwhelming, it becomes difficult to discern from the large amount of information and you feel like losing your coherency.

As a future Marketing professional, creativity is a basic skill as well as analytical thinking: you should prove them by including your own comments, opinions and conclusions upon the subject and not limit yourself to present only what other people said. Be critical to yourself and to others. Don’t be afraid to bring out your own vision that’s what counts the most!

Writing style

Your paper is an academic piece of work, and so it should look and feel like. Give a lot of attention to your writing style:

- language issues keep an academic and formal style, with no colloquial expressions and no slang terms. Be very precise and avoid hypes (yes, yes, we know it’s hard to do it especially when you’re a Marketing or Advertising professional-to-be) and irrational use of superlatives (“the best”, “the greatest”, “the most” ).
For a professional look, avoid using vague expressions such as “some authors say”, be specific and precise! A common mistake is to assume some things are obvious or known: no, they’re not obvious to everyone, so you have to justify your statements (okay except maybe if you’re saying that “1 1=2″…)

- grammar issues nothing can cut enthusiasm for a paper more than poor spelling and grammar! Check check check and check again your grammar before submitting your work: make use of the grammar facilities included in the word processors, ask your friends to proofread your paper, use dictionaries and grammar books every time you’re unsure about something.

- layout and other issues: keep a professional clean simple layout, and stick to one font type (eg. Arial, Times New Roman or Verdana). Unless you’re asked to submit your paper in another layout, you might want to leave 3 cm (1,2 in) edges on both left and right side, use line spacing at 1.5 and font sizes 10 to 12 (depending on the font type) for normal text, with chapter title sized at 14. Double check your quotations to be acknowledged, and make sure the tables and drawings are numbered correctly.

Take a final look at your work and ask yourself if you’re feeling proud of it. If the answer is a strong “yes!”, youre probably ready to present it.

Presentation the final torment!

Let’s not forget these guidelines were written especially for Marketing students. For you, the presentation of your paper should count much more than for other students, since it is a way to promote yourself and your work. If you fail at marketing your own person, how can you be successful in marketing something / someone else? This is the reason why you should dedicate a lot of time and energy to this apparently insignificant last issue.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that since your paper content is great, it will speak for yourself. It will not! You have to bring out the strengths of the paper and try to minimize its weaknesses, if any. Treat your paper like it is a new product that needs to be launched, and your teachers are the consumers. Make them “buy” your paper, make them enthusiastic about it!

Start your presentation with an introduction of how the paper subject attracted you, then shortly point the elements of novelty you bring in. After that, you can proceed with the content briefing: keep short and very objective. Talk loud and clear and note people’s attention level: try to keep them awake but if you see them drowsing, you can refresh the atmosphere by changing your tonality or inserting a joke.
/>At the end, don’t forget to conclude: a paper with no conclusion is an unfinished pointless paper!
Sustain your speech with a proper visual support: in most cases, a projector would do a great job. Be careful of how you build your slides: use 80% drawings and figures and only 20% text, as the human eye and brain respond much better to suggestive drawings instead of regular boring text. Pay attention to coherency: your presentation must flow and your ideas must have continuity. Practice your speech at home or in front of your friends, ask for comments and critics.

Good luck!!!

About The Author:
Otilia is a certified Marketing consultant with expertise in e-Marketing and e-Business. She developed and teach her own online course in Principles of Marketing (http://class.universalclass.com/emarketing). You can contact Otilia through her Marketing resources portal at http://www.teawithedge.com

Copyright Otilia Otlacan – http://www.teawithedge.com

Search Engine Secrets – Keywords, Ranking & Search Engine Optimization Fun

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I am a Optimization newbie. I have read a little on various forums, browsed a few articles, and read
through The Affiliate Masters Course (Ken Evoy) a couple of times.

Eleven days ago I invested a little of my affiliate earnings in a new product that was being launched.

The Dowser Professional is a keyword research tool on steroids, and has allowed me to improve the returns from the few existing websites I already have, and find a number of new niches very quickly.

I was so impressed with The Dowser Professional that I decided it was a key product I wanted to promote as an
affiliate, even to the extent of developing a product specific niche website.

I am very much a believer in Ken Evoy’s technique of “pre-selling”. If you provide a customer with proof that a product works, and what they could do with the product, you can maximise your sales potential.

So I set out to prove that The Dowser Professional was an insanely powerful too, and that anyone could easily use it
to improve their website(s) and find rich new niches.

I set myself what I believe is the ultimate challenge, to target experts on their own turf.

I picked an initial keyword to research, “keyword”.

Within a few minutes I had a good list of related , and within 20 minutes had completed my keyword research. Yes the whole process was that fast.

I then setup a Blogger.com blog based around the keywords I selected.

http://keyword-report.blogspot.com/

The primary keywords for the site are “keyword position report” (KEI approx 6K) and “keyword ranking report” (KEI approx 3K).

It is amazing that such large holes can be found in a very competitive niche with only a few minutes work, but that is
the power of The Dowser.

I set myself a very strict rule. No seeking links until the site was indexed and had achieved ranking based purely on
keywords.

Today (July 28th 2005) the site was picked up by Yahoo. It ranks 1st and 5th for it’s primary keywords, and has already
received traffic from both Yahoo and Technorati.

The site is not yet listed in MSN and Google. I expect it to rank well on MSN and poorly on Google until it has some
incoming links.

The site contains maybe 30% original content, and any articles used were carefully “wrapped” with specific
keyword heavy text both before and after.

Additional related information including screenshots of example Yahoo ranking are available on my Niche Website
Blog.

About the author:
Andy Beard has worked in Sales, and Localization for the last 15 years, primarily in the computer games industry with an enviable 100% profit track record.

His blog Exploring Niche Websites gives insights into creating profitable websites on the internet http://niche-website.blogspot.com/2005/07/keywords-ranking-and-little-seo-fun.html

Keyword Position Report http://keyword-report.blogspot.com

Search Engine Optimization – SEO Trade Secrets – 8 Great Tools for Search Engine Optimization

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Trade Secrets – 8 Great Tools for Optimization

by: Glenn Murray

About 80% of website traffic comes through engines. And research shows, if youre not on the first 2 pages, most people wont find you.

This article isnt about how to achieve a high ranking. That topic has been done to death over the past few months. We all know the basics now Submit your site to the major search engines, scatter a generous helping of the right keyword phrases throughout your site in real sentences, then get a lot of other relevant sites link to your site. Thats it.

This article is about what tools to use to make your job easier.

1) Choosing Keyword Phrases (costs approx USD$7.50 per day)

To decide what keyword phrases to use, subscribe to www.wordtracker.com for a day and do some . Simply enter a keyword and WordTracker tells you how often people have searched for that keyword in the last month or two, how many competitor sites are using that keyword, and how many searches it expects in the next 24hrs.

2) Measuring Keyword Density (FREE)

To measure the density of the keyword phrases on your page, go to http://www.gorank.com/analyze.php and type in the domain and keyword phrase you want to analyse. Itll give you a percentage for all the important parts of your page, including copy, title, meta , meta description, etc. The higher the density the better.

3) Check How Search-Engine-Friendly Your Site Is (FREE)

Search engines send out spiders (or robots) to investigate your site. These tools allow you to see your site from the spiders point of view.

4) Check How Many of Your Pages are Indexed (FREE)

Go to just about any search engine and type site:www.yourdomain.com. The search engine will then tell you how many of your pages it has indexed.

5) Monitor Your Position in Google (FREE)

No need to waste time clicking through hundreds of Google search results looking for your site. This tool allows you to enter a keyword and a domain name, and it searches Google to see where your domain is positioned. Go to http://www.cleverstat.com/google-monitor-query.htm to download the setup file. Then just install.

6) See How Important Sites Are (FREE)

The Google Toolbar is an indispensable tool. One of the things it can tell you is the importance of every site you visit (in Googles eyes at least). Youve probably heard a bit about PageRank or PR. PR is Googles measure of the importance of a site. Basically, the higher your PR, the higher your ranking. This tool gives you a snapshot of the PR of every site you visit. Go to http://toolbar.google.com. TIP: Its good to get links from other sites with high PR especially if they contain the same keywords as your site. WARNING: Apparently the Google Toolbar monitors your internet usage. As yet, its unclear what it uses this information for.

7) Monitor What Sites are Linking to Yours (FREE)

Google News Alerts (http://www.google.com/newsalerts?hl=en) and Google Web Alerts (http://www.google.com/webalerts) will tell you whos linking to your site. Simply set up an alert to be notified when Google finds www.yourdomain.com.

8) Getting Help (FREE)

If youre new to SEO, the first thing you should do is check out Googles guide to SEO at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. If you already know the basics, there are a number of forums you can subscribe to to post questions. These forums are free, and theyre frequented by countless SEO experts. And when I say experts, I mean EXPERTS! Some of these people do SEO all day, every day. And like many technical experts, theyre only too happy to help for free. The best forum seems to be http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3, but http://searchengineforums.com/Forum28 is ok too. If all else fails, you can try sending Google an email. Go to http://www.google.com.au/contact/index.html, but dont hold out much hope of help here. Theyll eventually answer, but theres no guarantee on the quality of their response

This is just a snapshot of the tools available out there, but these will certainly get you started.

Some additional resources: http://www.123promotion.co.uk/promotion/tools/website-promotion-tools.html Various Web Tools

Enjoy!

About The Author

Glenn Murray heads advertising copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com for further details or more FREE articles.

Marketing Secrets – Online Business Marketing Tips and Tricks

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Creating a good business plan is crucial to the success of your business whether it is online or not. By your business correctly you will increase not only the number of visitors to your site but the correct demographic of customers for your service or product. Two of the most important things to consider when you are working on an online business plan are webpage design and advertising.

Designing a business marketing friendly web page should be one of your top priorities. The first thing you should consider is the you are planning on using. You should compose a list of 50 that directly relate to your business and then carefully narrow them down until only the ten best remain. You should use plural words as often as possible to catch as many as you can. For example if one of your is Run you might be better off using Running instead since it will catch both run and running. You should avoid placing ads or banners at the top of your webpage unless it is absolutely necessary for you site. These ads and banner will take the engine crawlers longer to sort through and will result in a lower rating for your site.

Advertising is also an important part of online business marketing. The most effective way to advertise your business online is through search engines such as www.google.com and www.yahoo.com. Studies have shown that most consumers will only go through the first 3 pages of a search when they are on the web so ideally you should work on getting your site in the top 30 results on every major . Another often over looked aspect of online business marketing is advertising offline. You can reach a large target demographic cheaply and effectively by advertising in newspapers and even on the radio.

………………………………………………………….

About the Author:

This article has been written by professional writers from www.business-students.com , a website dedicated to business students, and anyone interested in learning about the exciting world of business with lots of great features such as forums, business articles, book price comparison centre, and more.

Search Engine Optimization – Earn With Fun by Simple SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

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It all happened 3 months back, I have a blog & 1 fine day i saw my blog was ranking on top 10 position for a keyword which is less targeted, but was excited to see that & planned to promote it. Now watz the catch before promoting i placed Google Ads on my page.

It all happened 3 months back, I have a blog & 1 fine day i saw my blog was ranking on top 10 position for a keyword which is less targeted, but was excited to see that & planned to promote it. Now watz the catch before promoting i placed Google Ads on my page.

I started promoting my blog by simply making submissions to blog directories, Engines & General Directories in related categories.

I was real amazed with the results, My position improved in search engines this resulted in good traffic & was able to see flow of $$$ in my Google Ads account. It took me 43 days to reach $99,

I have learnt lot & will be working more on that, if I have to suggest some 1 how can any individual earn $100 & more by simple my answer would be

#1 Create a blog (google blogs are not ranking good in google but has good ranking in yahoo.com) Make sure you create a blog in the topic where you I have deep interest so that you can post more about the topic & share information.

#2 Start for your blogs net presence. You can start submitting to blog directories & general directories in relevant categories.

#3 Keep posting regularly….

I bet by this simple task you make more than 100$ I understand its a small amount but its worth in proportion of the time you spent & fun you have posting something you would love to talk about.

Ravz..!
http://expertseo.rediffblogs.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ravz is into research & of online . SEO India site http://expertseo.rediffblogs.com which offers Optimization at affordable prices.

Search Engine Secrets – Your Online Home-Based Business Can Lead to Search Engine Stress

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By Kirk Bannerman

As a member of several forums, I
have recently noticed (especially since Yahoo recently decided to
try their hand at competing with Google) that the stress level of
many webmasters has gone way up. This applies not only to
webmasters involved in Internet-based home businesses, but to
webmasters in general.

Additionally, it seems that many people that are in the business
of engine optimization () are, with good reason, going
completely bonkers. As Google came on the scene in 1998 and
quickly dominated the search business, website optimization
became largely a game of shooting at a single target, namely,
pleasing Google…for all intents and purposes, Google became the
“800 pound gorilla” of the business.

Since the advent of search engines (particularly Google) spawned
the whole SEO business, I guess its only fair that the search
engine industry can once again turn the SEO business on its ear,
and it seems now to be sort of a cat and mouse (not desktop)
relationship that can get really interesting as we move forward.

Not only are there now several viable players (most notably
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask Jeeves) in the search engine
business, but they are all adopting different and frequently
changing algorithms for determining the ranking positions for
websites.

The current game is that webmasters are trying to
figure out how the various search engines perform the rankings
and, on the flip side, the search engines are striving to be
unpredictable to those webmasters and SEO firms.

For those people using websites to promote home-based businesses,
it can be stressful constantly trying to determine “what the
search engines want” and agonizing over every downward
fluctuation in rankings that their website may experience.

Looking forward in time, I think we can expect that rankings will
fluctuate frequently and will not be at all consistent from one
search engine to another. It will be quite common that for a
particular search term a website might suffer a drop in position
ranking for search engine “A” and an increase position ranking
for search engine “B” at essentially the same point in time.

Rather than stressing out over every position ranking “wiggle”, a
better approach might be to just focus on “what do visitors to
my site want?”. The search engines are striving to give their
users a quality (relevant) search experience and if you are
focused in giving visitors to your website what they are looking
for, these paths will meet somewhere down the road.

You can save yourself alot of consternation by focusing upon the
needs of the website visitors you are seeking to attract, rather
than chasing the frequently changing ranking algorithms of
several search engines. Focus on a single target instead of
chasing several moving targets at the same time.

This article pertains to natural searches only, as paid search
engine advertising is a completely different situation.

About the author:

Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and
coaches others seeking to start their own home based business.
Visit his website at
Legitimate Home Based Business for more details.

Search Engine Marketing Secrets – Yes, You Really Do Need a Marketing Plan

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So youve gotten your business going. You have a customer or two. The phone is ringinga little. For any business to grow and prosper long-term, it needs a solid foundation that includes a plan.

A marketing plan is a road map detailing the route youll take to get your business noticed by potential clients. By following a properly crafted plan, youll know what to do and why youre doing it, while avoiding some of the mistakes that can cost you money and future growth.

If You Build It, They Wont Necessarily Come

The first part of any marketing plan is a basic understanding of your , competition and whether or not an opportunity exists for your product or service.

My first business venture was to make very expensive looking floral wreathes. All my friends and neighbors had them on their front doors and I knew I paid $100 for mine, so why not make and sell them myself! What I didnt consider is that I have expensive taste and in order to make a profit, my wreaths were priced significantly higher than the local craft store. If I were in a more affluent area, it may have worked, but not here.

I started the business on a hunch and didnt truly know my market or competition. Had I done my research, I may have used lower cost materials, made less elaborate products, sold them in a different area or skipped the venture all together. What I learned is that my opinion combined with my friends opinions is not a strong enough basis to launch a business.

No, Im Not Going to Stop for Directions.

When starting a business you generally know where you want to end up and you might have a vague idea of how to get there, but what if you get lost? A marketing plan is like a road map or corner gas station used as a reference tool to keep your marketing on track. If you run into construction traffic, a properly developed plan will offer options to keep you motivated, organized and headed in the right direction.

I Want to Rule the World Or Do I?

Do you want a home based business with one or maybe two employees or a large firm with several hundred? How do you feel about travel, making cold calls, the Internet, can you type? How fast do you want to grow and do you have the resources to keep up with the growth? Your goals as a business entity will dictate how and to whom you market.

My second business venture was a used toy business. I hit every garage sale within 10 miles of my home and bought all of the solid plastic toys I could find. I also put up signs at day care centers offering to buy used toys directly from parents. My goal was to have my own garage sales business and earn a profit on the toys I had bought.

This time, I didnt consider my personal goals before embarking on my business. I didnt like going inside strangers homes to pick up their toys. I had nowhere to put the enormous stockpile I had amassed and wasnt willing to hire employees to gather enough toys to generate the revenue to cover a storage unit or store front. I wanted a little mom business, not a full blown corporation.

Had I considered my true goals, I would have marketed myself as a service provider to day care centers found out what they wanted and would be willing to pay, and then gone out to find it – no storage issues, no going into peoples homes, no employees required.

Its Report Card Day!

Even the best marketing plan needs to be constantly evaluated and adjusted to keep business growth on track. The results of your efforts may not be bringing in attention or revenue you require. The economy, business environment, competition or technology may have changed necessitating a shift in your plan.

Making adjustments to a marketing plan is healthy. Even if you paid a mint for a professionally developed plan, youll want to review your status and results at least every six months to monitor effectiveness. When buying a plan, its important to ask that follow up support to be part of the package.

Ill Just Put It On My Credit Card.

Before developing a marketing plan, youll want to have a ball park budget in mind. Once your plan is complete, set a budget and stick to it!

Its easy to spend more than your annual revenue on marketing activities and supplies when you first start out. Make sure your budget is realistic before committing. Every dollar spent should have a trackable outcome even if it takes several months or years to realize.

Plan Your Day and Work Your Plan

By following a properly developed marketing plan, youll minimize the growing pains that often accompany a business start up. Revenue growth will be reasonably predictable and youll be laying a foundation for long term stability. Your business will run more efficiently because next marketing steps will have been laid out in advance.

About The Author

Leslie Guria, Marketing Consultant with Foot in the Door Marketing, (http://www.footinthedoormarketing.com) and author of Openings a monthly newsletter geared toward small business owners. As a consultant, Leslie supports the marketing needs of small business owners nationwide. She has an MBA and over 16 years of successful sales, marketing and project management experience.

leslie@footinthedoormarketing.comThe Truth About Negative Commands (don’t Read This!)Laurie Kristensen

Everyday when I read emails and advertisements, or listen to television commercials and dialogue in shows and movies, or hear people around me in everyday life use commands such as the following examples, I feel dismayed for them.

This is because I understand something that many others do NOT!

And, since learning what I now understand, while I am BOMBARDED every day from all directions with commands like those listed below, in all their variations, I feel worse and worse for not speaking up!

I feel especially badly for all those advertisers out there who are ignorant about this, because I also realize they are often sincerely excited about what they are sharing and are working very hard to attract the attention of others.

Examples:

  • Don’t miss this [fill in the blank]!
  • Don’t delay!
  • Don’t forget to be there!
  • Don’t forget to stop and buy milk [or pick up the dry cleaning -- fill in the blank]!
  • Do not forget to be on time!
  • You can’t miss out on this opportunity!
  • Don’t be afraid to ASK!
  • Would you like to [fill in the blank]? If so, don’t wait another minute! Order Your [fill in the blank] NOW!
  • Don’t Live With Depression [fill in the blank]

And so on…

This is because your subconscious mind works in strange ways. I learned this while training to become a hypnotherapist.

*********

FACT: Your subconscious mind cannot recognize a negative!

*********

As a result, when a person reads or hears statements similar to the above, their subconscious mind actually understands the command as follows.

Examples:

  • Miss this [fill in the blank]!
  • Delay!
  • Forget to be there!
  • Forget to stop and buy milk [or pick up the dry cleaning -- fill in the blank]!
  • Forget to be on time!
  • Miss out on this opportunity!
  • Be afraid to ASK!
  • Would you like to [fill in the blank]? If so, WAIT another minute! Order Your [fill in the blank] NOW! (In this case, you might think it’s okay because the negative statement is followed by a positive request for action… but keep reading, you’ll see how it can be improved!)
  • Live With Depression [or, fill in the blank]

Whenever I have tried to explain this to those who use this type of command in their advertising or their everyday language, they ALWAYS say, “I’m trying to create a sense of URGENCY.”

But r
esearch is absolute on this…

The subconscious mind CANNOT recognize a negative command.

And so, anytime you use a statement that includes a negative command, you are actually giving the OPPOSITE command for the action or results you desire!

This is also why using only positive language in personal growth affirmations and in hypnosis — whether self-hypnosis or with a trained professional — is crucial.

It’s also important to avoid alternate forms of negative commands, such as the following examples:

  • rather than…
  • instead of…
  • avoid…
  • etc.

Always use POSITIVE commands and suggestions!

I’ll admit, it takes some creative thinking, and it’s a learning process to overcome the overwhelming cultural training we have all been living with!

However, by becoming aware, I am gradually learning how to choose my words more carefully and achieving greater results!

For instance:

  • Instead of “Don’t miss [fill in the blank]!” you can say “Take advantage of [fill in the blank]!” or “Get in on [fill in the blank]!”
  • Instead of “Don’t Delay!” you can say “Hurry!” or “Act Now!” or “Take Immediate Action!”
  • Instead of “Don’t forget to be there!” you can say “Be there!” or “Remember to be there!”
  • Instead of “Don’t forget to stop and buy milk [or pick up the dry cleaning -- fill in the blank]!” you can say “Remember to [fill in the blank] on your way!” or “Please buy [fill in the blank] before you get home!” or “Thanks in advance for [fill in the blank]!”
  • Instead of “Do not forget to be on time!” you can say “Be there on time!” or “Remember to be there on time!” or “Be there at [time]-sharp!”
  • Instead of “You can’t miss out on this opportunity!” you can say “You must TAKE this opportunity!” or “TAKE this opportunity NOW!” or “This is a MUST-SEE (or MUST-DO) opportunity!”
  • Instead of “Don’t be afraid to ASK!” you can say “Feel free to ASK!” or “Please ASK any questions you have!” or “Freely ASK your questions!”
  • Instead of “Would you like to [fill in the blank]? If so, don’t wait another minute! Order Your [fill in the blank] NOW!” you can say “Would you like to [fill in the blank]? If so, ACT IMMEDIATELY! Order Your [fill in the blank] NOW!”
  • Instead of “Don’t Live With Depression [or fill in the blank]” you can say “Overcome Your Depression!” or “Live Free of Depression!” or even “Be Depression-Free!” and so on.

Get the idea?

Command, suggest, or inspire people to POSITIVE ACTION, and you will achieve far greater results!

And now, if you re-read my article headline, you can ALSO get an idea of how you can use this information to create some “reverse-psychology” results, as well!

About The Author

Copyright Laurie Kristensen, 2005-Present. Laurie Kristensen owns and operates a successful audio transcription and typing business from home, visit http://www.LKTranscription.com — also be sure to browse through Lauries Success Resources at http://www.LKSuccess.com You have permission to publish this article in its entirety, unchanged, as long as the byline, URLs, and copyright are included.

lk_by_heart@yahoo.com

Marketing Secrets – the Top 10 Rules for Succesfull Email Marketing

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Top 10 Rules
Over the years I have helped create and execute hundreds of email broadcasts for everything from conferences to double-glazing, and betting services to financial services. I have seen some outstandingly good creative and some outstandingly bad. Creative is not the only factor involved in email success – data, timing, offer etc also have important bearings on response rates. Over the course of time I have come to recognize a few simple, but fundamental rules about email messages, that if followed, greatly enhance response.

1. Use good data. Only rent email addresses that have a verifiable opt-in status. Response rates are generally 10 times greater using good opt-in data rather than opt-out.

2. Keep the message simple. Email message broadcasting should be seen as a means to an end – the end being a contact with your prospect or a visit to your website. Long messages raise the threshold to response. Keep the reason for emailing to the forefront of the message.

3. Keep the creative simple. Try to ensure the whole message can be seen on one screen, including response mechanisms. Don’t use lots of different font sizes and typefaces – it confuses and detracts from the message. Make sure that graphics are hosted so that the file size is kept to a minimum – preferably less than 24kb.

4. Create a good Subject Line. Give the recipient a reason to open your message. Poorly considered subject lines will negate any good creative or offer, as the recipient may not even see it. Subject lines should be intriguing and not too salesmanlike.

5. Make it easy to respond – after all, this is the point of the exercise. Always have a clear, concise call to action. Allow them immediate access to your website and contact by email – they are online so use the media. You should also enable them to contact you offline.

6. Be prepared to broadcast on multiple occasions. You should not think of email marketing as a one off hit – an all or nothing approach. Research shows that response rates increase with frequency as the recognition factor increases.

7. Make use of HTML. Whilst keeping the message simple, you should where possible use html to create the message – it looks far better on screen, and allows the URL’s of links to be hidden behind visually pleasing images. You should always produce a txt version of the html to be broadcast simultaneously to the html, to ensure that recipients unable to accept html will be able to receive your message.

8. Track everything – open rates, unsubscribes clickable-links, emails received, telephone and faxes received. Simply tracking the clicks is only half the story. You should monitor what happened when the click through occurred on the website, as well as your sales call centre.

9. Get the timing right – don’t broadcast over night to B2B databases as the first thing that will happen the following morning is that the message will be deleted. Tuesdays and Thursdays have proved to be the most responsive for B2B broadcasts. Sending a message on a Friday afternoon to consumers has proved very successful.

10. Datacapture – make sure that at least one link on your email is to a datacapture screen.

http://www.ukmarketingmanagement.com
mailto: john@ukmarketingmanagement.com

This Document remains copyright 2003 UK Marketing Management Ltd. Re-distribution in its original format unchanged is
permitted. It is requested that you email permission@ukmarketingmanagement.com to inform the author where it has
been made available. Contact us for permission to make alterations.

John McCabe is the co-founder of UK Marketing Management, a specialist agency based in the UK. He has 15 years experience of developing campaigns in a variety of industries. During the last four years he has concentrated on email marketing, both as a corporate end user and as an agency. During this time he has helped develop the media with list owners, broadcasters and clients – pushing up service levels and quality of data.

Search Engine Optimization – Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimization a Perfect Marriage

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Pay per click or engine optimization, which one should you use? Many view PPC as a colossal waste of money while others disdain engine optimization. In reality, the two marketing strategies form a perfect marriage.

Pay-Per-Click – PPC

PPC marketing is a love it or hate platform. For the love it crowd, PPC marketing is a way to get instant exposure and feedback on site designs. In a matter of minutes, you can start receiving traffic and adjusting your site to convert the traffic at the best rate possible. For those in the hate it crowd, bids are to high and one never knows how may of the clicks are fake and worthless.

Optimization

As with PPC, seo marketing has its proponents and detractors. Those who love it look at the free traffic and glorious profitability of a site that converts the traffic at a decent rate. Detractors view seo as an unnecessary waste of time since it can take a year or more to get high rankings, particularly on Google. Detractors also argue that high listings are subject to changes in the process, which means you can lose your rankings.

So, who is right? In truth, both sides make accurate arguments. PPC is expensive and click fraud is a monstrous problem. Seo produces free traffic, but it takes along time to get to the top and rankings are subject to the whims of search engine ranking changes. The truth, of course, is both marketing platforms should be used whenever possible.

Marketing Marriage

Every site is unique, but most should combine PPC and seo marketing as part of an overall strategy. When starting out, the PPC campaign is critical for getting immediate traffic and tweaking the site to maximize conversions. At the same time, a seo campaign should be undertaken. As the site rises in search results, the PPC campaign should be fazed out for the relevant high listings.

PPC and seo marketing are not mutually exclusive. When married together as part of an overall marketing strategy, both platforms will deliver the goods.

About the author:
Halstatt Pires is with MarketingTitan.com- an Internet marketing and advertising company. To read more marketing articles, visit MarketingTitan.com

Use Forums To Improve Customer Relationship Management Jeff WaltersForums are great for learning, sharing of ideas, and generally masterminding with peers, but give some thought to the impact they can have on your lead generation efforts, as well as on your customer relationship management activities.

Joining an active forum can significantly accelerate your rate of learning whether you are a newbie or an experienced practitioner.

For newbies – even if you merely lurk in the shadows and dont post on your forums – you will learn a lot by reading questions by others, and the helpful replies by experienced forum members.

The benefit for the experienced members can be thought of as a web version of masterminding – ideas can be shared and validated, and various techniques can be discussed with peers often on different continents and in different time zones something not nearly as feasible in the physical world.

Apart from the information sharing and networking that forums offer, they have the potential to both positively and negatively impact your marketing efforts, levels of customer satisfaction, and the overall sentiments towards your customer relationship management.

The remainder of this article will give you some ideas as to how you can use forums in a positive way to improve your marketing initiatives. A follow-up article (Forum Perils for Customer Relationship Management) will cover how to avoid the negative impact forums can have on your business.

Forums can positively impact your marketing strategy and initiatives in the following way:

* Conduct Research / Investigate Reputation

Search engines make it so easy to research what is being said about both your products, as well as those of your competitors.

Simply type in the name of the product of service you want to research, followed by comments, review, scam, or any other relevant term. Within seconds you will have a list of website reviews, blog postings, and forum comments.

Ignore the first two (many are by affiliates just punting the product hoping to earn a fee) the ones to read are the forum conversations, where you will invariably get some pretty honest feedback good or bad about the product.

If you get some glowing comments in public/membership forums for your products, contact the individuals to see if you can post these as testimonials. Negative comments should also be reacted to once again, contact the individuals and see if you can rectify the situation. Often a fixed bad experience can convert a vocal detractor into a fan most people can tolerate a mistake, what makes them irate is when you ignore them, or pretend that no problem or grievance exists.

* Customer Relationship Management use for Satisfaction Tracking

If your business markets a product to quite a large user base, it makes marketing sense to set up a product-specific forum, and actively promote the forum to your customer base.

Once active, the postings by your customers will give you a good indication of the overall sentiment towards your product, as well as your service levels. Prospects can also use the forums as a gauge of product popularity and level of active support.

Your forum will also provide you with a communication channel to your customer base. You can use it to conduct quick polls essentially a free customer relationship management alternative to paid-for satisfaction audits by market research firms.

* New Product Ideas / Launches

Whether your website has a forum or not, it is worthwhile to join a couple of the more active forums related to your market. By monitoring questions, complaints, and cries for help, you can possibly identify the need for new products or services. A forum can also be a no-cost way to launch a pilot for a new product or service. You can get some early sign-ups/purchases without a major investment in marketing, and at the same time use the opportunity to get some quick testimonials.

* As An Expert / Attracting Traffic

Beyond merely identifying needs, you can use these forum questions as an opportunity to position yourself as a helpful expert. To do this, you need to monitor the most active threads (gets the most readership), and where you have the expertise, provide quality responses to posed questions. This will help grow your reputation over time.

If you ensure that your signature includes your website address preferably with a short tagline indicating your USP this can prove to be a very useful method for lead generation, and importantly, one that delivers qualified prospects.

If you notice frequently repeated newbie questions, consider setting up a FAQ section on your site, and then direct the enquirer to the page, rather than providing a comprehensive answer in the forum.

* Finding JV partners

Monitoring active forums has another positive marketing spin off – it will help you identify potential JV partners. In the same way you are being assessed as to your expert know-how, you can use the postings by your peers to identify those with whom it would make sense to explore setting up joint ventures. This could get you access to mailing lists that you currently do not have, and in so doing, significantly broaden your marketing reach.

If you are adding an online component to your offline business, or starting to investigate an online business opportunity, consider how you can incorpor
ate the points listed above. For those suggestions that have a nice fit with your market, make a decision to take action and include them in your marketing activities. By actively and consistently applying these forum tactics you will find that both your lead generation and customer relationship management initiatives will be far more productive.

2005 Intellinova (Pty) Ltd. – All Rights Reserved

About the author:
For the past 20 years, Jeff Walters has been transforming raw business data into profit-producing strategic information in various data intensive sectors- banking, insurance, gambling, medical, government.

He has lead several data-to-information projects:
ABC Costing, analytical CRM, datamart /data warehouse development, and Balanced Scorecard.

Jeff can be contacted through: www.IntelliNova.com,or www.SystematicDirectMarketing.com

This article may be reprinted, provided it is published in its entirety, includes the author bio information, and all links remain active.

Search Engine Secrets – Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimization a Perfect Marriage

· Leave a Comment

Pay per click or , which one should you use? Many view PPC as a colossal waste of money while others disdain engine optimization. In reality, the two strategies form a perfect marriage.

Pay-Per-Click – PPC

PPC marketing is a love it or hate platform. For the love it crowd, PPC marketing is a way to get instant exposure and feedback on site designs. In a matter of minutes, you can start receiving traffic and adjusting your site to convert the traffic at the best rate possible. For those in the hate it crowd, bids are to high and one never knows how may of the clicks are fake and worthless.

Optimization

As with PPC, seo marketing has its proponents and detractors. Those who love it look at the free traffic and glorious profitability of a site that converts the traffic at a decent rate. Detractors view seo as an unnecessary waste of time since it can take a year or more to get high rankings, particularly on Google. Detractors also argue that high listings are subject to changes in the process, which means you can lose your rankings.

So, who is right? In truth, both sides make accurate arguments. PPC is expensive and click fraud is a monstrous problem. Seo produces free traffic, but it takes along time to get to the top and rankings are subject to the whims of search engine ranking changes. The truth, of course, is both marketing platforms should be used whenever possible.

Marketing Marriage

Every site is unique, but most should combine PPC and seo marketing as part of an overall strategy. When starting out, the PPC campaign is critical for getting immediate traffic and tweaking the site to maximize conversions. At the same time, a seo campaign should be undertaken. As the site rises in search results, the PPC campaign should be fazed out for the relevant high listings.

PPC and seo marketing are not mutually exclusive. When married together as part of an overall marketing strategy, both platforms will deliver the goods.

About the author:
Halstatt Pires is with MarketingTitan.com- an Internet marketing and advertising company. To read more marketing articles, visit MarketingTitan.com

Use Forums To Improve Customer Relationship Management Jeff WaltersForums are great for learning, sharing of ideas, and generally masterminding with peers, but give some thought to the impact they can have on your lead generation efforts, as well as on your customer relationship management activities.

Joining an active forum can significantly accelerate your rate of learning whether you are a newbie or an experienced practitioner.

For newbies – even if you merely lurk in the shadows and dont post on your forums – you will learn a lot by reading questions by others, and the helpful replies by experienced forum members.

The benefit for the experienced members can be thought of as a web version of masterminding – ideas can be shared and validated, and various techniques can be discussed with peers often on different continents and in different time zones something not nearly as feasible in the physical world.

Apart from the information sharing and networking that forums offer, they have the potential to both positively and negatively impact your marketing efforts, levels of customer satisfaction, and the overall sentiments towards your customer relationship management.

The remainder of this article will give you some ideas as to how you can use forums in a positive way to improve your marketing initiatives. A follow-up article (Forum Perils for Customer Relationship Management) will cover how to avoid the negative impact forums can have on your business.

Forums can positively impact your marketing strategy and initiatives in the following way:

* Conduct Research / Investigate Reputation

Search engines make it so easy to research what is being said about both your products, as well as those of your competitors.

Simply type in the name of the product of service you want to research, followed by comments, review, scam, or any other relevant term. Within seconds you will have a list of website reviews, blog postings, and forum comments.

Ignore the first two (many are by affiliates just punting the product hoping to earn a fee) the ones to read are the forum conversations, where you will invariably get some pretty honest feedback good or bad about the product.

If you get some glowing comments in public/membership forums for your products, contact the individuals to see if you can post these as testimonials. Negative comments should also be reacted to once again, contact the individuals and see if you can rectify the situation. Often a fixed bad experience can convert a vocal detractor into a fan most people can tolerate a mistake, what makes them irate is when you ignore them, or pretend that no problem or grievance exists.

* Customer Relationship Management use for Satisfaction Tracking

If your business markets a product to quite a large user base, it makes marketing sense to set up a product-specific forum, and actively promote the forum to your customer base.

Once active, the postings by your customers will give you a good indication of the overall sentiment towards your product, as well as your service levels. Prospects can also use the forums as a gauge of product popularity and level of active support.

Your forum will also provide you with a communication channel to your customer base. You can use it to conduct quick polls essentially a free customer relationship management alternative to paid-for satisfaction audits by market research firms.

* New Product Ideas / Launches

Whether your website has a forum or not, it is worthwhile to join a couple of the more active forums related to your market. By monitoring questions, complaints, and cries for help, you can possibly identify the need for new products or services. A forum can also be a no-cost way to launch a pilot for a new product or service. You can get some early sign-ups/purchases without a major investment in marketing, and at the same time use the opportunity to get some quick testimonials.

* As An Expert / Attracting Traffic

Beyond merely identifying needs, you can use these forum questions as an opportunity to position yourself as a helpful expert. To do this, you need to monitor the most active threads (gets the most readership), and where you have the expertise, provide quality responses to posed questions. This will help grow your reputation over time.

If you ensure that your signature includes your website address preferably with a short tagline indicating your USP this can prove to be a very useful method for lead generation, and importantly, one that delivers qualified prospects.

If you notice frequently repeated newbie questions, consider setting up a FAQ section on your site, and then direct the enquirer to the page, rather than providing a comprehensive answer in the forum.

* Finding JV partners

Monitoring active forums has another positive marketing spin off – it will help you identify potential JV partners. In the same way you are being assessed as to your expert know-how, you can use the postings by your peers to identify those with whom it would make sense to explore setting up joint ventures. This could get you access to mailing lists that you currently do not have, and in so doing, significantly broaden your marketing reach.

If you are adding an online component to your offline business, or starting to investigate an online business opportunity, consider how you can incorpor
ate the points listed above. For those suggestions that have a nice fit with your market, make a decision to take action and include them in your marketing activities. By actively and consistently applying these forum tactics you will find that both your lead generation and customer relationship management initiatives will be far more productive.

2005 Intellinova (Pty) Ltd. – All Rights Reserved

About the author:
For the past 20 years, Jeff Walters has been transforming raw business data into profit-producing strategic information in various data intensive sectors- banking, insurance, gambling, medical, government.

He has lead several data-to-information projects:
ABC Costing, analytical CRM, datamart /data warehouse development, and Balanced Scorecard.

Jeff can be contacted through: www.IntelliNova.com,or www.SystematicDirectMarketing.com

This article may be reprinted, provided it is published in its entirety, includes the author bio information, and all links remain active.

Search Engine Marketing Secrets – 5 Tips to Heat Up Your on-Line Marketing Using Off-Line Tactics

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The internet of course brings a huge arena of
opportunities for you. The ability to do business with people
around the world has now been made readily available through
a web site and email. It truly has leveled the playing field and
has provided ALL of us with the opportunity of taking our business
to the global level.

How powerful is that!!

While everyone is focusing on their “eBusiness” they are missing
the potential that exists in using off line marketing approaches to
boost their online marketing efforts.

Here are five things you can do to heat up your efforts.

Articles

Actually if you are already using Articles as a marketing tactic
for your on line marketing efforts, use the same articles for off
line publications as well. Publishers regardless of the fact they
are on or off line are ALL looking for good, valuable content.

Advertising

You know the effects that advertising on line can have for your
business. You already have an ad that pulls for you on line. Then
why not give it a shot off line and see if you can tap into another
possible .

Again, with the local newsletters in your community and any small
business groups there are. Check out their rates and start using
off line advertising to generate some exposure from off line
sources.

Remember that you have to pay for this advertising so in that
regard, advertising in something that you can afford and afford
for a long period of time.

Networking

By attending a networking mixer you are getting the best of both
worlds. You get the chance to get out and break out of that bubble
AND you also get to spread the word about your business by talking
with others!!

Depending upon the format, many of these mixers are of a referral
nature. Meaning they allow only one business from each industry
and through each member’s dealings if they find someone looking
for your service or product… then you will
get a referral to follow up on.

Business Cards

A business card can end up in more places than you can even
dream possible. They are a cost effective marketing tool. How
many places do you go to on a regular basis where you could
just leave a few business cards on a counter??? Now even if
you are an eBusiness owner you can still use this to your
advantage.

Here are a few things to consider when getting your cards done.

1. Do not go with black printing on a white card. It screams cheap
and newbie. If money is tight, understandable, but go for a coloured
card stock with a matching coloured print. It is still inexpensive and
it doesn’t scream new, or “Herb Tarlick” marketing practices.

2. Include your business name, contact name, phone number, site
address, web site address and of course your address. If for
security reasons you don’t want to include your home address
then that’s fine. However, make sure you have ALL possible ways
for a potential customer to do business with you.

3. USE THE BACK OF THE CARD…what a waste of potential
marketing opportunities. So many people forget about this. A
business card is a mini- billboard…use it ALL. On the back you
could have a few tips and then the email address to your
autoresponder for them to get more info. I had an Accountant
use the back of her card by providing all the applicable phone
numbers to all the tax offices that a business owner would need.
Another client of mine is a travel agent and he included all the
1-800 numbers for the prime airlines and car rental agencies. The
idea is to make your card a keeper ;o)

Business Alliances

Ok, on line we refer to these as Joint Ventures, Business Alliances
is the same thing, but only the name has been changed.

Leverage yourself by finding another business owner off line,
where you can set up an alliance and piggy back each other’s
marketing efforts. This one takes a little time and effort to set
up, but, once it is again you are tapping into prospects that would
never have found you otherwise.

There you go, five quick tips and in some regards you can use the
same tactic in both on and off line marketing…so why not???

About the author:

Denise Ryder is a Marketing Coach and is owner of ProfitSpace
Newsletter, ( http://www.profitspace.com). Hey, want to learn
how to turn a mundane sign up process into a profit-puller for
your eCourses, Reports and Newsletters? Get this free download
now ( http://www.profitspace.com/book.html)

Marketing Secrets – Article Marketing – How to Make It Work for You

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PaulCopyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul

Information based is one of the oldest and most effective techniques for bringing targeted prospects to your site and converting them into buyers. This is part of the reason that software, and distribution services that make the process of article easier are so popular lately.

Though the various tools you can use to make the process of distributing your articles more easily are invaluable in getting your content the most exposure, thats only half of the story.

Getting article marketing to work for your site lies primarily in two things:

The article youre submitting, and
The preparation you do before you a single word of your content is written.

Since those two determining factors make at least 50% of the difference in bringing you success, lets take a look at what the most common mistakes are in that area, and how to overcome them.

Mistake #1 – Confusing the Reason to Promote with Articles with the Reason to Write Articles

There are three key benefits to promoting an article – branding, lead generation, and as a corollary, online promotion, particularly as part of your optimization efforts.

Yet there is only one reason to write an article, and that is to inform your audience. If your article is not geared towards this as its primary purpose, you will fail to see the three benefits of promotion – because no one will want to read your article.

How many links youre able to generate by submitting your article to hundreds of sites will matter little if youre unable to get them picked up by publications, or read by people who for information.

Sure, if you know what youre doing all those links pointing back to your site will count for something in your results – but remember that generating links to your site is only one part of optimizing your site for Google, Yahoo or MSN.

To overcome this issue, youll need to figure out how to get people to read what is in your article, and then click through to your site from your resource box. The best start to a solution is to produce better content.

In the end its a matter of choice. You can get a little exposure from increased link backs, on a very basic level, or enjoy massive exposure from a little extra work.

Mistake #2 – Starting The Article Promotion without a Plan

Not every article can fulfil all three purposes of promotion. Some will work better for branding, others can generate leads and increase sales. But if you dont start out with a plan for what the function of your article should be, youll end up unhappy with the results.

To overcome this issue, before you write a single word, decide what purpose the article is supposed to serve. An article meant to you as an expert should display your knowledge. One for generating leads may need to be geared towards solving a very specific problem.

An article that gets published every where and helps to make you known is not meant to have the same level of exposure as hyper-targeted content geared towards a narrow group of people. Learning the difference will help you know what kinds of articles to write.

Mistake #3- Publishing Content That Doesnt Help Your Reader

Maybe youre thinking: All I want is links back to my site – any visitors the article generates is gravy.

Well guess what? Not all article banks and directories are going to accept your content automatically. You can double the number of sites you can submit to by writing articles that the directories want to share with readers. And all it takes is one publisher with a hundred thousand readers to increase your potential audience tenfold.

So if you want article marketing to work for you, write articles that publishers want in their publications.

This also means obeying the standard guidelines, running a spell check, researching a good topic to write about, or even hiring a writer to produce articles on your behalf.

Mistake #4 – Failing to Maximize the Opportunities of Article Marketing

You already know that articles marketing can help you generate additional links back to your site. But did you know that you can get more visitors and better search engine results from articles in a variety of ways?

You can mention your desired keyword in strategic places, though you should take care not to overdo this. Some people will also tell you to make use of anchor text, which can also is an effective method. However, you should know that the majority of directories and publications arent able to support this.

There are alternatives to this method that are just as effective, if not more so, but they require more space to explain.

Its not just about the links back to your site either. Part of doing well with article marketing is getting picked up by publishers with large audiences, or gaining the ability to leverage other brands due to the quality of your work.

Better search engine results are great.

But by themselves they dont put money in your pocket – there are a myriad of factors that can turn your article marketing efforts into an opportunity to increase your income, not just the number of visitors to your site.

About the author:
Tinu Abayomi-Paul is a Web Promotion Specialist who runs the Free Traffic Tips Blog. You can read part two of this article at http://www.freetraffictip.com/article-marketingand learn about three more common mistakes even veteran article marketers make.

Search Engine Optimization – List Building vs. Search Engine Optimization

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List Building vs. Optimization

by: Robert Gwuzd

It seems the excitement about engine optimization fades in and out from time to time. The more people talk about engine optimization () the more it seems to be the logical choice for bringing customers to your site. However, there are some points that I havent seen anyone else make as of yet about the effectiveness of versus the effectiveness of building a responsive list. I think youll be surprised to see which one comes out on top.

Rules and Regulations

There are rules and regulations for almost everything in life. List building and SEO are no different.

Rules for SEO: Your HTML coding has to be just so in order to rank highly on the engines. Your copy (text) also needs to include specific a certain number of times in specific places or you might not be accepted. And if you are accepted, unless you follow all the dos and donts of SEO, youll likely not see the top 10 or even the top 50.

Rules for List Building: Offer a good product or service; notify your list about it, and watch the sales come in.

The Only Constant Is Change

If you do get accepted in the search engines, you might be tempted to rest easy. Dont! As weve seen in recent months, search engines can change their policies and ranking orders at the flip of a switch. If you depend on search engines for all your traffic, such a change could leave you completely out of business. Not good!

Lists on the other hand are built from loyalty not rules and regulations. The people who subscribe to your list, ezine, or newsletter are there because they want to be. Theyve come to you because you offer them something of quality something unique.

If you change the design or copy on your site, it wont matter one bit to the members of your list. Theyll still be there for you. If the search engines decide theyre only going to list sites that use the colors blue, green, and purple it wont affect you at all.

Sales vs. Leads

Truth be known, SEO only drives leads to your site not sales. On the other hand, list building puts your offer in front of those who have already checked you out, decided they liked what you had to say, and chose to stick with you. These are loyal, pre-qualified individuals who are waiting to receive your next mailing and purchase your next product.

Free, Automatic, and Viral

Lastly, list building can be done at no cost. List building can happen automatically and can (and should) be a viral process.

If you produce a quality list that offers something of value, others will want to tell their friends about you. This process of automatic, viral costs you nothing whatsoever and works like a dream because your subscribers are making unsolicited recommendations to those who trust them.

This process not only drives new subscribers to your list, but also ultimately makes new sales for you.

Search engines, on the other hand, do not operate virally. While some are free, many charge for the opportunity to be reviewed for inclusion. Still others charge on a pay-per-click basis, which can get very costly without ever bringing in one sale.

When all is said and done, which one is better? Lists or search engines? While both can have an important role in your marketing plan, if what youre looking for is the generation of more sales building a responsive list simply cant be beat.

About The Author

How – exactly – do you build a list that delivers an automated, consistent, monthly income? Robert Gwuzd and Ian Herculson have teamed up to offer you The Opt-In Strategy, a powerful, FREE EBOOK designed to show you specifically how to build a list of thousands who will consistently buy from you. Best of all this ebook COSTS YOU NOTHING. Download it now at http://www.opt-insolution.com

Search Engine Marketing Secrets – Promotional Marketing Products – Selecting the Perfect Item

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People are known to shop on impulse- buying an item just because it is on sale, or purchasing something because it looks great in the store. When shopping for items, you really can’t succumb to impulses. Instead, you must carefully decide on an item that will help meet your objectives.

A career school admissions representative who worked with the high school once wanted to buy magnets to give to people. Although magnets were in the budget, they would not really do the job of spreading the word among other high school students, as the magnets would be at home on the fridge where maybe a handful of other students would see. A better idea was to give out day planners (only to enrolled students) that they could carry to school everyday where hundreds of classmates could see. “Oh- that’s where I’m going to school after graduation” they would say when asked about the school’s name on the planner. Rachel, the rep, was hurt that the magnets she liked did not get ordered. But, Rachel does not have a background and she didn’t understand that these items served another purpose.

So, when ordering your items before you even browse the pages of catalogs or websites, you want to have some objectives in mind. You would not want to invest money in an item that doesn’t match the tactic. Think about these:

-Do you want to stimulate trade show traffic?
-Do you want to use these as sales aids?
-Are these going to be premiums?
-Are you introducing a new product/service?
-Do you want to thank current customers?
-Are these for an event giveaway?
-Are these to motivate employees?
-Are you trying to gain back lost business?
-Are you trying to improve customer service?
-Are these going to be used as gifts?
-Are you using them to supplement a direct mail campaign?

These are just a few questions you will want to ask yourself. If you are looking to supplement a general direct mail campaign, you will want to keep postage costs in mind. Perhaps mailing a magnet, sticker, pocket calendar, pen or pencil would be something good to use. You would not want to mail a t-shirt or mug- that would be very pricey for the response rate of direct mail! If you are doing a campaign to target past customers or are just doing a smaller-gauge mailing, perhaps something a little bigger would work.

On the flipside, if you are looking at motivating employees, thanking customers, buying gifts or building premiums chances are you will want to budget more money per item. However, there is likely to be fewer items ordered. I don’t think a pen would be ample to thank someone for years of service! Items for these categories would fall under desk supplies, plaques, acrylic awards, clocks, engraved items and more.

If you are using these items or sales purposes, perhaps if you have traveling sales people, you will want something that will be left behind to keep your name top of mind. Things like a note cube or coffee mug are things that can sit on a decision-makers desk for a long time.

If you are looking to promote your business at an event, such as a concert or festival, passing out t-shirts could be a great idea. You can easily tie t-shirts up in knots and throw them to the crowds. Lower ticket items for events could be things like pens, pencils, keychains, magnets, calendars, tape measures and more.

Finally, cost is something to keep in mind too. You don’t want to spend the same amount on a prospect as you would on a loyal customer. Use this as a suggestion:
Under $5- Prospect
$5-$25- Reward
Over $25- Loyalty

The important thing here is that promotional items should not be ordered just because you like it. The item should clearly be in the plan to help meet your business objectives.

About the author:
Cindy Carrera is a freelance creative author who’s written numerous articles about PR including: business promotional items, custom promotional products and wholesale promotional items.

MLM Leads- The Top 5 Traits of a Great MLM Leaddoug firebaughThere are certain traits that you look for in a good MLM lead. After working a TON of leads, and blessed to having built an organization worldwide, I have found that all good MLM Lead have 5 traits in common, with no exception. These traits you look for, and if you find that a lead has at least 3 of them you have a great possibility for your business. And MLM Leads can also end up being one of the best revenue sources for you, but first, find these traits. If you do, you will strike GOLD. These traits are common sense in many respects, but many times are rare to find.

1) A GREAT Personality.

One of the KEY traits that we have found is an infectious personality. A personality that truly shines and glows. You can feel their warmth over the telephone, and sincerity. They have the type of personality that you simply want to be around, and talk to.

You know the type. For whatever reason, you ENJOY the conversation with them, and they are always positive, and optimistic. They have a tendency to make you glad that you talked to them, and you are drawn towards them

This type of MLM Lead can be a gold mine, as they usually hang out with people of the same personality, and same outlook on life. They rarely are down, and when you call them they always seem glad you called.

2) High Energy.

Another KEY traits to look for is High Energy. But let me be clear: High Energy is NOT hype. There are many folks out there that you will call that will try to HYPE you into believing you have found the GOLD MINE you have been looking for, and will tell you all about how great they are.

High Energy people don???t really talk that much about themselves, but what they are doing. They focus on the engagement of actions and results, and you can FEEL their energy radiate form the phone and any communication they do. They can GET THINGS DONE, and refuse to quit during adversity. Plus, they have a great approach to Success in Life and Network Marketing- they have a philosophy of WHAT ARE WE WAITING ON????

3) Great People Skills.

This trait is HUGE. They MUST feel comfortable with people. Especially people they do not know. In MLM, you will communicate and work with a lot of folks that you do not know. And if you find that your MLM Lead has great people skills, you will have found a great potential for Success in network marketing.

People skills include friendliness, good listener, sincere, great communicator, and loves people. If a person truly loves people, they will go a LONG WAY to being a Success as an MLM lead.

4) A Good Listener.

An MLM Lead that is a good listener will end up being a better recruiter than most. Recruiting is all about listening to the prospect.. If you fins that the MLM Lead asks questions, and then LISTENS and them asks more questions,. You have found a good possibility for a recruit. Listening is the MASTER skill in Communication in Network Marketing, and Recruiting. A good listener is hard to find, but they are out there.

Does the MLM Lead talk more than they listen? Do they try and dominate the conversation? Do they try and impress you? If this is the case, they probably do not have a great listening pattern established. But if they do listen to you, ask questions, and then ask more questions that make sense to ask, then you have found a potential gold mine for recruiting and building an organization.

5) Available when they said they would be.

This is a HUGE trait that many MLM leads do not have. If a prospect says to call them back in 2 days, and you do, and they continue the
conversation as before, you have a good one. Many MLM leads will not available at the time you call, because they had no intention to begin with of doing your business. A person of their word, who shows up for a return call like they said they would, is a person of integrity.

Many people will attempt to play hide and seek as an MLM lead, and that is just part of the business. If they do not show up like they said they would, that is an issue that you may want to consider in the future, as all Future Great Leaders keep their word.

And here is a BONUS Trait- DISSATISFIED. A Great MLM lead MUST be dissatisfied with their income, life, future, or something. You are to help them change what they are not happy with in their life, with your products and company. If they are Dissatisfied, then that means they are probably LOOKING for something better. Help them find it.

These are the 5 Traits you should look for in a great lead. Yes, there are other traits that you will MLM leads, but these are the ones that we found to be worth GOLD in this business of working MLM Leads.

blessings…doug
PassionFire Intl
(c) 2005

Subscribe to the MLM Network Marketing Training Letter- The MLM Success HEAT

About the author:
Doug Firebaugh is one of the top trainers in the world in MLM and Network Marketing. He was fulltime in MLM for 13 years, and the last 7 years has traveled the world training and speaking. He lives in Birmingham, Michigan. Over a million people a month read his training ezine. You can get a FREE subscription at:
http://www.passionfire.com/pf_heat_4.html
contact: doug@powerfire.com
http://www.passionfire.com

Search Engine Secrets – How to Avoid Website Downtime That Can Affect Your Search Engine Listings, Cost You Money, and Damage Your Reputation

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If your web pages are down even momentarily it can hurt you several ways. Learn why, and what to do to make sure your pages are visible the maximum amount of time.

The Internet has changed the way we access information, and the way we buy and sell products and services. When it works, which, fortunately, is most of the time, ideas and cash flow from person to person, company to company, and country to country.

But when the inevitable happens and your pages go down, your business, your bank account and your reputation can suffer, especially if you are unaware of the down status of your e-business operations for more than a few minutes. One way this can hurt you is with the engines.

Whether you operate a corporate website, a mom-and-pop or something in between, theres no question about it. If you want to get traffic via the search engines, you have to work at getting and maintaining on the first page of the current big four Google, Yahoo, MSN and AskJeeves. Depending on the youre trying to get high results for, this can be a time-and-resource intensive process.

Everyone who uses knows that getting and keeping high placement is an ongoing process filled with many unknowns. The rules of the game seem to change without notice, causing frustration, disappointment and even desperation among beginners and veterans alike. Methods that work today may not work tomorrow. Tactics that may be legal today may cause problems tomorrow.

Its as if, despite all the research, experimentation and best intentions, there really is no exact formula that can be applied to guarantee results. There is, however, one aspect of that is a known quantity. If your pages are down even briefly when the spiders visit, you run the risk of losing your place. And unless they come back up immediately, they may be dropped altogether.

For example, Googles Information for Webmasters area says that if your pages cannot be crawled after several attempts due to network or hosting problems, they wont be listed meaning theyll be dropped and it may take a few weeks to for them to show up again. MSNs guidelines state that if your server is offline or there is another access problem when their spider tries to crawl your site, it may not return until a later time. Neither Yahoo nor AskJeeves seems to have guidelines on this issue, but its reasonable to assume that they and other search engine spiders operate like Google and MSN.

Another pitfall of web page downtime is wasted pay-per-click advertising dollars. When PPC landing pages go down, your clicks go nowhere and your money is needlessly depleted. And the PPC medium may suspend your ad if your landing page goes down for too long.

Its a fact that web surfers have limited, if any, patience for page not found errors. Building credibility and trust on the Internet is a challenging task. When surfers click to your page, and its not there, they may conclude that you are out of business. At first exposure to you, if your page is not available they are likely to find a competitor and forget all about you. Yes, you can create a custom 404-error page, but if your entire site is down, that wont help you much.

Suppose you sell advertising on your site and it goes down. What will your advertisers think if they visit your site and dont see their ads?

Maybe you have a paid membership site. What will your members think when they try to access your site and its not there?

Suppose a reporter visits your site and its down. That could kill a budding story about you, or it could inadvertently cause them to write something negative about you.

Why risk all these problems when the solution is so simple and cost-effective?

The answer is remote website monitoring. For under $20 per month, you can get basic monitoring that will inform you if your site is down so you can take immediate action to fix the problem. Depending on the complexity of your e-business operation, you can get more sophisticated service features that can monitor not only your pages, but also your database, servers, transactions and can even check for content changes on your pages. If someone hacked into your site and changed the content on your home page, wouldnt it be nice to know about it before the rest of the world does?

To check out companies that offer these services, do a search for remote website monitoring. Most companies have free trials. The key is to find a company that has flexible service options. Depending on the scope of your e-business, you may or may not need certain features that are bundled together. Why pay for what you dont want? Also, bigger may not be better. Look for an established company that is not too big to give you excellent customer service. During your free trial, send a question or two to their tech support and see how fast they respond. This will give you an idea of what youll get after you pay.

Whatever you do, do it today. You cant afford to not know if your web pages are down.

About the author:

Nick Nichols directs marketing activities at WebSitePulse.com, a leading provider of website uptime and monitoring services. Visit http://www.WebSitePulse.comfor a free trial and know how your site is doing 24/7.

Marketing Secrets – Can You Convert Your Marketing Into a Religion?

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Religion breeds fanatics.

We’ve all seen that. And if it works for a bunch of crazies, why not make the same strategies work for your product or service? Can you possibly adapt a system that has worked flawlessly for thousands of years to your business? Do you want to have customers chanting your name endlessly?

Suuuuuurrrrre you do! Read on and I’ll show you how it works!

Why Grandpa’s Restaurant Died!

Grandpa’s restaurant was his pride and joy. The food was yum! The service was basic, but quick. And the prices pretty much ensured a happy little paunch over time. Yet amazingly, the customers dwindled and the restaurant slowly rode away into the sunset.

I was in shock. That was my goodbye to free meals forever. You may not think much of it, but I was twelve, and in that traumatic instant every single free meal of my impending teenage years flashed before my eyes.

So what did Grandpa do wrong? He had a whole cohort of hungry disciples, yet he never did anything with them.. Here are a few marketing strategies he could have taken that would have ensured my rumbling tummy rumbled no more!

Magical, Magical Data!

Every day, millions of people walk in and out of restaurants. Yet most restaurants know not where they come from, or where they go, or when they will be back.

Wake up and smell the coffee you’ve been selling!

When they eat at your place, they become existing customers. And fifteen seconds after their delicious dessert, they become DORMANT! How the heck are you going to get them back, if you don’t know anything about them? The only way to do that is to collect data, much like this website does. When you know your customers a bit better, you can talk to them personally, and cater to their individual needs.

Can I Have Your Name While You Finish Your Beef Vindaloo?

Yes, you figured it out. You can’t do that. And the time between their eating and walking out, is so fleeting that you may as well not try. So what do you do? You count on a basic human factor — greed.

All of us are greedy and getting something for nothing is what we’d stake our steak on.

Imagine this scenario: You walk up to a more than satisfied customer right after the meal. Instead of the usual moronic, “How was your meal?”, why not ask, “Was the food good enough to come back again?” Now that’s a specific question. If they say yes, you give them a little form, informing them that their next meal is a whole 15% off. Would they like to fill in a form with their email address and postal address so that we can send them a voucher?

Aha! In one second, your database is off the mark, and you can pretty much bet that the yummiest of those seven deadly sins will kick in to get that customer back! Better still, you’ve got their permission to start a relationship. Yippee Doo!

How to Get Your Data Simmering

Once you have their information on file, how do you use it? The worst thing you can do is tell your foodies about how good you are. Tell them what they want to hear!

They are food lovers, remember? How can you entice them? Can you reach out and give them something special? Could you throw in a frequent-eater deal? Reach into their greedy stomach and something snaps in their brain, causing them to eat eight times a year, just to make ‘eat points’. With every trip, they get to know the restaurant system better. They order stuff they like. They feel happier. People know them. They find a favorite table and God help anyone who crosses their path.

They have now reached the level of fanaticism.

How to Turn the Fanaticism Into a Religion

The only way to start a religion is to get disciples. Digging into your database, invite your best fanatics for a special thank you meal. Suddenly, you’ve got an advertising campaign for the price of a leg of lamb with mint pesto and baby carrots.

They are the disciples. Their burps spread the word. You sit back and rake in the moolah.

Besides, by networking like-minded people together, you’re increasing their chances to do business with each other. The richer they get, the busier they become, and the more they want a place that knows and caters to their needs. The friends they bring along reflect their own wealth and status, thus sending the whole system in an unending loop of upgraded customers spreading the good news in double quick time.

Getting the Chinks Out of The System

If good news is a jumbo jet, bad news is a Concorde. However, regular customers get comfortable with you and don’t mind complaining. They nit pick with the loving tenderness of mom and make sure you stay in line. You couldn’t pay for this feedback if you tried.

So, try!

If a regular customer complains, make sure she gets rewarded for complaining. It’s like rewarding a puppy for good behaviour and what you really need is a steady stream of complaints to fix your systems constantly.

Grandpa never heard the complaints. The customers simply didn’t show up again. And his business walked out with them never to return.

Grandpa made his share of mistakes but there’s no reason why you can’t learn from them. The same marketing principles apply whether you’re in the food business or selling coffee mugs.

These are the strategic steps:

1) Throw in The Bait: Entice them with something to part with the data. If at first it doesn’t work, keep trying till you find something that does. Then, repeat it with every customer.

2) Use the Data Creatively: Think GREED. How can you make your customers want to keep coming back? You’ve got to appeal to base instincts.

3) Form a Club: Well-organised disciples are better than random fanatics. If one club gets too big, form another,and then another, till you have a whole series of people who swear by you, and for you.

4) Don’t Be Shy: Make them also swear against you. Get feedback. Encourage it. Pay for it. Just do it!

Which brings me back to me. Why did I choose a restaurant as an example when I could have chosen any other product or service? The prime reason is simply because restaurants involve impulse decisions, and patrons are very fickle. Proving it works in this field proves it can work in almost any other.

But there’s a selfish motive, too. I’m hoping some restaurateurs out there will be so pleased with this information, they’ll offer me free meals forever! That way, I can catch up on the teenage years.

Finally!

About the author:
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas? Find simple, yet electrifying ideas onmarketing strategy,psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com##smallbusinessideastoday and judge for yourself.

Search Engine Optimization – One Simple Action to Increase Search Engine Optimization

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Engine Optimization () is big business. Many Internet companies proclaim that they can increased your web traffic and page ranking. Of course, they charge big bucks to help you improve your web site traffic. What you are really paying for is their so-called expertise or what some call intellectual capital. This leads to a simple question: If you could reallocate some of your limited dollars through your own efforts and achieve your small business goals, how would that affect your business? During these last few months, this is precisely the action that I took.

First Lesson Learned: SEO is more about simplicity than complexity. The challenge is to understand the simplicity within the complexity of search engines, robots and key words.

To understand the simplicity of SEO begins by returning to why web sites exist. Originally, web sites were considered to be cyber space storefronts. As the Internet evolved, web sites evolved with incredible graphics and even more information including the ability to sell products and services through a Shopping Cart.

Today, web sites are still evolving and objectives ever expanding. Some are used to demonstrate subject matter expertise while others are to share collective information within a companys internal and external customers. Each micro second trillions of bytes of data travel through this Super Highway.

Returning to the highways of yesteryear, what do we remember? Possibly, the Burma Shave slogans on the numerous road signs come to mind? If you can recollect the Burma Shave signs, the product Burma Shave was always on the last sign. (You can visit www.fiftiesweb.com/burmal.htm for verification.)

Second Lesson Learned: SEO is about what you do, not who you are.

Advertising agencies understood the value of benefits and that people bought based upon benefits. For example, women did not want rough cheeks and men enjoyed driving cars wide open. So what does this have to do with your web site you might ask?

Third Lesson Learned: I needed my own Burma Signs.
Each web site has a page title or what I respectfully ask you to now consider them as your own Burma Signs on the Internet Super Highway. Your page title is one long uninterrupted road sign instead of several small ones. By using http://inventory.overture.com , you can determine what key words that you wish to place on your Burma Signs.

When I began revising my website, I had a page title that began with ADVANCED SYSTEMS. In checking key word searches, I learned that ADVANCED SYSTEMS was searched less than 700 times during the previous month. However, when I keyed in the word training, I received over 165,000 searches. Title selection just became quite simple. (Note: See second lesson learned.)

So if you wish to hit your target of increased web traffic, then simply begin with your page title. Use key words that describe what you do and not who you are. Remember to try to keep the title to 77 characters and include your location because this is the Internet highway and sometimes travelers do get lost.

Word Count 511

Copyright 2005(c) Leanne Hoagland-Smith, www.processspecialist.com

This article may be freely published. Permission to publish this article, electronically or in print, as long as the bylines are included, with a live link, and the article is not changed in any way (grammatical corrections accepted).

About the author:
Leanne Hoagland-Smith helps individuals and organizations to double results usually within 2 to 12 weeks. She secures lifelong change through proven processes. If at least doubling your revenue, improving your organizational culture or finding balance interests you, visit www.processspecialist.comor ask to subscribe to complimentary copy of Power Choices a monthly newsletter at www.processspecialist.com

Search Engine Marketing Secrets – Stop Wasting Time With the Search Engines

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Your Content is Kingstop wasting time with engines

used to be fairly simple. The algorithms the engines used were clearly based on strategically placed , and the strategy in the early days was to beat the engines. How? By loading each page with hundreds of , made invisible by making the words the same color as the page background.

The search engines have become a lot smarter since the old days, and figuring out their complex formulas has become a losers game. Yet the goals of both sides need not be mutually exclusive.

The optimizers just want to rank their pages higher.

The search engines are only trying to reflect the most accurate and quality results for their customers. Algorithms are kept secret only because people will do anything to rank higher, regardless of the value of their content.

When you enter a search term, youre taken to a page of results, and advertisements related to your search words. Here are some of the things the search engine tracks:

-What sites you click onbased on their title and description. This is why key words are still important. Theyre the front gate to a site.

-How long before you come back to that results page. If you come back immediately, thats an indication the site wasnt relevant for you, and the engine failed.

-Incoming links to that site, and their relevancy. This is a tough thing for a computer to gauge, and its why investing in artificial intelligence now might be a good idea. Computers get smarter all the time.

There are about 100 more factors that go into a sites evaluation. But the bottom line is that to rank high, you need to provide valuable, relevant content consistently.

If actual people like your site, the engines will also.

So, whats your next step?

You need to provide valuable, relevant contentconsistently.

In building and developing your site (a continual process, as Ive said before), dont obsess over key words and search engine optimization. And please dont hire one of the experts who knows how to beat the engines. If they were that smart they truly would not be available for hire.

Focus instead on providing relevant, interesting, benefit-oriented content for your readers. Continue to update your website. Get feedback on what works. Look at your statistics to see where people are leaving and when. Design your site to address the needs of your audiencenot to pound on your chest.

As many of you know, Im a big believer in giving away great information. The web allows us to do that. I get a lot of resistance from prospects and new clients about this. A holistic practitioner told me earlier this week that the universe wasnt ready for him to give things away yet. I think it was actually he that wasnt ready, which is a lot more manageable than the universe.

Share your information. The more you give, the more you get. If youre afraid of giving away everything, then simply learnand listen–more.

Copyright 2005 Stacey Morris

About The Author

Stacey Morris, Focus Coach

Download “12 Steps to a Profitable Website” at http://www.ServiceBusinessCoaching.com

staceymorris@focuscoach.netThe Rush: A Newbie’s Journey (Part 1)Stephen Robertson

This article is part 1 of an ongoing series following the adventures of an unemployed slob with a dream.

The trek into the world of internet can be a bit daunting. I know because as I write this, I’ve just taken one of my first steps into this foray.

I assume I’ve done all of the typical things most newbies do on the road in. I also assume that my reason for doing these things is somewhat textbook. I was laid off a few months ago from a dot-com for the second time in 3 years and just couldn’t stand the thought of going through the whole thing again. So I entertained all kinds of thoughts of what I “should” do for work. Ideas whizzed into my mind as quickly as they raced out: “I should just bite the bullet and get a tech job”, “Maybe I should do construction”, “I’ll hit the lottery”, “Interior Design?”, “How about writing a book?”, “Maybe I can get by as a consultant”, “McDonald’s?”.

One day as I finished my breakfast of all the job and classified websites I could eat, I angrily pounded on my keyboard, “MAKE MONEY”. I laughed when I realized that my cursor was in the Google search box. I hit enter. My first thought was, “Look at all of these scams!” Then for some reason which I don’t recall, I clicked one. Then another. After about page 10 in Google’s results pages, I realized it was all very interesting to me. It wasn’t that I was actually buying it, I mean, I wasn’t a sucker. It was the fact that beyond the obvious scams, there was actually a story. I read the testimonials of hundreds of people. “I made $50,000 my first month!”, “I’ll retire in 4 years!”, “If my grandmother can do it, you can!” They were as endless as the over-the-top enthusiasm. It provided me with the same literary satisfaction as a Reader’s Digest short story. But there was something more. I couldn’t help but wonder, “Is there even a tiny bit of truth in here?” I imagine this must be what it felt like for pioneers that pondered the journey west to search for gold. Sure they heard grand stories but what are the chances? Armed with the amazing knowledge that only 25 minutes of reading Google results can give you I considered myself much better equipped than the average joe. I went off to find the one goldmine that had yet been unpicked.

A week passed and I’d read thousands of testimonials, ideas, free ebooks, and forums. The forums were particularly interesting to me because here were people that all seemed to have a general interest in helping one another to achieve financial freedom. Being a competitive person in business, sports, and life in general, I wondered what the point of that was. “Why tip your hand?”, I thought. As I continued to read threads in the forum, it hit me, relationships. All good businesses have one thing in common, great relationships. Whether it’s with a landlord, the mailman, a client, or an employee, successful businesses thrive on good relationships. I was now addicted to this thought.

About The Author

Stephen Robertson Jr. is a guy like many. He hasn’t made any money yet through mailing lists, affilliates, adsense, adwords, or any other internet marketing endeavors. This ongoing story is a play-by-play of his adventure. You can catch the latest weekly update of his tale at http://www.ForgetWork.com/rush/

Webmasters, feel free to republish this story. It must remain unedited and whole. All resource/footer copy including this statement must remain intact and unedited. All links must remain clickable. Stephen Robertson Jr. can be contacted by either visiting http://www.ForgetWork.com/ or by emailing him at srj@ForgetWork.com.

Search Engine Secrets – Search Engines… What They LOVE and HOW-to Get Them to Come CRAWL Your Website

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Copyright 2005 The IWE, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Engines… one of the MOST tricky tactics of them all online simply because the SE’s are forever changing the rules of Website Optimization.

Meaning… what used to work “Yesterday” might not work “Today”.

Now, with that said, for the remainder of this article I want to let you in on what SE’s ‘LOVE’ and will thank you for everytime you hand them over some.

It’s really not much of a mystery to those of you who have been marketing online for some time But for those of you who haven’t this is something you should seriously consider getting into for more reasons than ONE.

OKAY. Enough of the small talk. I’m going to dive straight in and get to the point Right Now on what SE’s ‘LOVE’ and it’s simply…

… CONTENT!

That’s right, “Content” is what SE’s ‘LOVE’ and are continually crawling the Internet for Day and Night 24/7/365 and will gladly pay your website a visit if you supply it on a Daily, Weekly or Monthly basis.

The more often you supply “Content” and post it on your website the more often SE spiders will come CRAWL and “index” your website pages.

The question is… “do you write Articles?”

If you don’t, maybe you might want to consider it.

Now that you know what SE’s ‘LOVE’, your probably wondering what the BEST way is to get the SE spiders attention to get them to come on over and CRAWL your website.

Well, first off I would recommend you submitting your Articles(whether you have some already or plan on starting) to ‘Article Directories’ simply because SE spiders are constantly CRAWLING these websites since they are SO full of content and are updated usually on a daily basis.

You can find them by simply typing in “article directories” into your favorite ’s search field.

The other great thing about ‘Article Directories’ is they usually have HIGH ‘PR’(Popularity Ranking) which is another KEY thing SE’s take into consideration which means once you’ve posted your articles on that directory or directories, the spiders will eventually ‘Find’ your article, crawl that page within that Article Directory and follow the corresponding links within your “Resource Box” back to your website.

The more article directories you post to, the more chances you’ll have at getting some SE spider activity on your website, crawling and indexing your webpages.

This is just ONE of the ways to get SE spiders to come visit your website and only ONE reason WHY you should submit your Articles to ‘Article Directories’ but that’s another article within itself.

For the remainder of this article I’m going to share with you a way to get SE spiders to come visit your website within the next 24 to 48 hours to have a look around.

Are you ready?

BLOGS!

Blogs are simply the Fastest WAY to get the SE spiders attention to come and take a look simply because Blogs contain “Content” in the form of “Articles” and/or “Reviews or just general feedback from your readership.

The more often you post to your Blog the more often SE spiders will come visit.

The reason IS… everytime you post to your Blog it’ll PING(Ping is simply a signal being sent out telling the SE that there’s NEW content to come and index at your Blog) …the SE’s(Not all of them) …to come take a look.

When they come visit, they’ll spider your Blog and will follow all corresponding links within.

Remember the “Resource Box” located at the end of a article(you can use mine as an example) with all the authors website information and URL. This will come in handy so make sure You carefully think about what you put their with your articles.

Now, with that said, I wrote an earlier article explaining how to set-up a Blog to get Yahoo! and MSN to come visit. It’s really quite simple, so don’t worry yourself to much about it being difficult.

All you need to really focus on is supplying the “Content”.

Here’s the link if you wish to read the article:
http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_13.html

I also wrote another article explaining what Blogs are for those of you who aren’t very familiar with them yet.

Here’s the link if you wish to read the article:
http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_12.html

Now, there are many other ways to get SE spiders to come visit your website but these two methods I mentioned above are in my mind the quickest.

So, there you have it, “Search Engines… What They LOVE and HOW-TO Get Them To Come CRAWL Your Website”, so go NOW and give it a try.

About the author:
Want to find out How-To write KILLER Articles? Click here==>http://www.internetwondersezine.com/ArticleAnnouncer.htm– Or if you want to get MORE ‘Insider’ marketing Secrets,subscribe to Cory Threlfall’s ezine called… The InternetWonders eZine — http://www.internetwondersezine.comor athttp://www.internetwondersezine.com/resources.html

Marketing Secrets – Basic Marketing Principles: Don't Put Up Your Website Without Them

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So you think you’ve created the perfect website. It looks great, loads fast, and you perform and duties on a regular schedule online and off. There seems to be only one problem….no one is buying your products. Did you rely on the essential rules in when you you created your site? If not, you’re in real trouble.

1) Great Customer Service?

One thing that will drive your customers away faster than anything else is poor customer service. This ranges from taking an eternity to answer your email, to shipping delays. You need to respond quickly, especially when it comes to email. In our “hurry-hurry” society people will not wait to hear from you for very long before moving on to the next guy.

Do you have your email address on every page of your website? Nothing irks me more then having to dig through a site just to find an address to ask a question. Do you offer a toll free number so they can contact you? Easy to do and free with http://www.ureach.com How about real time communication on your website? Take a look at http://www.humanclick.com, which allows you to answer questions from your website guests as they browse your site.

The more ways you give people to communicate with you, the better. Many companies fail online due to shoddy customer service. Don’t be one of them. By offering excellent service you’ll stand out from the crowd and build better relationships with your clients. Remember it’s easier to re-sell to an existing customer than it is to find a new one.

2) Who Are You and What Do You Do?

Identify your company and your products on the home page. Don’t make people “dig” down into your site for the answer. They won’t; they’ll just leave.

Also, make sure you describe the benefits of your service or product right away. For example, will it save time or money? Make you thinner? Is it easy-to-use? People don’t care about you, they want to know “what’s in it for me?” Tell them and tell them fast, or risk losing them. Sales are generally made on emotions. If you don’t trigger any by giving them a good reason to buy from you, they won’t.

3) Are you Charging the Right Price?

If you charge too much, no one will buy. If you charge too little, people will think there’s no value or that there’s something wrong with your product or service. (And they still won’t buy.) Before you set your pricing, make sure you do a little research into your competitor’s backyard. That way, you’ll have a better idea of where to set your pricing.

Don’t forget about “perceived value.” Anything you can add on in the way of free bonuses or free shipping will go a long way in convincing folks to buy. With the enormous amount of freebies floating around online, it shouldn’t be too hard collecting a few that relate to what you’re selling that you can give away with every purchase.

4) Does your Copy Sell?

Make sure your text
helps motivate your customers to make a purchase. Sprinkle “powerful headlines,” “calls to action,” and plenty of testimonials from happy customers throughout your pages. Remember that people read differently online; they skim. Make it easy for them to catch the main points and benefits quickly.

Also, offer a few different payment options and make it easy to place an order. If they have to jump through hoops, you’ll lose the sale. Simple and Easy is the way to go.

5) Is your Site Designed with your Target in Mind?

Does the look of your website cater to your target market? You need to know demographics of your intended audience before you even begin the construction process. Know your market’s demographics such as age bracket, income, education, and whether they are mostly male or female. If your site is geared towards teenagers, it needs to look fun and hip (save the sophisticated look for their parents). If your audience is middle aged businessmen you’ll need a more corporate look.Make sure you keep your core audience in mind when choosing your fonts, site colors, and any graphics.

If you remember to incorporate these basic marketing principles into your website you’ll not only have a site that looks good, but actually does what you intended it to do all along: Sell!

Merle’s Cyber Promotions http://www.mcpromotions.com/ “Creating Visibility Online for Small Businesses” Subscribe to MC Promotions Press by sending mailto:subscribe@mcpromotions.com
New Service just added “Get Ready to Market Package” For details go to http://www.mcpromotions.com/getreadytomarket.htm To find out more about the products and services offered by MC Promotions send mailto:mcservices-ar@automagical.net

Search Engine Optimization – Common Sense Approach to Search Engine Optimization

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Common Sense Approach to Engine Optimization

by: Mario Sanchez

Most web surfers start their sessions at a or a web directory. There are a number of different methods you can use to capture their traffic and drive it to your site:

  1. Stick to the big names: The two largest directories: Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) and the Open Project Directory (http://www.dmoz.org), and the two largest search engines: Google (http://www.google.com) and Inktomi (used by MSN search (http://www.msn.com) and AOL (http://www.aol.com) are likely to deliver 80% of your traffic, so concentrate on those and dont spend too much time on anybody else.

  2. Yahoo and the Open Project Directory are administered by humans, so an editor will inspect your site before it’s added. They receive so many submissions that it can literally take months before your site is reviewed, and nothing (not even paid subscriptions) guarantees that it will be listed. Its worth to keep trying, though, so check back every month or so and, if your site isnt listed, submit it again.

  3. Google and Inktomi are robots (software programs) that crawl (find and read) millions of sites on the web, and add them to their index. That’s why it is not absolutely necessary to manually submit your site to a search engine, since they may find your site and add it automatically when they find a link to your site on another page.

  4. You dont need to submit all the pages on your site to a search engine. Once the search engine finds your main page (homepage), it will find the other ones by following links. To improve the chances of your secondary pages being found, create a link called site map in your homepage, and have it point to a page that is nothing but a collection of links to all the pages on your site. This way, the search engine will follow the link and suck in all your pages. Try putting this link as close to the top of your homepage as possible, since it will have a better chance of being picked up by the search engine.

  5. Your site will stand a much better chance of showing up at the top of the search results list if you choose that are as specific as possible. In general, sites that use very specific keywords have a better chance of being at the top of the list than generic sites that use more common keywords. For example, a restaurant that specializes in brick oven pizza (keywords: brick oven pizza) has a better chance of showing up in a prime position than an all-encompassing Italian restaurant (keywords: Italian restaurant).

  6. A good is also conditioned by the amount of inbound links to your site that the search engine finds in other websites. A significant amount of links to your page from high ranked, quality sites with content related to yours, will significantly boost your rankings. Try contacting the webmasters of the leading websites for the keywords of your choice and try to get them to link to your site. You can offer a link exchange or place a paid link (advertising) on their pages, if thats an available option.

  7. Creating a good page title tag is also key, since its usually the first thing the search engines display in the search results page. Also, you must create a well written, easy to understand Description meta tag, since some search engines will use it to describe your site. The more your title and description match your preferred search keywords, the more likely web users will click into your site. Don’t pay too much attention to the ‘Keywords’ meta tag, since most search engines ignore them nowadays, due to the potential for abuse.

Finally, one last word of advice: dont obsess with search engines, since they are not the only way to generate traffic to your site. Try different approaches, like writing articles and posting them in discussion groups and newsgroups. Also, dont overlook bricks-and-mortar techniques like passing around business cards embedded with your website address, or advertising in traditional media. It is a combination of all these things, and high quality, original content, what will make your site popular.

About The Author

Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest (http://www.theinternetdigest.net) a website and newsletter that gives you free advice on web design and Internet .