Hey everyone!
Thanks for coming around here to read up on the latest website marketing tips and tricks. We've just recently moved our blog over to Wordpress and are hosting our blog on our own server. Come check it out and let us know what you think. Here's your direct link to our new blog:
http://blog.creative-emarketing.com
Hope to see you there!
DarrenB
You've probably heard that phrase. Content is King, at least as far as the search engines are concerned. The SE's really value solid content, and creating quality content should be the goal of every website owner. The more quality content your website has, the more likely it is that the search engines will rank you well, and the more likely it is that your website visitors will find what they are looking for!
Here's a great article that discusses creating content for your website. I hope this helps!
5 Tips for Writing Website Content - That Gets Results
By Brandon Cornett (c) 2008
I'm going to ask you to use your imagination for a moment.
Think of a topic that interests you. Maybe it's your favorite
sport or hobby, for example. Now imagine that you're searching
the Internet for information on that topic.
The first article you come across is related to the topic you're
researching, but it doesn't offer much in the way of value. It's
too general and full of pointless "fluff." It makes obvious
points that a third-grader could grasp. And it fails to offer
any related information or resources.
The second article you come across is much more in-depth. It
explains several aspects of your topic with refreshing insight.
It is helpful and useful, and it links out to many related
articles and resources on the subject.
If you could only bookmark one of these pages for future
reference, which one would it be? It would be the second page,
right?
You, like most people, would probably prefer the second page to
the first. It's an easy choice, and that's because the author of
the second article understood (and delivered) the most important
concept of website content development -- the value factor.
5 Benefits of High-Value Web Content
This kind of content has value for the reader, obviously. But it
also benefits the author / publisher. Here are the top five
benefits of creating high-value website content for your small
business website:
1. It keeps people on your website longer.
2. It makes people more inclined to trust you.
3. It encourages readers to recommend the site to others.
4. It encourages other webmasters to link to your content.
5. It helps you improve your search engine ranking and
visibility.
All of this sounds great, you say. But how do I create that kind
of small business website content? Here are the top five
guidelines for creating high-value website content.
5 Steps to High-Value Web Content
1. Choose the right author.
2. Choose the right topic.
3. Address all sides of the topic.
4. Add supporting graphics, pictures, etc.
5. Link to related resources, both on your site and elsewhere.
Let's look at each of these steps in greater detail.
1. Choose the Right Author
I once worked for a company who let their web programmers write
the instructions for their online ordering process. Big mistake.
If their audience were programmers as well, this might be okay.
But most of their customers had limited technical skills. So
when these people encountered online instructions such as
"Validate parameters before advancing" ... the customers would
often become dead in the water.
This is a prime example of choosing the wrong author for web
writing. Sure, the programmers' input is important. After all,
they built the thing. But they should not be the voice of
customer guidance. A skilled web writer (someone with usability
experience) would have "translated" these instructions to say
something like "Please fill in all required information before
moving to the next screen."
Here's the key to this. The best author for your small business
website content is not always the person who knows the most
about the product or service from a technical standpoint. Often,
it's best to have an in-house writer who plays the go-between
role of "consumer advocate," getting the information from one
group and translating it for another group.
2. Choose the Right Topic
If your small business only offers one product or service, then
that will likely be the topic of your web content. In this case,
I would focus on choosing the right angle as well. Don't tell
people what you want them to know -- this is an outdated way of
thinking about public information, especially when it comes to
small business website content. Instead, find out what people
want to know about the types of products you offer, and use your
web content to address those questions or concerns.
If you are writing web content for a company that has many
products or services, you will have to spend more time choosing
topics first and choosing your angle second. In this case, it
becomes more about topic organization than anything. Large
websites with many topics are ideally suited for a category and
sub-category system: These are our products >> And this is
product 'A' >> And this is a web page that explains product 'A'
in detail.
3. Address All Sides of the Topic
Whether you're writing about one of your products, or you're
creating a tutorial of some kind, you need to cover all the
angles. There's nothing worse than website content that leaves
the job only half-done, telling you why a certain thing is
important but not pursuing that lead.
When you are close to a certain topic -- as is the case with
people who create a product or service -- it's easy to assume
everyone else understands it as well as you do. But the opposite
is usually true, so you need to explain all sides of a topic
when you write content for your small business website.
Want to keep your pages relatively short for easy reading? You
can do that while still offering complete information. That's
what hyperlinks are for!
4. Link to Related Resources
Here's the key to developing great content for your small
business website. Try to create authority documents that others
in your field would link to and recommend to others. One of the
key criteria for a resource document is that it links to plenty
of supporting information, both on the same website and
elsewhere on the web.
In addition to being good for your readers, this kind of useful
content will make other webmasters more inclined to link to your
website. This adds to your link "popularity" and can further
improve the search engine ranking of your small business website.
When writing a particular web page, try to think of it as "the
ultimate guide to [blank]." This is the first step to creating
the kind of authority documents that eventually dominate the
search engines and drive endless web traffic for the authors.
But it's rarely possible to create an "ultimate guide" to
anything in just one page, so be liberal about linking to other
sources on your own website and elsewhere (as long as they are
not direct competitors).
5. Add Supporting Graphics, Pictures, Etc.
Reading online can be hard on the eyeballs. You can make the
reader's job easier in two ways. First, you can format your
content appropriately for web reading (short paragraphs, narrow
text columns, lots of bullet points, headers, sub-headers,
etc.). Secondly, you can add supporting images and helpful
graphics.
Well-placed graphics can improve website content in a number of
ways. Images are more enticing than text upon first glance, so
they can help attract and retain readers. They also help you
clarify your message with visual reinforcement.
Conclusion
I have a motto I use regarding website content. "If it's not
worth putting online, don't put it online." This is my reminder
to myself that I need to use the techniques outlined above to
create superior website content. Because that's the kind of
content that leads to online success. Apply these lessons to
your small business website and watch your own success increase!
================================================================
Brandon Cornett operates a web marketing firm
(http://www.austinseoguy.com/internet-marketing.php) in Austin,
Texas and is a web writer at large for dozens of websites and
blogs. Learn more by visiting http://www.austinseoguy.com.
================================================================
Titus Hoskins is one of those guys who sends me an email every other week or so. I'm signed up with about a dozen of "those guys" and each one has a different take on a similar subject. The difference with Titus Hoskins is that his articles and emails are always succint, to the point, and easily implemented in my immediate marketing strategies.
Here's yet another article from Titus that I feel really summarizes what I do as an SEO guy. It should be required reading for anyone who wants more website traffic. Enjoy!
10 Steps To Top 10 Rankings In Google (Improve Search Engine Rankings)
Copyright © 2007 Titus Hoskins
Most webmasters go totally "gaga" for top 10 rankings
in Google. And for good reason, Google is the most
dominant search engine on the net and will deliver
the largest amount of traffic.
Even those webmasters who are fortunate enough
to get No. 1 rankings for their keywords in all the
three major search engines will tell you Google is
the one that will deliver the majority of their
traffic. Hands down.
More importantly, those same webmasters will also
inform you, getting top 10 rankings in Google often
means your site will prove profitable. Mainly because
obtaining targeted traffic is usually your first
obstacle in creating a viable online business. In
other words, if you get top ten listings in Google
for good searchable keywords, it is almost impossible
not to earn money.
How To Proceed?
First, you must know the rudimentary basics of how
keywords work. Keywords and keyword phrases are the
exact words someone types into a search engine to find
what they're looking for online. If you have a site on
"dog training" then your goal is to get a top 10 ranking
for the keywords "dog training".
Now if no one searches for "dog training" it would be a
useless keyword, you would get no traffic no matter how
perfectly your site is optimized for that keyword.
How Do You Know If A Keyword Is Good?
To find out, you have to do some keyword research on
your particular keywords. Many professional online
marketers use keyword research software like Brad
Callen's Keyword Elite. However, you can also use
the keyword suggestion tools supplied by Google
Adwords or Overture. Try here:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
Now if you check "dog training", you will find it
receives around 4,469 searches each day. That's
a lot of traffic but you must realize that it may be
too good, or rather too competitive for your purposes,
especially if have a new site.
Biggest Mistake When Choosing Keywords
The most common mistake most novice webmasters
make is targeting keywords which are too competitive.
You simply will not be able to compete or place
for extremely competitive keywords. Well established
sites and businesses with very deep pockets have
the resources to completely dominate those keywords.
While it is not entirely futile nor a waste of time
to concentrate your efforts on highly competitive
keywords, you will have better success if you target
low to medium competitive keywords such as "dog
obedience training" with 285 searches per day.
Long Tail Keyword Marketing
Besides online marketers have discovered that longer
keyword phrases are usually the most lucrative. These
phrases deliver traffic which is better targeted and
more likely to convert into a sale. "Dog hunting
training" which gets around 100 searches a day will
be more targeted than the general term "dog training"
and if you have a site devoted to training hunting
dogs then this keyword phrase may convert better for
you.
Always keep this "Long Tail" keyword strategy in the
back of your mind as you implement the following steps
to achieve your own Top 10 Rankings in Google.
1. Make A Master Keyword List
Your first step is to make a master list of the keywords
you wish to target. Obviously these should be closely
related to the theme of your site. As you can see from
the example above, it is best to choose low to medium
competitive keywords. Check the keyword competition
by seeing how many sites are listed in Google for that
keyword. Webmasters also check the Google PageRank
of the sites that hold the top 10 positions. If all those
sites are PR6 and above it may be hard to get ranked
high for your keywords.
2. Use Related Keywords
Once you have your master list of keywords, find long
tail related keywords to target. Again, check out the
competition and daily searches made for each chosen
keyword.
3. Use Quality Content For Your Keywords
Creating quality content should always be your main
goal. Write for actual visitors who will see and read
your content. First and foremost you must have good
useful content that your visitors will use themselves
and recommend to their friends or colleagues. Tie this
quality content in with your chosen keywords. Use one
keyword phrase per page.
4. Keyword In Domain Name, Title and URLs
Having your keyword in your domain name will score big
points from search engines. Plus, each page of content
should contain your keywords in the title & meta tags
for that page. Most experts also suggest you have your
keyword in the URL and use hyphens to separate your
keywords. Although the author has gotten good results
by using an underscore and htm in URLs.
Example: www.yoursite.com/your_keyword.htm
5. Do On Page Optimization
Keyword ratio is a much discussed topic by SEO experts
and many suggest you should have your keyword in the H1
or headline title of your page. Sprinkle your keyword
and variations of it throughout your page. Don't over
do it but make sure the robot/spiders will clearly discover
what your page is about. Many webmasters make sure
they include their main keyword in the first and
last 25 words on their pages.
6. Use Traffic Modules
One technique that works extremely well in Google is
clustering a closely related topic or subject into a
distinct separate section on your site. For example,
if you have a marketing site, you could create a whole
section on article marketing where you would have 50
to 100 keyworded pages all relating to your subject.
Writing articles, formatting articles, submitting
articles, article software... place a keyword linked
menu on each page to connect all your pages together.
Keep in mind, your main objective is to supply quality
information to your visitors. One reason Google may
favor this type of structure is because they want
quality content returned in their SERPs.
7. Do Article Marketing
Article marketing is writing short informative articles
on keyword topics related to your sites. You then submit
these helpful keyworded articles to ezine directories
on the web, when your articles are picked up by related
sites you receive quality One-Way links. The higher the
quality of your article, the more links you will receive.
Another ranking tactic to use, if you're just starting
out your site will probably have a low PR rank and you
will find it hard to rank for even modest keywords.
That's why it's useful to take advantage of the higher
PageRank of the major ezine directories. Your keyworded
articles on these high PR sites will get picked up by
Google and displayed in the top 10 rankings. Now the
displayed URL will be the article directory site but
the links in the resource box will be pointing back to
your site. Over time this article marketing technique
will raise your own site's rankings for those keywords.
Simple but effective.
8. Anchor Text And One Way Links
Off page optimization is important in obtaining high
rankings in Google. Getting quality One-Way links is
very important. Anchor Text simply refers to "the
underlined clicked on words" in your links. Most
webmasters include their keywords in their anchor
text as this tells the search engines exactly what
the links are about.
9. Tags, Blogging And Web 2.0
Take advantage of Web 2.0 by using blogs, RSS feeds
and the social bookmarking sites like Reddit and Digg.
Try AddThis.com for a simple social bookmarking system.
At the very least your site should have a blog and RSS
feed attached to it as this is an effective way of
boosting your keyword rankings.
Tags have become very important for getting higher
rankings. Keep in mind, in free blogging software
such as WordPress, categories will automatically be
seen as tags. Blogger, which is owned by Google, now
has a form where you put your keywords (tags) for each
post you make.
10. PPC vs Organic Search
Of course, one of the fastest ways to get your links
displayed on Google is to pay for them by using Google
Adwords. Your ad and links will sit side by side with
the organic link results. In Pay Per Click advertising
you bid or pay so much per click for your keywords and
you only pay when someone clicks your links. But smart
marketers also know since you're getting millions of
impressions advertising your products, acquiring name
recognition and branding through PPC advertising can be
a major side-benefit.
However, most webmasters would say that organic links
(SERPS) will return better traffic than paid links or
advertising. In most cases, this may be true because
Google's organic rankings are becoming more respected
and more trusted by users. They simply carry more weight
with surfers.
This makes it even more beneficial to obtain top 10
rankings for your keywords in Google. Depending on the
competitiveness of your chosen keywords reaching the
first page listing or even the favored number one spot
is well within any webmaster's reach. Just go for it.
The rewards are well worth your efforts.
...
The author is a full-time online marketer who contributes his
high rankings in Google as the major source of his online income.
For the latest Internet Marketing Strategies go here: Internet Marketing Strategies
For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools
Copyright © 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be
freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
By Penny Sansevieri (c) 2008
Embarking on an Internet marketing campaign doesn't have to be difficult, tricky, or complicated. Here are a few simple ways (twenty in fact) that you can easily implement to get tons of traffic to your site right now!
1) Write articles: believe it or not this is an incredible tool for driving traffic. Well-written, relevant articles can net quite a bit of activity to your web site. Don't forget to add your URL in your byline. Articles should be 500 to 2,000 words in length. You can send articles to sites like: Article City
2) Social bookmark *everything* - and I do mean everything - you can bookmark each page of your site and each blog entry you post. While this might seem tedious, it's worth it. You'll see a strong increase in traffic if you social bookmark each page on your site and each of your blog entries.
3) List yourself in the best directories – you'll have to pay for this but since most people don't do this (since everyone's looking for a freebie) you could really enhance your traffic by getting a listing: dir dot yahoo dot com, business dot org, botw dot org.
4) Get yourself listed at: DMOZ dot org – it's not easy to get listed there, but worth the effort.
5) Review: if you can review hot new products or books within your market, head on over to Amazon and start positioning yourself as an expert. In order to do this effectively you'll want to create an Amazon profile and make sure and sign each review with a reference to your URL (your web site). You can also go to Epinions and Revoo to review products as well.
6) Offer a freebie on Craig's List: you'll be amazed at how much traffic you get from a single Craig's List ad. The key here is to send people to a page on your site and make sure they have to sign up for something (like your email newsletter) before they can grab their freebie. That way you're not just getting traffic, you're also building your list.
7) Create a "recommended by" list on your Delicious page – you can do this by logging on and creating an account and there and then tagging articles, blogs and other content you think is important to your readership. Then offer this page as a resource site. You can add a link to this page in your email signature line or on your web site.
8) And speaking of your email signature line... do you have one? If you don't, create one. Believe it or not, people do follow these links. You'll be amazed how many folks read email signature lines. I have one and change it several times a year, depending on what we're doing or promoting or what books I have coming out.
9) Lend a helping hand: you can be an answer person at Yahoo Answers – you don't have to spend hours on there, but maybe a few minutes a week. Make sure and include a link back to your site following your answers.
10) Set up a social networking site using Facebook, LinkedIn, or Squidoo. It's free and easy to do, just don't forget the all-important link back to your site!
11) Make sure your blog has an RSS feed so if you capture a reader you don't lose them if they forget to bookmark your site or blog.
12) Join relevant groups at Yahoo groups. You'll find everything from groups on growing your small business, writing books, finding your passion, even underwater basket weaving. I dare you to find one that isn't right for what you're promoting. When you do find the right group, join and participate as you can!
13) Podcasting is another great way to drive traffic. Start a podcast by going to Audio Acrobat. There are other programs you can use, but I love Audio Acrobat. You can record the podcast over the phone quickly and easily and then hit the "send" button on your computer once it's recorded and the system will syndicate it to 27 podcast directories including iTunes. It's a great way to let people know about you and your web site!
14) Start a blog and then once you do, start commenting on other people's blogs, linking to them from your site or adding them to your blogroll.
15) Inbound links: don't squander your time (or a perfectly good link) on smaller low-traffic sites. Instead spend your time going after high traffic, high quality sites. Good sites should have a PR (page ranking) of 4-6 depending on the market. You can find out what a site's page ranking is by downloading the Google toolbar which comes with a PR feature built in.
16) Start an email newsletter: while it may not seem like a newsletter that you email can drive traffic to your site you'd be surprised at the effectiveness of this type of promotion. If your newsletter (like your articles) is interesting and relevant to your audience, you'll find that it has a huge pass-through factor, meaning that it is passed from one email subscriber to another. Also, if you have an email newsletter you should never, ever go to a single event without your handy signup sheet. Yes, you can even use offline events to drive traffic to your web site.
17) And speaking of offline efforts: if you're ever quoted in a magazine or other publication, make sure and mention your URL as it's appropriate to the topic. Don't be too pushy about this, but do not forget to tell folks you have a web site that may be a great resource for the topic of your interview.
18) If you have products to sell, why not get a store on eBay? This site gets a tremendous amount of traffic and on your sales page you're allowed to list your URL. It's another great way to get an inbound link and a way for people to find you.
19) Load a video on YouTube and 57 other video sites (the rest listed on my Red Hot Internet Publicity blog).
20) While this isn't a tip per se, it's still important. If you're going to go through all the trouble of getting traffic to your site, make sure your site is converting this traffic into something. Get folks to sign up for something, your newsletter, the RSS feed on your blog. Whatever it is, getting their email address will help you remarket to them when the time is right. Studies show that visitors landing on a site often don't buy the first time. That's ok! You want to get them into your marketing funnel so you can market to them again and again – not in a way that's obtrusive, offensive or downright annoying, but in a way that is helping them with their own mission.
An example of this might be an email newsletter. A helpful, informative newsletter is a fantastic funnel. A blog is another great way to keep people in your marketing loop without bombarding them with "please buy my stuff" email messages. Also, make sure you know what your traffic numbers are before you launch into any Internet marketing campaign. By traffic numbers I mean how many people are visiting your site. You want to know this so you can gauge a before and after view of your marketing efforts.
About The Author
Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a book marketing and media relations expert whose company has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns. Visit AMarketingExpert.com
Top 10 Internet
Marketing Tips for 2008
By Gillian Meier (c) 2008
Internet Marketing has grown phenomenally over the last few years but the shift has quite clearly moved to a market that is driven by the consumer and that is no longer dictated by journalists and corporates. Online consumers are responding more favourably to non-intrusive, relevant and socially attractive campaigns and have quite frankly had enough of intrusive, forced online advertising campaigns.
The top 10 internet marketing tips for 2008 are:
1. Optimize your website's content
2. Create a content development strategy for your website
3. Invest in a paid search (pay-per-click) campaign
4. Publicize your website through article marketing
5. Develop a social media marketing strategy
6. Create a Company Blog
7. Experiment with video marketing
8. Engage your audiences with web widget marketing
9. Discover the benefits of mobile marketing
10. Create an effective email marketíng strategy
Let's look at each of these in more detail:-
1. Optimize Your Website's Content:
First and foremost, get your website content right. Make sure it is easily read by both humans and search engines. An essential variable applied by Search Engines in the way in which they rank websites is based on the relevancy of the content that the search engine is indexing.
2. Create a Content Development Strategy for Your Website:
In addition to optimizing the existing content on your website, it is essential that you develop a strategy to continuously grow your website's content on an ongoing basis. All new content should be written specifically with the web reader in mind and should also be optimized for the search engines.
3. Invest in a Paid Search (Pay-Per-Click) Campaign:
When you pay for traffic (visitors) that click on your advertisements that are being advertised on search engines, this is called pay-per-click or search engine advertising. Paid search allows you to quickly leverage search engine traffic by bidding for keywords that are related to the products or services that you promote and sell on your website. Paid search advertising is particularly beneficial to companies who are not yet well ranked on search engines through natural search.
4. Publicize Your Website Through Article Marketing:
Article marketing is regarded by Internet marketing experts as one of the most effective promotional methods to publicize your website and to grow the number of back links (incoming links) to your website content. To ensure ongoing awareness, articles should be submitted to suitable article directories, content publishers, article announcement lists and content syndication (RSS feeds). Each article should be published on your website first and should include a bookmark button to encourage social bookmarking.
5. Develop a Social Media Marketing Strategy:
Studies show that by the end of 2007 more than 60% of top global companies will have had some form of social media marketing strategy in place. Corporates and small business owners should create a clear social media marketing strategy as part of an integrated communications and marketing strategy. Social Media has become an essential component of online marketíng and search engines are adjusting their rankings to include search personalisation. One of the effects of the social media revolution is an exponential growth in the amount of content online.
6. Create a Company Blog:
In the past, corporates have focused marketing and communications efforts on becoming faceless. This has changed significantly. Where the online consumer has become very much in control, companies will no longer be able to connect with their customers in a meaningful and emotional way without having a personality. More and more companies are starting to realize the significance of establishing a company personality and we are starting to see more Corporate Blogs coming alive. Business Blogging will continue to become more lucrative as more and more people look to new media such as Blogs and social websites for insight.
7. Experiment With Video Marketing:
There is tremendous power and revenue-generating potential in Video Marketing. With the rapid ongoing growth of YouTube's traffic in addition to the emergence of Internet Television websites, streaming video is dominating the international web and marketers are quickly scrambling to capitalize on this exciting channel. As companies seek to simplify video sharing, video marketing will become more interactive which could have huge implications for Affiliate marketing.
8. Engage Your Audiences With Web Widget Marketing:
Widgets have made significant strides as an accepted marketing technique in recent months. Many new Blog oriented services are launching Widgets providing businesses with the opportunity to quickly introduce their services and new products to audiences.
Web Widgets are small applets that live in HTML and provide miniature versions of a specific piece of content outside of the primary web site. Web Widget Marketing is not only an exciting new marketing technique; it is fast becoming one of the leading brand-building marketing strategies for businesses advertising online.
9. Discover the Benefits of Mobile
Mobile media marketing has continued to grow at a meteoric pace as many web companies recognize the huge potential in mobile marketing. As new technologies emerge and standard websites are converted to ones that can easily be accessed by mobile devices, companies will need to ensure that their websites are mobile-friendly. This leads the way for new and innovative opportunities to provide the consumer with improved brand and marketing experiences.
10. Create an Effective Email Marketing Strategy:
Introduce an effective Email communications strategy as part of your marketing strategy to grow your existing customer base and to expand your client base significantly through permission marketing and regular targeted communications. Engaging your customers with relevant, targeted information when, where, and how they want it is crucial to marketing success. By combining technological advances with tried-and-tested best practices, the future still looks bright for email marketers.
To conquer commercial combat, a significantly powerful Internet presence, supported by a brilliant E-Marketing Strategy, is paramount to ensuring that you remain competitive, grow revenue and magnetise your customers!
About The Author
Blue Magnet is an Internet Marketing Training & Consulting company in South Africa
Are you ready to learn how to increase your website traffic?
Every website owner has dealt with this problem at one point or another in the life of their website. After spending thousands of dollars on a beautiful website, not a penny was made from it for months and months. How do we rectify this? How do we get the traffic our website needs in order to become profitable?
There are three main ways to generate traffic to your website:
There are dozens if not hundreds of other way to generate more traffic to your website. But before you try anything else, work with these first. Once you master these three simple website traffic tools, then you can branch out and try some of the fancier methods.
Good luck!
Darren Barkett
Many businesses jump into the online market with little regard to their online marketing plans. They spend thousands upon thousands of dollars each year on traditional marketing efforts, but they spend next to nothing on their online marketing plans.
Don't make this same mistake. With more and more consumers spending more and more of their money online, neglecting this arena of sales and service is likely to send you to the bottom of the business barrel. You've taken the time to grow your brick-and-mortar business. Take the time to build the foundation of your online business as well.
You've finally created your website. And if you're like most business owners out there, you've spent a pretty penny on that website. Now what?
Unless you did some serious homework before you hired your webdesigner, you probably didn't think about optimizing your website for the search engines. Having a website is only one element in your online marketing plan. Getting people to your website should be your next and greatest focus from this point on.
Simply stated, a website without traffic is as useful as a, um, a one-legged man in a... uh, no, how about a canoe without a ..., um, well, it's not very useful. A website without traffic becomes a financial drain on a business. It's like opening a store but not getting any customers.
Luckily having a website is not as expensive as opening a store. And I think it's this relatively low cost that suckers so many people into the online market without having thought it all the way through.
If you find yourself guilty of what I'm talking about, take heart. It's not too late to start getting traffic to your website.
Come back after the New Year celebration and I'll tell you exactly how to start getting traffic to your website. A little hint... I know a simply tool you can use to get hundreds of visitors to your website overnight. Interested? Go relax for another day or two. Come back here in a few days ready to learn. We'll get your website heading in the right direction.
Darren
Phew! The last two weeks have been absolutely crazy for me. Our new home was finally finished, and we were able to move out of our temporary housing into what has quickly become our dream home. What a process!
From the listing of our home to the packing to the selling of our old home and purchasing and building of our new home, the entire process has been one stressful event after the other.
But along the way, I was able to get rid of all that junk that gathers through time- junk that no one had used in years and couldn't possibly use for the forseable future. Purging myself of these unnecessary items had a cathartic effect on me.
Not only was I getting rid of unnecessary items in my life, I was understanding what processes were unnecessary in my business.
Were the countless hours spent deleting and answering emails building my business? Was the time spent surfing the nets for the next best marketing strategy building my business? Were all those stacks of papers and articles to read going to help me organize my marketing efforts?
No.
So, instead of waiting for the new year to start refocusing my marketing efforts, I've already started. And so should you! Take a moment to analyze what parts of your daily routine are building your business. What parts of your daily routine is making you money? What parts of your day is spent laying an effective foundation for your business?
If what you're doing isn't actively growing your business, stop doing it. Right now! Don't wait. The world is full of failed businesses with people who waited for "the right moment" to create positive change in their organization or selves. Do it now and start building your business the way it should be built.
Darren Barkett
Many of you want more traffic for your website. But how do you increase website traffic overnight? Search engine optimization really works when it is done correctly, but that typically takes about three months for the search engines to reflect the optimization. Do you really want to wait three months to get that increase in your website traffic?
What I recommend and what I do for many of my clients is to optimze your website for the search engines first. Then, create a well researched pay-per-click advertising campaign.
Pay-per-click is an amazing marketing tool that far too many businesses are not taking full advantage of. Google and Yahoo are the leaders in the PPC world, but several others are out there like Business.com.
Pay-per-click (PPC) works like this. Businesses create an account with one of the PPC providers. They then create ads and place bids on keywords they think their potential customers or clients might use when searching the internet.
The beauty of PPC is that you only pay for an ad when someone clicks on it. Your ad might show thousands of times, but you only pay for that advertising when someone clicks on your ad and is taken to your website.
Pretty powerful stuff, eh?
Now here's the trick. It's really easy to setup a PPC account and start running ads. It's far more tricky to generate the targeted traffic that is close to a sale. Before you dump a bunch of money into PPC, make sure you take the time to research just how to set up your campaigns so that you avoid many of the mistakes beginners make. More than one intrepid businessperson has found themselves holding a thousand dollar PPC bill from Google at the end of the month with little or no sales for their efforts.
I'll be focusing on PPC over the next several posts. Make sure you come back to see how I structure my PPC ad campaigns to deliver high rates of targeted traffic- traffic that is just ready to spend!
Darren
Many of you have mentioned to me that you struggle with the concept of "keywords." I thought I'd post a question a member of this list posed to me along with my response. Hopefully it will help you understand how to select the right keywords and which keywords will bring you the traffic you need to grow your business. Here's the letter:
Hi Darren,
I had already had set up some meta tags, but found some additional info to help my site in your most recent e-mail - thanks!
Three questions:
1 - What about listing words separately, and as well, as grouped - is that necessary or redundant? As an example, here is what I currently have listed as my keywords within the meta tags of my website:
"doskas, website, design, small business, Internet, 210-884-0244, dan@doskas.com, Dan Scanlon, hassle-free, web, site, page, doskas design, website design, web site design, doskas design, doskas web, doskas website, doskas web site, domain, hosting"
Whatever you can suggest would help - thanks!
2 - I currently have my pages running off a template - I have the meta tags within the template so that they are also within all existing 5 pages of my website. Is that good form, or does the W3C Consortium frown upon that?
3 - Google had last had a spider crawl my website on July 13th, 2007, before my most recent site overhaul/resurrection about 3+ weeks ago. I'm learning that Google likes a site map built for the site for the spider to "be attracted to", but until I figure that out, are you aware of a way to tell Google to no longer cache (and delete) those old, ugly, no longer representative pages?
Thanks again for offering to assist - hope I haven't jumped too far in, already!
Dan Scanlon
DosKas Website Design
And my response:
Dan,
>
> Glad to help! The thing to remember about metatags is that they've been
> overused by spammers and are now undervalued by the search engines. It's
> good to have well researched metatags, especially if you are running
> Google's Adsense on your site since Adsense often uses your metatags to
> select which ads to run. It is far more important to include
> well-researched and focused keywords throughout your content than it is in
> your metatags.
>
> Each keyword you select is in essence announcing that you want to compete
> for search engine results for that phrase. So, including "web" isn't very
> productive since you'll be competing against any website that has the term
> "web" in it- any kind of web- spiders included! The more focused your
> keywords are, the more likely it is that you won't have as much
> competition for that keyword and the traffic you get will be more targeted
> and ready to buy!
>
> I've got to run, but in a follow-up email I'll handle the rest of your
> good questions. Try this when researching your keywords. Go to google
> and enter in a keyword you're thinking of focusing on. How many results
> come up? That is your competition. You want keywords that are searched
> for with fewer results.
>
>
> Darren
Next post I'll include that follow-up. Hope this helps!
Darren
