Web Moves Blog

Links & Linking
Website owners: do you know how many links are out there on the Internet, pointing back to your site? If you’re interested in getting free search engine placement for your site, you ought to know. An easy way to find out is to download the Alexa toolbar from http://www.alexa.com. One of its many useful features is that it shows you how many links are pointing to the site. High quality links are one of the most crucial aspects of good search engine optimization. When you think about it, this makes sense. After all, this is the Internet, the World Wide Web, we’re talking about. And in a web, everything is… right, everything is LINKED.

Links have always been a priority in search engine optimization. Search engines have long used link popularity as an indicator of a site’s “importance,” and this in turn affects the site’s performance in the search engines. Until recently, many different schemes existed that allowed a website owner to garner dozens, or even hundreds of links, simply by using specialized tools, reciprocal programs, and the like. Then came the Google “update” of November, 2003.

In that now legendary update, Google penalized tens of thousands of websites by dropping their placement in the index or eliminating them entirely. While Google isn’t talking about what happened, it is very likely that “undeserved” links, or links that do not have anything to do with quality content, played a role in this episode. Most website owners now seem to agree that while links are as important as ever, they have to be added the old-fashioned way, they have to be earned.

What does this mean? Simply put, it means that a link between two pages on the Internet should have some valid reason for its existence besides the desire of the website owners to hit page 1 on Google. So if Joe’s Auto Shop and Cindy’s Interior Design trade links, in order to boost their rankings, the link only exists for that reason, and it may well lead to lower search engine rankings for both Joe and Cindy. On the other hand, if Bud’s Cabinetry Shop, on its page describing different types of woods, is linked to the National Association of Wood Products, this is very likely to be viewed as a “quality” link by the search engine, and may help rankings.

How does one build these kind of quality links? There are at least four well-known methods, and creative website owners can come up with more. First, you can ask for them. At conventions, conferences, meetings, anyplace where the business of your website may be discussed, ask for quality links. If someone has a site you respect, and it relates to your product, simply ask them to link to your site. It’s good old networking at its finest. Second, you can write articles that promote your website, or your product or service, include a link back to your home page, and offer it for publication on the Internet. There are numerous forums for doing just this, try Googling some search terms to come up with them. Third, get on the Internet and find directories that relate to your product or service, and ask for a link to be placed. This is an easy step that most website owners can take themselves. Finally, and perhaps the best way to build a great site! Put up great content, and other sites will link to you. Because, in the end, that is what the Internet is all about  disseminating information. Add valuable content, in terms of information, to your site, keep adding it over time, and gradually, people will link to you. If you build it, they will come.

Author Bio:
Neil Street is co-founder of Small Business Online, LLC, based in Wilton, CT., a website design, management, and promotion company dedicated to the Internet needs of the small business. His website is at http://www.smallbusinessonline.net. Send email to neil@smallbusinessonline.net He can also be reached at(203)761-7992

Introduction
What strategies do the “experts” use to optimize their own Web sites? Haven’t you always wanted to know?

Did you know that there are SEO’s who have a dozen or more Web sites that they use for nothing but testing? What killer strategies have they learned by studying the results from these testing Web sites?

Though you can learn SEO strategies by reading forum posts or by attending conferences or seminars, speakers are rarely willing to share their best strategies with you. After all, if everyone were to use those strategies, their effectiveness could dwindle.

Where do the truly advanced, technical SEO’s go to learn new strategies that will take them to the highest possible level?

Where can they learn from the masters . . . from those who have devoted hours and hours to research, testing, and trial and error to come up with personal strategies that really work?

Introducing . . . The Ultra Advanced SEO Symposium
First off, what is a “symposium”? A symposium is generally associated with educational institutions where qualified presenters give technical papers on particular topics in which they are experts.

Symposiums are more private events with limited attendance. They’re not workshops, where you learn by doing. With symposiums, you learn by listening to the experts speak.

The Only Truly “Advanced” and “Technical” Event for Search Engine Optimizers

To date, there’s never been an event devoted just to the advanced and technical SEO that wants to be taken to the highest level.

Through our teaching of Search Engine Workshops, we’ve been asked time and time again when we were going to offer the “next step” in search engine optimization.

Now we have that next step: The Ultra Advanced SEO Symposium.

You Might Ask: Why Would These Experts Be Willing to Share their Best, Personal Strategies with Attendees?

Let’s discuss a few of the reasons
* Each attendee will be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement, agreeing not to publicize, promote, post to forums, teach, or announce the strategies in any way. The strategies are to be used for the personal use of the attendees only and for their clients.

* The symposiums will be private events without a huge attendance. So, the strategies won’t be given out to large groups of people.

* Attendees will often be divided into focus groups, and within those focus groups, the attendees themselves will be sharing their own strategies too. So this is a give and take symposium where the attendees and presenters can learn from each other.

* To be frank, the speakers are being paid well for sharing their strategies. In other words, we’ve made it worth their while to participate.

What Might You Learn at an Ultra Advanced SEO Symposium?
The topics you can expect to learn at this event include:

* Understand the new Yahoo! and related sites

* Understand what it takes to get firmly ranked within Google’s top results

* Untie Internet marketing’s “Gordian Knot” and leverage the true power of Cascading Style Sheets

* Discover “The Butterfly Effect”: how to build an authoritative theme

* Learn about integrated performance marketing and how to use the tracking power developed through affiliate marketing to track all sources of traffic and their results

* Learn how to generate large lists of relevant keywords in minutes, and then learn how to determine exactly which ones will generate the true actions (sales, signups, etc.)

* Discover at least four advanced optimization strategies that 99.9% of most SEO’s have never even heard of

* Learn how to legally determine exactly what your competitor is doing and find out how to do it better

* Learn how to penetrate cloaking methods and discover exactly what your competitor is showing the search engines

* Learn advanced tracking strategies, including how to install a freeware tool that will automatically compile your log files and give you the information you need at a glance. Attendees will also be given a script that will greatly enhance their lead generation.

* Plus much more . . .

The When, Where, and What of the Ultra Advanced Symposium
The Ultra Advanced SEO Symposium will be held on Saturday and Sunday, April 3-4, at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando, Florida.

The symposium will start at 8:00 a.m. each day and conclude around 5:00 p.m. However, depending on the needs of the participants, additional events may be scheduled at night.

The cost is $2,495 for the two-day event, which is 100% tax deductible as a business expense.

To put the cost into perspective, attendees will easily be able to apply some of these strategies and rapidly make their money back by an increase in online sales.

Remember: these are advanced, technical, and private strategies that you won’t have the privilege of learning anywhere else.

The symposium is being sponsored by Robin Nobles and John Alexander of Search Engine Workshops. Presenters for this symposium include Rachel Honoway of MyAffiliateProgram, Michael Marshall of Theme Master, Dave Barry of SEO Concierge, Rich Creal of Trade with Success, and Gene O’Neil with Advanced Search Engine Marketing Consultants.

Disclaimer: Legitimate SEO Strategies Only
While the strategies taught at these symposiums will certainly equip attendees to immediately apply them to their own sites and compete in highly competitive industries, only legitimate SEO strategies will be taught.

We will never promote or condone spamming practices of any kind, and neither will anyone associated with any of our courses, workshops, or symposiums.

Need More Information?

More information about the brand new Ultra Advanced SEO Symposium, visit http://www.ultraadvancedsymposium.com.

Or, call John Alexander. (905) 853-4472

We hope to see you on April 3-4 in Orlando!

Author Bio:
Robin Nobles with Search Engine Workshops teaches SEO strategies the “stress free” way through hands-on, search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe and online search engine marketing courses (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com). Visit the World Resource Center, a new networking community for search engine marketers. (http://www.sew-wrc.com)

Increase Your Traffic
Gary Halbert once said that the ONLY advantage he wanted when it came to selling burgers was not a better sauce, or better grade of beef, but a STARVING CROWD.

It’ s a simple concept, but not many people get it.

#1. Find and Know Your Starving Crowd

You can have the greatest product in the world, but still sell squat if no one wants to buy your product. Who are your potential buyers? Do you know them like the back of your hand? KNOW your buyers. Head down to http://www.Overture.com, type in your keywords and take furious notes!

#2. Power Position Yourself

Understand that people online are looking for information.
They don’t want information from just anyone. They want good, solid information from people who have been there, done that. If you can provide valuable advice to your prospects, you can be sure that they’ll begin to trust you and develop a RELATIONSHIP with you. And just how do you position yourself as an expert? Easy, Become one.

Once you develop a reputation as an expert, the traffic will come in flocks. People NEED help. Help from experts.
Are you an expert? : – )

#3. Create an Epidemic

Imagine this. What if you could get a super salesman to spend 24 hours everyday, 7 days every week, 52 weeks every year, for the rest of your life… a salesman who never gets sick or tired and all he does is direct hordes and hordes of targeted traffic to your site?

Don’t even try to estimate the astounding value someone like this would bring to your business.

It is possible, and it’s called viral marketing. It’s the most powerful concept on the Internet. Many have tried using it and many have failed miserably.

People have this misconception that as long as they have an ebook that is “brandable”, it constitutes a viral marketing campaign.

They are dead wrong.

#4. Steal Traffic from Someone Else

Got you. Of course, there are ethical ways to do that. The most powerful way, is through a JV or Joint Venture. A JV does not mean shooting an email to someone in your field of high repute saying “Hey, wanna do business with me?”

You’re in for a big disappointment if you think that’s gonna work. Your potential JV partner is a human as well, and chances are, he/she is a SOMEBODY in your field. So make your JV proposal as benefit laden, and “hands free”
for your potential partner as possible. Recognize your JV partner’s accomplishments, be generous with your praise and above all, be sincere.

But never be afraid to ASK. If you don’t A-S-K, you will never G-E-T.

#5. Become A Marketing PI

Here’s Industrial Espionage 101. The magic word?

Forums.

Forums will show you exactly what your target market is unhappy about and the problems they have. Lurk around forums. LISTEN. Forget about YOUR problems and listen to other people’s problems. Solve those problems. I guarantee you’ll become rich. Zig Ziglar said, the way to achieve success is to help others get what they want.

#6. Expired Domains Do More Than Expire

You can always use expired domain names as a great source of traffic. Search the expired domain databases, look on EBay. Some web hosts now allow multiple domains to park on a single account. Take advantage of that.

#7. Transform Words into Traffic

Articles are the best “Traffic Machines” that work for
ANYONE- no matter what product, service, or information they’re selling.

You get 100% targeted traffic, FREE! And, they position you as an expert, and improve your link popularity. Plus, articles are really easy to write as well.

If you have never written an article, go try writing one NOW!

All 7 steps above seem really easy. It’s one thing to read and go “ahh” and another thing to read those steps and actually take solid action. Nothing will happen until you take action. No action equals no traffic, equals no sales, equals no money to pay the rent.

Author Bio:
Jo Han Mok is a frequent guest and featured speaker at Internet Marketing bootcamps and conferences on subjects such as copywriting and Joint Venture Marketing. Find out how Jo Han’s latest web tool can help you get laser targeted traffic in the next 7 minutes! http://www.InstantVisitorSurge.com

Introduction
Most people have heard of the hall of fame, but to many, the hall of shame may not be as well known. My goal in this article is to help ensure that you never have an opportunity to be in it, not even from a distance! Here are some ways that a website owner or webmaster can get in trouble with some of today’s major search engines. This article is another way of saying: ‘The 10 steps to avoid at all times’, in preventing a site penalty or ban from the search engines.

Step 1: Build your entire site using graphics
One of the best ways to secure a front-row seat in the hall of shame would be to put all your links in Java script or use images or graphics for the links. Today’s search engines cannot ‘see’ or index sites that use such linking strategies. Make certain all your links are text links, using the standard H REF HTML reference. And while you’re at it, it’s always a great idea to include a sitemap of your site. A well-designed sitemap will ensure that all the pages in your site will be fully indexed.

Step 2: Design your site using Flash technology
Even today, I still encounter some websites that were entirely designed using Flash as its exclusive technology. No search engine can index or ‘read’ a site that was entirely created in Flash, since there is no text to crawl. Search engines only seek out one thing and that is content’ and then only in the form of text. You can use a bit of Flash, for example in a Flash banner or header, but make absolutely certain that there is lots of HTML text to crawl on that page and throughout your site.

Step 3: Use invisible text
One of the safest ways to ensure the Number One spot in the hall of shame is to use invisible text on your pages. Today, search engines are becoming more and more clever and can detect that sort of thing. For as long as I can remember, invisible text has always been prohibited by all search engines and you are almost certain of securing either a permanent ban, or a temporary penalty (which could become permanent). Stay away from invisible text and you will never get in trouble.

Step 4: Use doorway or gateway pages
A doorway or gateway (similar) page is a page that was designed specifically for search engines, and not humans! This happens when a website makes use of deceptive software or a script that relies on the IP address of a search engine robot to serve a specially written page for that robot. This process is called ‘cloaking’ and is another way of ensuring you a prominent spot in the hall of shame. Stay away from doorway pages and cloaking mechanisms. They are bad news and are forbidden by most major search engines today. Write your pages for real humans and fill them with good content and the search engines will rank your site with good marks.

Step 5: Forget all about your title tags and H1’s
If there is one element that will rank a site well it is the careful use of properly written title tags and H1 tags that are rich in keywords and key phrases. Neglect to do this and you will do well in the hall of shame. Search engines today rely on the keywords that are written in title tags, and the words that are contained in H1 or H2 tags. It’s also a good idea to use one or two headlines on your pages. These headlines of course need to contain the keyword (or keywords) used in that page for your maximum benefit.

Step 6: Be inconsistent and too vague
Another way where you can fast track your site to the hall of shame is to use themes that are irrelevant or inconsistent to the overall topic of your site. If your site sells blue widgets, red widgets and black widgets and nothing more, then it’s safe to assume that your site’s theme is ‘widgets’. Don’t talk of anything else but widgets and you will have an extremely relevant site that is entirely focused on widgets. This important step should steer you away from the hall of shame.

Step 7: Don’t ever use Wordtracker
A safe way to get an invitation to the hall of shame is by never using Wordtracker! Optimize a website for the wrong keywords or key phrases and you will end up with a site that has no or very little visibility in the search engines, plus you might even get enquiries or questions for products or services your company doesn’t even sell. Spend the time to properly research the real keywords people are using when searching for the products you sell. The only way to do this is by using Wordtracker.

Step 8: Link to bad neighbourhoods or link farms
One sure way to end up in the hall of shame is to link to what is called ‘bad neighbourhoods’. You obviously can’t control the people that are linking to you, but you certainly control whom YOU are linking your site to. If some of the sites you are contemplating linking to have been banned or penalized by Google or other search engines, you might incur the very same treatment.

Step 9: Build your site using frames
If your site isn’t built yet, using frame technology could place you in the hall of shame, since most search engines today have a hard time trying to index sites that employ frames. Although you can use the ‘no frames’ tag, building a site with frames is old technology and almost nobody uses them anymore. Design your site using HTML coding and stay away from frames if at all possible and it may help you to stay out of the hall of shame.

Step 10: Ignore what’s going on in the SEO industry
Today more than ever, the search engine industry and the SEO profession are evolving at breathtaking speed. Witness the many changes in the past 12 months. There has been (and probably will continue to be) mergers, acquisitions and buyouts in the search engine field. Combine all this with the constant modifications done to search algorithms, such as the huge changes implemented at Google in the past 2 to 3 months, and you start to get the picture. Keep informed by reading all the news in this industry and you might avoid a front-row seat in the SEO ‘hall of shame’.

Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales

Introduction
At the beginning of the Balanced Scorecard, a book on the new generation of performance metrics, authors Dr. Robert Kaplan and Dr. David Norton present an analogy to drive home their case. They ask you to imagine entering an airline jet cockpit, and in front of the pilot, you see just one gauge.

You ask the pilot, ‘What’s that gauge measure?’
‘Altitude’, you’re told.
‘What about the other gauges?’
‘We won’t be using them this flight. I’m just focusing on altitude.’
‘How about air speed?’
‘No, that’s the gauge I was using last flight. I wanted to try something different this one.’
‘Compass?’
‘Not this time’
‘Fuel gauge?’
‘Nope!’

The idea is, of course, that you need a balanced set of measures to accurately monitor business performance. The analogy got me to thinking about the metrics we typically see companies enter their search marketing campaigns with. And I couldn’t help thinking, ‘At least the airline pilot got one of the metrics right!’

If it’s Not Measured, It’s Not Managed
After working with search marketing for 8 years, I’m amazed at the number of otherwise intelligent marketers who enter their search campaigns without a clue of how to measure the success of the campaign. The entire motivation for looking at search optimization is because the CEO had a hissy fit because they didn’t rank for a broad industry term that was, at best, only marginally relevant to their actual product and service offerings. They’re pretty sure they want better rankings, but they really haven’t given much thought as to why.

You do search marketing for a reason, and unless your company is run by a Fascist egomaniac, the reason shouldn’t be so your CEO can search for his dog’s name and see your company’s site rank number one. Those reasons should come down to bottom line goals that align with both your corporate and marketing strategy. Is it lead gathering, on line sales, brand building, relationship building, extending marketing share in new areas or positioning your product against the competition? All are valid objectives, and all can be aided greatly by a well thought out search marketing strategy. But, until you know the reasons, you’re flying blind.

Also, I’ve been in the boardrooms of more than one Fortune 500 company and asked to see the research done on their customers feelings about the website and how they interact with it. Please, if you ever get a chance, do this. At first, you’re greeted by blank stares. Then the sidewise glances start between the IT department and the marketing people. ‘I thought you were going to do that!’ Finally, you get the answer you knew was coming. ‘Uhmm’we’ve been meaning to do that. But we haven’t really got any research of that kind’.

The IT department probably has technical stats on user sessions, pages visited, length of session and enough assorted statistics to choke a CTO, but no one has thought to ask a customer how they feel about the site.

And, we’ve found, if they haven’t done this research on their own site, it’s a lead pipe cinch that they have no idea how their customers interact with search engines.

Decide What to Measure
Search marketing metrics have improved over the past 2 years. Back then, the only metric was ranking. The problem with this is that rankings didn’t really mean anything by themselves. A high ranking was useless unless it drove traffic. And, in turn, that traffic was useless unless it translated into something that added to the bottom line of your business. That bottom line impact could be long term, as in the building of brand equity, or short term, as in an online purchase or the capture of a potential sales lead. Because search marketing was primarily used by direct marketers, it was generally the second of these that was chosen as a performance metric.

That brings us to today, as increasingly the focus turns to ROI, as measured through conversion rates. This measurement is primarily done on the sponsored side of search. Tools that allow you to accurately measure ROI on organic search campaigns are still rare and usually involve gathering data from different sources, analyzing it and, in many cases, throwing in some scientific guess work.

While the move to ROI measurement is an improvement over just measuring rankings, it’s a bit like the pilot using the altitude gauge and ignoring the other instrumentation in the cockpit. The problem is, as you move beyond conversion tracking, accurate measurement of other factors becomes more difficult.

Conversions are Good, But They’re Not Everything
A conversion is generally defined as a visitor taking an action that allows the website owner to establish a relationship with them. It could mean capturing contact information, having them complete an online form, or actually make a purchase. Conversions are defined on a case by case basis.

Most of the better search engine marketing companies now offer some type of conversion tracking on sponsored search campaigns, and a few (like Enquiro) also offer it on organic search optimization campaigns. It allows the client to see how specific keywords and engines perform by monitoring if traffic being driven from these sources takes the actions defined as a conversion.

The problem comes when the conversion happens off line. Often, consumers use the web and search engines to conduct purchase research, creating a short list of the best products or models and shopping for the best prices. In most cases, this can be done without ever taking an action that could be defined as a conversion. The researcher may gather up their information, then take it and visit a local outlet to actually make the purchase. In this case, conversion tracking would have never recorded the visit as a successful one.

The Brand Value of the Online Experience
Another limitation with conversion tracking is that it can’t capture the building of brand awareness online. And increasingly, websites are being recognized as an important channel to enhance to overall brand experience of a company.

I was recently meeting with a prospective client and he mentioned that his company (a multinational business to business service provider) didn’t really monitor online metrics because ‘we’re not Amazon’. His reasoning what that because they didn’t really sell items online, there wasn’t anything to measure. He also mentioned that search marketing wasn’t a high priority because of this lack of revenue generation from their site.

I was a little taken aback, so I probed a little deeper. I asked if they had given any value to the brand awareness they were building when visitors came to their site for information (of which there were thousands of pages, few of which could be found with a search engine). I asked if they had done any research on the types of users their site attracts, their reaction to the site, the frequency of repeat visits, and whether introduction to the firm through the website later translated into new clients. The answer was a long and continuous string of no’s, and it was becoming clear; this company had no intention of beginning to monitor these metrics.

I hope this company is the exception, and that other marketing departments are beginning to recognize the importance of the online brand experience. Increasingly, more and more of a companies interaction with its clients is happening online, and the quality of that experience is vital to building a strong relationship with that customer.

Align Your Metrics with your Goals
To measure the effectiveness of any online campaign, you should come up with a set of metrics that give you a complete performance picture. The nature of your metrics will depend on what your corporate and online marketing strategic objectives are. What are your unique competitive advantages and how does your online presence contribute to them? What are the metrics that your customers measure you by? You have to ask yourself these questions before you can begin defining online metrics.

(Note: You might want to start with reevaluating how you use metrics throughout your organization before beginning this process. Sometimes, lack of metrics in marketing can be symptomatic of inadequate measurement of other areas of the business. If this is the path you want to go down, check out www.balancedscorecard.org and invest in the book by Robert Kaplan and David Norton)

Return on Investment:
If you’re an e-commerce site, the primary metric will likely be return on your advertising investment derived through online sales. Other metrics could include monitoring the frequency and nature of repeat visits and sales, average sale amounts, profits on sales (are you driving sales on higher margin items?), customer satisfaction levels, percentage of converted visits vs. non converted visits or percentage of sales in specific categories

Brand Awareness:
In this case, you will have to be a little more creative in defining your metrics. It will probably have to involve some type of user survey to determine brand awareness at various stages in the online relationship. A survey will also be able to determine awareness of products and services.

Building Relationship:
As with brand awareness, measuring the development of stronger relationships with customers is more difficult to do. Again, you will probably have to use other research methods to get the full picture. You will also want to measure the duration of visits, frequency of repeat visits, sections of the site visited, and actions taken while on the site.

Measuring: The Bottom Line
The role of metrics in online marketing is quite new, and when it comes to search marketing, effective measurement is in its infancy.

Deciding on the right metrics is not an easy task to take on. It requires a fundamental understanding of your own goals and strategies, your customer’s needs and behavior and the values and advantages that sets you apart from the competition. But if you’re making a significant investment in your website and marketing that website, without metrics not only are you flying blind, you’re also throwing money out the window.

Author:
Gord Hotchkiss

List Building Through Cooperative Partnerships
This is a little tip I got from Alex Sampson, a true marketing master.

Fact#1:

The ownership of an opt-in list of subscribers is the #1 thing you can do to promote your product or services, you cannot succeed online without one, so don’t even try.

Fact#2:
Someone searching for one thing may be equally or more interested in another product of similar means.

For example. You’re selling fishing poles. And your surfer is interested in maybe seeing the latest poles, so they stop by your site, but they already have a nice pole, and don’t need another, however they’re planning a fishing trip and do need bait and tackle, which you’re not selling.

Ok lets put this in a little better light in relation to internet type downloadable goods. Say you’re selling a report on the importance of autoresponders and follow. Another website is selling Autoresponder scripts – or hosting. And another website is selling a set of follow up letters that are very persuasive yet also adapt to whatever it is you’re selling for the most part.

Option A. Each webmaster can go alone and even compete with each other to make sales, they would both start affiliate programs, etc…

Option B. All 3 webmasters join forces and start a little co-op.

Webmaster 1 gives EXCLUSIVE rights to webmasters 2 and 3, to give their ebook away for free.

Webmasters 2 and 3 give the same rights to webmaster #1 and so on.

So webmaster 1 is selling ebook#1 and giving away ebook#2 and ebook#3 as FREE Bonus’s which can as much as triple his sales.

Webmasters 2 is selling ebook #2 and giving away ebook#3 and ebook#1 as Free Bonus’s…

etc..

Now you may ask why would you want to do that, and its because it creates synergy, see you control the downloading of the free ebook, you set up a very aggressive autoresponder that the person must go through to download the ebook.

The fact that they are downloading your ebook shows you that they’re willing to pay for high quality information, it shows you that they have a credit card and aren’t some teenager playing pranks.

This means you just got an email address of someone who’s not afraid to spend money online, someone who’s spent money before, and someone who may order again soon, if you can offer them something that intrigues them.

See the power of this? You have 2 other webmasters building your optin list, and you have 2 new products that you can offer as FREE EXCLUSIVE Bonus’s thus increasing your initial sales.

In closing I want to say that I’ve tried this technique before and had very successful results with it. If you have any questions or would like to form some kind of co-op with me and one of my ebooks that I’m writing please email me at: support@timereleasedwealth.com

Author Bio:
Patrick Curl is an internet marketer with 3 years experience, his new viral ebook “Driving a Stampede of Traffic To Your Website” is hitting the web like a jack hammer, you can download your free copy and get free re-branding rights today at: http://www.timereleasedwealth.com
Also get FREE Solo and Text Ads.

Web Analytics
Not accessing and reviewing your vital website statistics is like never looking at your checking account activity and never knowing how much money you have in it.

In Part 1 of this two-part series I explained how to crunch relevant website statistical data to facilitate constant e-marketing initiative improvements. I explained what types of data are important, such as unique visits, click-thru numbers and percentages, lead conversion rates, and how to process all these numbers. (read Part 1).

Here in Part 2 I’ll explain how you obtain the data in the first place and then provide a fool-proof method for website click-thru statistical acquisition.

The first thing you need to know is where your website lives. Every website sits on a server, a computer with the purpose of waiting for requests from clients (people’s personal computers by way of a browser). Each server physically lives in one of two places. It is either located at its website owner’s company, which is called in-house, internal, or self hosting. If company A has an active website and owns the server the website is on, and the server is physically located at their company, then it falls in this first category.

The other place a website server can physically live is at an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or host company. There are a number of configurations the server can fall under in this category which is beyond the scope of this article. The main thing to keep in mind is you first need to know where your website’s server is.

Once you know this, you can begin to assemble all the relevant site statistics. All servers automatically generate all the datayou’ll ever need on an ongoing basis. They are relentless in their stats recording. They record all the data in what’s called server log files. Manually parsing through these log files is a horrible job that should only be wished on your worst enemy. They are huge laundry lists of everything from every site visitor’s IP address, browser type, site referral, time and date visited, and much more.

Fortunately, there are software programs that can do this for you. One of the most popular is WebTrends. You feed your server log files to the WebTrends software, and it produces for you an excellent presentation of all your relevant (and some superfluous) website statistics.

If your website sits on a server that your company has in-house, than you need to purchase WebTrends or some similar software and locate your server log files. The files often end in .log. In other words, it’s up to you to get your website’s statistics, and you do this by locating your server log files and running them through software such as WebTrends.

If your website sits on a server in an ISP then you can either request the server log files from them and run them through your own software, or you can ask them if they provide an interface for you to review your site statistics online. Most do provide this service. It’s often web based and all you have to do is log onto their site to view them.

Now you’re armed with a lot of good data. But if all your e-marketing initiatives drive traffic to your homepage, how will you know which ones are working and which ones aren’t? If you send out emails to rented lists and the call to action are all links that point to your homepage, then you’ll never know which emails are doing better than others. You may get an idea by seeing if your overall traffic increased the day you sent out the email or posted the banner (even to determine this you’ll need your website stats), but to do it right, you need exact data, and the web will provide it for you.

Some sites that you place banners on will offer you click-thru counting services to you. Most email brokers also offer similar services, at a price. But what if they don’t offer tracking information for you? Or worse, what if you don’t trust their reporting?

The solution: Create, implement, utilize and manage your own unique tracking pages.

It’s relatively simple. In every e-marketing campaign you conduct you create and assign a unique html page to it. Then the initiative’s call to action (hyperlink) points to its unique page. After the campaign is done, you can then go to your website statistics obtained through your website’s server log files, and see how many visits were logged for each unique tracking page.

For example, let’s say you send out an email to a list of 1000 email addresses. In the body of the email there is a call to action link that says, “Click Here to Buy Now”. This link points to a page on your website. But not just any page. It points to a unique tracking page you created earlier to track how many of the 1000 people clicked-thru from the email. It’s important that no users can get to this new page in any other way than through the email.

Let’s say you named the page email-campaign1.htm. After the email campaign is done (I like to wait about 2-4 days), you go to your website statistics (the result of parsing the server log files through WebTrends or its equivalent) and search for the page called email-campaign1.htm. Finally, you view the page visits number. Let’s say the visits to this unique page totaled 200. That number is your click-thru number.

Now you can really start to fill in all the relevant data discussed in Part 1. This will enable you to determine how well each campaign is doing and whether you need to make adjustments.

To help manage all these unique pages, keep them all in one sub directory of your site. If you don’t do the technical work for your site, you ought to consider giving Part 1 and Part 2 of this series to your technical web person so they can get a better handle on your website vitals.

Until you know how well your website and e-marketing campaigns are doing, measured in visits, leads and sales, you can’t possibly maximize your operation and increase your bottom line. Now you have the information to make this happen.

Author Bio:
Jason OConnor is President of Oak Web Works The synthesis of Web marketing, design, and technology. Jason is a Web development expert, e-strategist, and e-marketer who is trying to affect the future of the Internet in a highly positive way http://www.oakwebworks.com mailto: jason@oakwebworks.com for a FREE site consultation and to learn how to increase your bottom line by properly leveraging the Web.

Who Cares? Webmasters Want “Referred Traffic”
“Searches Performed” Empty Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics!
Who Cares? Webmasters Want “Referred Traffic”

Yahoo abruptly quit using Google as a search partner recently in a surprise move that has the search industry now scrambling for statistics to analyze and numbers to bandy about. I’d like to share some rarely discussed statistics and numbers with you here. First the numbers and stats from the press, then I’ll share a few of my own. Here are the stats that are getting the most attention for the Yahoo search story.

Share of searches performed by U.S. users
(source: comScore Media Metrix)

Google = 35%
Yahoo = 28%
AOL (powered by Google) = 16%
MSN = 15%
ALL Others = 6%

Charts and analysis of this statistical lie can be seen at:

http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156431>

As an SEO specialist, I don’t care if Yahoo and MSN together get almost 40 percent of all searches performed as long as Google delivers nearly triple the REFERRED traffic of either of those also-rans.

I love those numbers presented by comScore. The problem is that it has nothing to do with search engine REFERRED TRAFFIC to webmasters. I did a small study of client traffic stats last year and found in EVERY case that Google delivered over 70% of referred traffic to client sites and one gets nearly 90% of his referred traffic from Google!

Those included some new clients as well as several of those I’d been working with for up to a couple of years.
This indicates to me that it’s not the work I do that favors Google, and that it is a similar result across many types of sites, optimized or not. My article discussing these numbers was picked up in half a dozen places and debated in a forum or two because it seems shocking to imagine Google dominating at that level.

http://searchengineoptimism.com/Google_refers_70_percent.html

If you scroll down the page at that SearchEngineWatch page linked above, you’ll see another chart that reflects Google’s reach and, guess what? It’s actually closer to 70% due to the fact that Google powers AOL and, up until last week, Yahoo. Now I expect the 28% loss from Yahoo will make those numbers fluctuate a bit in coming months as searchers decide whether they like the results they get from Yahoo search without Google powered results.

Now that Yahoo search will no longer be contributing to Google’s 70% of referred traffic, I suspect it will vary from last year if webmasters look at their traffic stats at the end of next month. I’ll look forward to THOSE numbers!

Still, I’ll wager that if you look at your client traffic stats for search engine referrals that delivered traffic from Google FAR outdoes traffic from any other search engine for some time to come. When that changes, then it will start to matter. Until it changes – who cares even if Yahoo and MSN search get double their current “Searches performed”
when the referred traffic they deliver is just a fraction of that?

Who cares if the competitors are at 27% of searches performed if they deliver only 5% of their referred traffic? What do people do when they get results at Yahoo and MSN search? They must stay there, follow paid links, or give up their search and go shopping if they aren’t ending up clicking through from those oroganic results to the top ranking sites!

I have multiple top ranking terms at MSN and Yahoo for several clients that get trickles of traffic from both of those sites, EVEN THOUGH those very same search phrases deliver dramatically higher traffic from Google – and in cases where they rank lower at Google! Puzzling, eh?

Google delivers traffic. The others don’t deliver at even half the rate that Google does. So I simply don’t care that nearly a third of searches are done elsewhere. I am going to work on ranking well for the search engine that DELIVERS VISITORS from organic search.

I’ll pay for traffic from the others if necessary since they don’t deliver on even TOP RANKING searches. I believe that is because the searches at MSN and Yahoo sites and their search partners have too many flashing, blinking, prominently placed, paid ads dominating the SERP’s.

Yahoo and MSN may get lots of searchers searching, but if those searchers don’t click through on those top ranking organic results – what earthly good does it do to rank well in organic results at those search engines?

I suspect that Yahoo will profit nicely from Overture, and since they appear to be so highly profit-driven (yes, I agree that is a good thing for business, but bad for search) then the results will be profit driven too. Paid results will dominate at both Yahoo and MSN and they will continue to deliver far less organic search referred traffic than does Google.

Until I see some changes in referred traffic, I’ll bet some serious money that Google will continue to deliver over 50% of all referred search traffic to everyone due to the emphasis on relevance above profit.

The impending Google IPO makes me nervous about all of this because Google will have to do as the others do and emphasize paid results on the SERP’s at a much higher level than they do now in order to keep investors happy. Investor pressure.

Those two clearly marked sponsored ads at the top of the page and clear boxed Adwords ads along the right will be charming memories in short order. We’ll see paid links grow to dominate the Google SERP’s and it wouldn’t surprise me if they started running banner ads in addition.

Statistics from the webmaster perspective show Google sending nearly triple the traffic of all other search engines combined.
That’s the only statistic that webmasters care about.

Author Bio:
Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization specialist practicing ethical small business SEO Search Engine Placement, Optimization, Marketing http://SearchEngineOptimism.com/SEO_articles.html http://SEOptimism.com

Traffic Magnet
Fact: Most new, small business web sites take months to average just a few hundred visitors per week. At many of these sites, growth stalls indefinitely at that level. Unfortunately, lots of income just cannot be generated with these numbers.

Why such little traffic to so many of these sites?

Well, while there are a multitude of reasons, it basically comes down to this…

Most small business owners simply do not have a marketing budget big enough to properly “kick off” a new web site. What’s more, web promotion is getting more and more difficult as the net is saturated with new sites daily.

With these facts in mind, I’ve put together some information on one of my favorite traffic generation tips today. It has been working for me for years, and it will work for you.

I like to call my little web traffic magnet, “The Genuine Article!”

“The Genuine Article” helped me grow my web site traffic to 8,000 visitors per month in just my second month of existence. Not a big deal to many larger web sites, but to a brand new site, not bad. Keep in mind, I had zero listings and a very limited budget. I still rely on this promotion method to bring cost-free, targeted traffic to my sites.

So exactly what is this traffic magnet and how can YOU use it?…

Simple. I write about what I do. That’s it. Nothing more. I simply write a new article every few weeks. I then do two things with my articles.

1. I email my best articles to other publishers and webmasters. Since each article is filled with real, useful information on my area of expertise, (online marketing) many webmasters and ezine editors are happy to post the articles at their web sites and in their ezines.

Anyone can use this powerful promotion method no matter what you are promoting. Just visit this free ezine directory and gather some ezines on your area of expertise. Email each editor and ask them if they accept article submissions. Nearly all editors are happy to receive articles!

2. I also post my articles as stand alone web pages at my own site. (With reprint rights.) I do this, not only to allow more webmasters easy access to my articles. It also attracts more traffic through the search engines.

Here’s how
Every article that I post gets a fresh title and set of META tags, and a search engine submission. I also make sure that every article is keyword rich and I always try squeezing in a few extra keywords where appropriate. This helps with my search engine ranking and generates some very targeted traffic.

NOTE: Beware, there is a fine line between what search engines consider “the natural occurrence” of keywords and keyword “stuffing”. If your document is a good read that happens to be keyword rich, you stand a much better chance at having it appear on a search engine than if is an obvious attempt at search engine trickery.

Next, I am very careful to “title” my article web pages tactfully. A few important components include keywords as well as a descriptive and intriguing nature. This results in not only better placement but more clicks.

The last thing I do as I build my “article” web pages is to place a link to my home page on every article. Readers who find my articles and want more information about the topic they are researching, can always simply click to my main site. Too many marketers leave out this important step.

Every few weeks I build another page — different keyword rich pages, different subjects, and all linked to my main site home page.

So, are you using this creative and FREE marketing tool? If not, it’s simple to start. Gather your best areas of expertise and start writing. Contact at least 25 other webmasters or ezine editors with the new article. Tell them about your article that would fit in perfectly with their site or publication. And don’t forget to make every article into a separate web page at your site.

Absolutely anyone can utilize the “Genuine Article” and start growing a traffic magnet to their web site! You can even get started today without having to write an article. Just visit http://bizweb2000.com/articles.htm and gather any of mine you want. You see, I always practice what I preach!

Author:
Jim Daniels of Make-A-Living-Online.com

Secret And Powerful Way To Build Your Opt In List
I decided to write this article to show you a very powerful method how you can instantly BOOST the size of your opt in list. This method is very powerful yet not many people use it.

This method can quickly add several hundred subscribers to your list and can be implemented in minutes. All you need is an article (written in a special way) and a little time or money to invest.

So here’s what you need to do

1) Write an article (in a special way which I reveal).
2) Get the article in front of as many readers as possible (I reveal how)

Articles are a very good way to add subscribers to your opt in list. You get subscribers when they visit your website or sign up on your list after reading your article.

To make this happen you need a resource box at the bottom of the article stating your name and your sales pitch or recommendation. (I reveal how to structure resource box later.)

To get an article you can write it yourself or pay someone (article writing expert) to write the article for you. I prefer the 2nd method because I’m not very good at writing articles.

When you have the article ready you need to do is get your article in front of as many potential subscribers as possible. You can do this by submitting your article to article directories and directly to newsletter publishers. It’s rather hard work and I’ll explain how make it easy.

To get your article accepted by as much publishers as possible you need to follow one simple strategy. The strategy is to include a product link somewhere in the article. This way the person who publishes your article can earn income as an affiliate.

This method will increase the chance that your article gets published – BIGtime. The chance that your article will be accepted will be much higher when the publisher can earn money from it by replacing the product URL with an affiliate link.

To increase the chance that your article will be accepted, write it in a way that either:
1) Gives a solution to a common problem.
2) Informs the reader about some news or something that is worth to know.

If your article is written that way, it gives the reader a reason to read it and act upon what he reads.

When you have an article you need to submit is to article directories and publishers who will publish it. You can do it either manually or automate the process.

I have to say that submitting your article manually is a big waste of time and you should do it only if spending a little money is a big issue to you. You can automate the whole article submission process completely with Ezine Announcer:

Ezine Announcer will submit your article to all major article directories and directly to 500 or more ezine publishers. Ezine Announcer is a very good tool to gain instant and BIG exposure. Here’s the URL:

http://wetrack.it/eza/af.cgi?2307

A great way how to also get your article in front of many publishers is to use one of the article submission services which you can find by searching for “article submission services” on Google.

Some of these services will submit your article to more than 1,000 publishers. One of these services even submits your article to 3,900 publishers. Great isn’t it?

A very important part of the strategy is your article resource box. You need to elaborate it so that gets as many clicks as possible. Resource box should be up to 6 lines long and no more than 65 characters in each line.

If your resource box will be longer, you risk losing a chance that your article will be published.

Here’s the way how article resource box should be structured:

1) It must get the readers attention.
2) It must state a benefit or solution to a problem.
3) It must call to action.

When you have followed the steps the success with this strategy is guaranteed. Now you need some luck so that many ezine publishers like your article and decide to publish it.

I hope you find this article valuable and can put the new knowledge to use. I’d love to see you succeed at this strategy and invite you to email me with a success story. Meanwhile I recommend you to sign up for my opt in list building course.

Author Bio:
FREE Opt In List Building Course Shows You HOW TO: Add subscribers to your opt in list
Promote products to your subscribers
Make sales from your subscribers Sign up now at: http://www.affila.net