To Optimize Or Not To Optimize
Excessive optimization could be considered a sickness depending on context. Look up compulsive disorders in the Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) and over-optimization fits the description fairly well. So, should most online home business owners be seen by a psychotherapist? Well, I won’t answer that as of now since it doesn’t bode well for my immediate physical health. But one thing is for sure: web site optimization is tricky business.
The search engines are in an all out war to be the best. Since content is king, they are all striving to develop the all around best algorithm to deliver the most relevant search results. They are thus in a constant state of flux, which in turn wreaks havoc on our nerves as online home business owners.
You see, search engines are one of the best forms of free traffic. And we all know that to run a successful online business, traffic is a must. Most home based web businesses start out on very restrictive budgets. I know mine did, and still is. So, when the toss up is time or money, I, like many others probably do, chose to work with time.
In walks optimization. You must be on your toes to stay ahead of the every changing SEs. You must periodically evaluate your site’s content to ensure that you aren’t bumped to low indexes. But this can easily get carried away into what I like to call over-optimization, and then you probably should consult the DSM-V.
Traffic is important. There is no doubt about it. But there must be a balance. So the ultimate question is not whether you should or shouldn’t optimize, but how much time you should spend on it in terms of other site promotion methodologies.
Try to divide your time. In the beginning I focused heavily on search engine optimization. Slowly, after several months of realizing that the process never ends,(I too consulted the DSM-V and had Freud give me a swift kick in the tushy.) my focus began to shift to a host of promotion techniques. Here is a short list of some of the primary traffic generators I work with.
(1) Writing articles, such as this one, to share my experiences with others and of course provide a link to my site at the end. Guess what? If someone picks it up and decides to publish any of my articles on their site, I get bonus points from the search engines. Why? Reciprocal linking of course. The link shows that someone else values my site, and as a result my ranking increases.
(2) E-Zine advertising, whether it be free classified ads which a host of publishers will offer their subscribers, or full blown paid solo ads, is a great traffic generator. You know that the people who visit your site through an ad were looking for something that you offer. Now that’s targeted traffic!
(3) Traffic exchanges can also bring in targeted traffic. Many of these have the option of free or paid memberships. As of now I have focused on the free aspect (Remember, I love low, or no cost advertising). All that is required is for you to do a bit of surfing to have your short ad show up on other sites across the internet. TrafficSwarm and ClickMatrix are two of the best I have come across. They allow you to target your ad to ensure that the people who click are serious about checking out your site. You can sign up for free accounts to both of these at http://www.trafficswarm.com/go.cgi?224700, and http://www.clicksmatrix.com/index.php?ref=ekinetic.
(4) Pay-per-click can also drive targeted traffic. The thing I don’t care for is that the cost can easily get out of hand, if you don’t continuously evaluate your click through rates on a daily basis. Soon your back to focusing on pay-per-click and re-consulting with the DSM-V :).
Ultimately, you want to incorporate a handful of techniques that you find work for your particular home based web business. I nor anyone else can guarantee what works. It takes testing on your behalf. But, and this is important, the testing phase is educational and forces you to stay focused on methods that work. So try the inexpensive traffic builders first. Find out what works for you. Then expand your arsenal. Most of all, be patient and success will come!
To Optimize Or Not To Optimize
Excessive optimization could be considered a sickness depending on context. Look up compulsive disorders in the Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) and over-optimization fits the description fairly well. So, should most online home business owners be seen by a psychotherapist? Well, I won’t answer that as of now since it doesn’t bode well for my immediate physical health. But one thing is for sure: web site optimization is tricky business.
The search engines are in an all out war to be the best. Since content is king, they are all striving to develop the all around best algorithm to deliver the most relevant search results. They are thus in a constant state of flux, which in turn wreaks havoc on our nerves as online home business owners.
You see, search engines are one of the best forms of free traffic. And we all know that to run a successful online business, traffic is a must. Most home based web businesses start out on very restrictive budgets. I know mine did, and still is. So, when the toss up is time or money, I, like many others probably do, chose to work with time.
In walks optimization. You must be on your toes to stay ahead of the every changing SEs. You must periodically evaluate your site’s content to ensure that you aren’t bumped to low indexes. But this can easily get carried away into what I like to call over-optimization, and then you probably should consult the DSM-V.
Traffic is important. There is no doubt about it. But there must be a balance. So the ultimate question is not whether you should or shouldn’t optimize, but how much time you should spend on it in terms of other site promotion methodologies.
Try to divide your time. In the beginning I focused heavily on search engine optimization. Slowly, after several months of realizing that the process never ends,(I too consulted the DSM-V and had Freud give me a swift kick in the tushy.) my focus began to shift to a host of promotion techniques. Here is a short list of some of the primary traffic generators I work with.
(1) Writing articles, such as this one, to share my experiences with others and of course provide a link to my site at the end. Guess what? If someone picks it up and decides to publish any of my articles on their site, I get bonus points from the search engines. Why? Reciprocal linking of course. The link shows that someone else values my site, and as a result my ranking increases.
(2) E-Zine advertising, whether it be free classified ads which a host of publishers will offer their subscribers, or full blown paid solo ads, is a great traffic generator. You know that the people who visit your site through an ad were looking for something that you offer. Now that’s targeted traffic!
(3) Traffic exchanges can also bring in targeted traffic. Many of these have the option of free or paid memberships. As of now I have focused on the free aspect (Remember, I love low, or no cost advertising). All that is required is for you to do a bit of surfing to have your short ad show up on other sites across the internet. TrafficSwarm and ClickMatrix are two of the best I have come across. They allow you to target your ad to ensure that the people who click are serious about checking out your site. You can sign up for free accounts to both of these at http://www.trafficswarm.com/go.cgi?224700, and http://www.clicksmatrix.com/index.php?ref=ekinetic.
(4) Pay-per-click can also drive targeted traffic. The thing I don’t care for is that the cost can easily get out of hand, if you don’t continuously evaluate your click through rates on a daily basis. Soon your back to focusing on pay-per-click and re-consulting with the DSM-V :).
Ultimately, you want to incorporate a handful of techniques that you find work for your particular home based web business. I nor anyone else can guarantee what works. It takes testing on your behalf. But, and this is important, the testing phase is educational and forces you to stay focused on methods that work. So try the inexpensive traffic builders first. Find out what works for you. Then expand your arsenal. Most of all, be patient and success will come!
Six Keys to Creating a Successful and Profitable Ezine
Fortunes are made on the Internet by people who have built solid mailing lists for the promotion of their online businesses. But the question many publishers face is how to turn their ezine subscribers into buyers?
Let me be honest with you. Your mailing list is only as valuable as your subscriber’s willingness to purchase your products and services, or the products and services of your advertisers.
Until your subscribers begin to buy what you offer, your mailing list is not worth a plug nickel!
Here are the six ingredients that you need for creating a successful and profitable ezine:
Advertising Your Ezine
* While often expensive, paid brokers can actually get readers to subscribe to your ezine. Yet, in my own personal experience, buying subscribers did put a large number of email addresses on my list, but it provided no value to my list since most subscribers never read my web-based ezine.
* One ezine advertising program that I have used in the past to great success is List Partners which permits you to set up an free affiliate program to permit others to advertise your ezine in exchange for free advertising or cash. http://www.listpartners.com
* I have generated some very solid advertising results using Publisher Ad Swaps.
By setting up private advertising arrangements with other ezine publishers, you can get your advertisement in another ezine in exchange for an advertisement in your ezine.
To locate like-minded publishers seeking beneficial ad swaps, there is a moderated discussion group dedicated to this task called the Ezine Publishers Swap Meet:
http://lists.topica.com/lists/publishers_swap_meet/
* Paid Search Engine placement can be another solid method for attracting new subscribers to your ezine.
* For more help in promoting your ezine, check out “How to Publicize Your E-Zine” at:
http://www.zinebook.com/publicz.html
Develop A Standardized Template For Your Ezine
Your readers want a specific structure for your ezine. They want to be able to learn your structure and to be able to quickly follow your structure to get to the meat and potatoes of every issue. Your readers are pressed for time in the same way that you are, so they want you to enable them to get what they want from you in a quick and orderly fashion.
Provide Exceptional And Targeted Content
When you develop your ezine, you know in principle what type of content that you want to bring to your readers.
But, unless you have the financial ability to work your ezine on a full-time basis, finding the time to create all of your own content is a challenge that every publisher faces.
Fortunately, there are writers who have the time to create the content you can use, and they make their content available for publication so long as their terms of reprint are honored.
These writers cover a wide range of subject materials that enable publishers in nearly every genre find a ready supply of content that they can include in their publications.
To learn how you can find articles that can be used for reprint in your publication, you should explore the following resources:
Niche Content Finder
http://www.freewebs.com/niche-content/
The Article Depot
http://articledepot.50megs.com/
The Phantom Writers Articles Archive
http://thephantomwriters.com/free_content/d/index.shtml
Free-Reprint Article and Content Providers Webring
http://b.webring.com/hub?ring=contentproviders
Personalize And Brand Your Ezine
In order to separate your ezine from the thousands of other online magazines, you must create a solid brand for your ezine.
What I mean by this is that you should always strive to make your ezine stand well above the crowd and to give your ezine its own personal identity. You want your ezine to be the one that your subscribers will read religiously and intently.
The way to develop an identity for your ezine, separate from your competitors, is to inject a touch of yourself into every issue. Talk to your readers as if you are talking to a friend or colleague. Your publishing competitors cannot duplicate your personality or your own personal take on life itself. Your personality is the primary ingredient that will help you to develop a solid ezine brand that your readers can trust.
Create Reader Interaction
The greatest challenge in publishing an ezine is ALWAYS getting your subscribers to read your ezine.
One method for doing this is to develop reader interaction.
The one ezine that I know that has done the best job of this is Your Membership Exchange:
http://www.your-membership.com
In this ezine, readers submit questions, and other readers answer the questions. Their unique selling proposition is “Newsletters for Our Members, By Our Members.”
In each issue, a new question is posted, and then the publisher takes the best answers to a previous question and publishes them in the ezine. I read this one every day.
In my ezine, I had accomplished a strong level of interaction with my readers by running a contest. In every issue, I posed a brain teaser question and published the names of the first three people who in the previous issue got the answer right.
Ask For The Sale
I mention this only because I know someone who is making this mistake right now. I am sure a lot of other publishers are making this mistake as well.
Many people begin the process of publishing an ezine for the explicit purpose of selling their own wares. They follow the advice of the guru’s about developing a mailing list and publishing their ezine on a regular basis. A lot of work is put into the ezine to develop a loyal base of subscribers who read each and every issue delivered.
And when all is said and done, the publisher fails to ask their readers to purchase the wares that their e-zine was designed to promote. How does one actually expect their readers to buy their wares if they do not ask their readers to buy what is being offered?
You are the expert in charge of your publication, so you should not be afraid to ask your readers the hard questions. You must explain to your readers what you are selling, and you must ask your readers to actually purchase what you are selling! Don’t be afraid of offending your readers. Take care to do what is necessary to help your ezine to generate the profits it was designed to create.
Author Bio:
Bill Platt owns The Phantom Writers, a company committed to helping people to establish an Internet presence & promote their businesses through the use of Free-Reprint Articles and Press Releases. Articles are distributed to 6,000+ publishers & webmasters as part of the package. http://thePhantomWriters.com Do you write your own articles? Let us distribute them for you.
5 Powerful Tips To Beat The Biggest Problem All Marketers Face
I bet you can’t tell me… the single biggest problem facing Every Direct Marketer, new and old. It’s not generating traffic, nor building an O’pt-In list, nor is it finding products to market and it’s not a lack of Cash.
You can buy traffic, you can buy O’pt-In list members, you can make or buy products and you can even borrow Cash. The biggest single problem for any Direct Marketer is How To Earn Your Prospect’s Trust. Learn how to earn AND keep trust and you open up huge new Marketing possibilities.
Too many salespeople of doubtful credentials, and too many adverts promising so much and delivering so little have hardened consumers, they no longer trust Marketers and Marketing claims without a great deal of convincing.So how exactly do you turn a skeptic into a believer?
Tip #1 – Make Your First Contact Count
Your initial point of contact with prospects is typically:
* An advert, in a PPC, a banner exchange, a classified or solo campaign
* An entry in a Search Engine directory
* Or an article you have written.
Unfortunate as it may be, people do judge others by first contact. If your initial impression of someone is poor, chances are that you will not give them a second look, be it in business or your personal affairs. Make sure your initial point of contact with all prospects is to your advantage. This does NOT mean expensive, glitzy or superficial. It means make your initial contact Sincere. Keep that one word in mind as you design all your sales and marketing strategies and your Initial Contacts will always be positive.
Tip #2 – Products, Pricing, Promises and Personality
Sincerity in your contacts with prospects comes from applying the (modified) 4 p’s of marketing:
* Products Market the best products you can and never settle for second best. Add value and benefit to your prospect with quality merchandise. Resist the temptation to market “Cost Cutting” alternatives that are in fact more expensive due to their poorer real value.
* Pricing Price your merchandise at a fair value for the producer, the consumer and the marketer. Over pricing your products is a self defeating tactic because prospects learn to avoid your pitch and with over high pricing you invite competition to under cut your cost and price base.
* Promises Your sales literature and copy must be accurate and reflect the true benefits of your products and services. This does not mean you should be unduly modest, by all means make big claims, but make sure you can prove and demonstrate anything you promise. Remember, in this context, any guarantee you give must be more solid than any Banks Vaults and worth as much as the contents of Fort Knox
* Personality Inject your personality into your contact with prospects. People love to do business with people they know. Avoid doing things you feel uncomfortable with, but do tell people about yourself, your failures, your wins, your hopes and your fears. Be the human face of you business and build a sincere relationship with prospects.
Tip #3 – Communication
When you get past the initial contact, the next hurdle in building trust is communication with your prospects. There are several ways to do this:
* A sequential autoresponder with relevant messages sent to your O’pt-In prospects at regular AND frequent intervals.
* An e-zine sent out to subscribers with useful information and not just an excuse for another advert.
* Articles showing your prospects how YOU manage your business and personal tasks, tactics and strategies.
Communication is two way traffic. Ask your prospects for input into your professional relationship and how they think you can improve it. Listen to your prospects.
Tip #4 – Credibility
Prospects always seek comfort that they are doing the right thing. It pays to use “borrowed” credibility if you are not a world recognised expert in your field. This is where testimonials enter the picture. Here are a few ways in which you can obtain testimonials and build credibility with a new product or service:
* Give a few samples away to a test group in return for the testimonial
* Use functionally disabled or time barred samples as demo versions which you can give away to prospects
* Develop fully functional modules with less features than the standard product and give those away to prospects.
* Develop e-courses and other training programs showing prospects the benefits and training them in how to use and consume your products and services.
Tip #5 – Service
Your prospect’s Trust is very hard earned. But this is as nothing when compared to retaining their Trust. Once a prospect becomes a customer, too many marketers make the fatal mistake of taking that customer for granted. Post sales service is a crunch time for cementing the Trust you have managed to win with such effort. Make sure you stay in touch with your new customer. Offer them advice and help in the use of their new product or service. Make sure any potential issues are dealt with before they escalate. Be available and within easy contact for your customers and prospects.
Relevant Resources
http://www.simplyeasier.com/me.html
Conclusion
As a direct marketer you can buy traffic, you can buy O’pt-In list members, you can make or buy products and you can even borrow Cash. You cannot manufacture or in any way manipulate trust – Trust is the one thing in your business that must be earned the Hard Way. Be sincere, do the right things as shown here and build trust with your prospects.
Author Bio:
Charles Kangethe of http://www.simplyeasier.com is a leading new wave Netpreneur and a published author from England. The “Simply Easier” brand name is your guarantee of high value, quality Marketing Products, Services and Resources.
8 Ways to Build Your Subscriber Base
When you combine the use of several of the following techniques for building your subscriber base you will find that you can grow your list rapidly. Don’t forget though, building your list is the easy part, Keeping your subscribers requires a lot more effort.
You will want to provide your readers with quality information they can depend on. If you promise to deliver your information on a certain day, then make sure you deliver it that day.
Provide your readers quality information that teaches and informs. And more than anything treat your readers with respect. Don’t abuse your list by sending continuous advertising or displaying twenty ads each issue you send.
Here are some of the best ways to build your list:
1. Your Website
Place a subscription box on every page of your website. Make sure you don’t overlook this simple but powerful way of gaining subscribers.
2. Give Them Something to Subscribe
This strong way of obtaining subscribers can literally quadruple your subscription rate. All you have to do is offer your visitor a free gift in return for their subscription. This free gift can be a free ebook, software course or report.
3. Writing Articles
You can write informative articles and allow them to be freely published. You will be branding your name. Include your subscription information within your bylines. You probably subscribe to at least one online newsletter or ezine. Most ezines will include a feature article written by the editor or a guest author. At the end of the article, a few lines of text about the author, referred to as your “byline” or “resource box.”
The writer gives the publisher permission to publish their article free of charge in exchange for the publisher including the author’s
byline. Your byline is basically just an advertisement for your business. You can usually include a couple of lines about yourself and a web address. By allowing your articles to be published, your articles will have the potential to be viewed by millions of Internet users.
4. Write Your own Ebook
You can create powerful ebooks and allow them to freely distributed. Place your subscription box on each page. Allow others to pass it along.
5. Submit Your Ezine or Articles to Ezine Directories
You will need to submit your ezine to a variety of listing sites. Do a search for ezine directories in your favorite search engine. Start submitting your ezine subscription information. Submit to at least ten different sites everyday. Pretty soon you’ll be listed in hundreds of sites. Be sure and study the listings on each site. You will need to submit a description of your ezine. Write a powerful description that will generate hundreds of new readers.
6. Use discussion lists to promote your list
Discussion lists provide a great way of communication with other people with the same interests. Usually blatant advertising is prohibited, but signature lines are permitted. When you subscribe to discussion lists you will be joining a group of individuals who have mutually subscribed to receive posts from other subscribers on the same list.
7. Pop-Up Windows
Although pop-up windows can be irritating if not used correctly, they will provide a highly effective means of obtaining new subscribers. Combine pop-up windows with your incentives.
8. Alert Boxes
Although using pop-up windows with incentives is a highly effective method of obtaining new subscribes, there is another method that is even better. When combined with an incentive, this method will literally double or even triple your subscriptions instantly. The alert box is similar to a pop-up window but doesn’t require your subscriber to fill out a form.
Author Bio:
Kristie Weddell is an independent researcher and owner of Affliatesource.com, a site devoted to providing resources for Affiliate and MLM Marketers. Subscribe to her free ecourse ‘5 Simple Steps to an Online Cashflow’ at http://tinyurl.com/33p42
SEO Trade Secrets – 8 Great Tools for Search Engine Optimization
About 80% of website traffic comes through search engines. And research shows, if you’re not on the first 2 pages, most people won’t find you.
This article isn’t about how to achieve a high ranking. That topic has been done to death over the past few months. We all know the basics now: Submit your site to the major search engines, scatter a generous helping of the right keyword phrases throughout your site in real sentences, then get a lot of other relevant sites link to your site. That’s it.
This article is about what tools to use to make your job easier.
1) Choosing Keyword Phrases (costs approx USD$7.50 per day).
To decide what keyword phrases to use, subscribe to www.wordtracker.com for a day and do some analysis. Simply enter a keyword and WordTracker tells you how often people have searched for that keyword in the last month or two, how many competitor sites are using that keyword, and how many searches it expects in the next 24hrs.
2) Measuring Keyword Density (FREE).
To measure the density of the keyword phrases on your page, go to http://www.gorank.com/analyze.php and type in the domain and keyword phrase you want to analyse. It’ll give you a percentage for all the important parts of your page, including copy, title, meta keywords, meta description, etc. The higher the density the better.
3) Check How Search-Engine-Friendly Your Site Is (FREE).
Search engines send out spiders (or robots) to investigate your site. These tools allow you to see your site from the spider’s point of view.
– http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.search-engine-viewer.htm
– enter your URL and it gives you a summary of the things you could improve.
– http://www.gritechnologies.com/tools/spider.go?
– Poodle tells you how many links the spider will see and investigate.
4) Check How Many of Your Pages are Indexed (FREE).
Go to just about any search engine and type site:www.yourdomain.com. The search engine will then tell you how many of your pages it has indexed.
5) Monitor Your Position in Google (FREE).
No need to waste time clicking through hundreds of Google search results looking for your site. This tool allows you to enter a keyword and a domain name, and it searches Google to see where your domain is positioned. Go to, http://www.cleverstat.com/google-monitor-query.htm to download the setup file. Then just install.
6) See How Important Sites Are (FREE).
The Google Toolbar is an indispensable tool. One of the things it can tell you is the “importance” of every site you visit (in Google’s eyes at least). You’ve probably heard a bit about PageRank or PR. PR is Google’s measure of the importance of a site. Basically, the higher your PR, the higher your ranking. This tool gives you a snapshot of the PR of every site you visit. Go to http://toolbar.google.com.
TIP: It’s good to get links from other sites with high PR especially if they contain the same keywords as your site.
WARNING: Apparently the Google Toolbar monitors your internet usage. As yet, it’s unclear what it uses this information for.
7) Monitor What Sites are Linking to Yours (FREE).
Google News Alerts (http://www.google.com/newsalerts?hl=en) and Google Web Alerts (http://www.google.com/webalerts) will tell you who’s linking to your site. Simply set up an alert to be notified when Google finds www.yourdomain.com.
8) Getting Help (FREE).
If you’re new to SEO, the first thing you should do is check out Google’s guide to SEO at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. If you already know the basics, there are a number of forums you can subscribe to to post questions. These forums are free, and they’re frequented by countless SEO experts. And when I say “experts”, I mean EXPERTS! Some of these people do SEO all day, every day. And like many technical experts, they’re only too happy to help for free. The best forum seems to be http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3, but http://searchengineforums.com/Forum28 is ok too. If all else fails, you can try sending Google an email. Go to http://www.google.com.au/contact/index.html, but don’t hold out much hope of help here. They’ll eventually answer, but there’s no guarantee on the quality of their response.
This is just a snapshot of the tools available out there. Doubtless there are better tools available, but these will certainly get you started.
Enjoy!
Author Bio:
Glenn Murray heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit www.divinewrite.com for further details.
Color Psychology in Marketing
On the internet we don’t deal with face to face selling. The internet is a visual and psychological medium. The words, or sales copy, on your website have by far the greatest psychological impact on your visitors and thus becomes your most important communication and sales tool.
Another important psychological aspect of your website that is often overlooked are the colors. Yes, that’s right… I said colors. Just as you use words to express yourself, colors can be used as an expression as well and are a language all on their own.
Author Name: Al Martinovic
Company: MilleniumMarketers.com
Author Bio:
Al Martinovic works from home and runs a successful mlm business at http://www.ineedsmokes.com and also publishes a popular internet marketing newsletter: http://www.milleniummarketers.com
The background color of your website, the color of your header, the color of your text, headlines and sub-headlines etc. can all have a psychological impact on your visitors. Here is a list of some of the common colors and what type of psychological emotion they invoke in people:
RED is associated with love, passion, danger, warning, excitement, food, impulse, action, adventure.
BLUE is associated with trustworthiness, success, seriousness, calmness, power, professionalism.
GREEN is associated with money, nature, animals, health, healing, life, harmony.
ORANGE is associated with comfort, creativity, celebration, fun, youth, affordability.
PURPLE is associated with royalty, justice, ambiguity, uncertainty, luxury, fantasy, dreams.
WHITE is associated with innocence, purity, cleanliness, simplicity.
YELLOW is associated with curiosity, playfulness, cheerfulness, amusement.
PINK is associated with softness, sweetness, innocence, youthfulness, tenderness.
BROWN is associated with earth, nature, tribal, primitive, simplicity.
GREY is associated with neutralality, indifference, reserved.
BLACK is associated with seriousness, darkness, mystery, secrecy.
You can use the above as a guide when choosing colors for your website. It really boils down to your target audience and what psychological message you want to convey in colors.
Blues and white backgrounds work best for business sites. Maternity sites should consider some pink. Golf or lawn sites sites should consider green. Food sites should consider red, etc.
There are also numerous shades of the same color that you can use too. Here a link that lists 216 colors that work in all browsers:
http://www.geocities.com/webtvbeth/hexchart.html
It also boils down to common sense too. As far as using colors in text, black text on white backgrounds may be dull but it is the most readable and pleasing to the eye.
Yellow text on white background is not only unreadable, but causes eye-strain which will have people leaving your site quickly. Nothing will lose sales faster than eye-straining text.
Here’s a link for a “color wheel” that shows which colors compliment each other, and which ones don’t:
http://www.saumag.edu/art/studio/chalkboard/c-wheel.html
In conclusion, not only can the sales copy on your website have a psychological impact with words but the colors you use can as well.
Use them wisely…
Are Your Words Attracting Clients?
I’ve always found that one of the easiest, most cost-effective, and productive ways to build a business is to magnetize yourself. Think of the magnets you see in your everyday life. They’re strong, aren’t they? They have pulling power, don’t they? They have the ability to keep things attached, don’t they? That’s the beauty of attraction marketing, too, with you being the magnet that draws people to you.
So, how do you magnetize yourself? By letting people get a “taste” of you. Why? Because when they’re ready to contact you, they already know who you are and what you can do for them.
It saves a lot of time and brings you clients who want to work with you instead of prospects who want you to convince them to deal with you. That’s a subtle, but very important distinction.
Many potential clients will want to “experience” you anonymously before they’re prepared to enter into a conversation with you. Your job is to make that as easy as possible for them, and one of the best ways to do that it to put your thoughts in writing and make sure your writing is seen by as many potential clients as possible.
What should you write and how do you get your words to “attract” qualified clients to you? Here are a few suggestions:
1. Write an e-mail newsletter in your area of expertise that lets people see who you are and what you can do for them. I have been sending this newsletter out for six years and have received business from readers all over the world. Writing an e-zine has helped me build my business and it can easily help you build yours, too.
2. Leverage your efforts by sending your articles to mailing lists that cater to publishers looking for content. (You’ll need to become members of the list in order to submit your articles, but the exposure you get is well worth the added e-mails you’ll receive.)
Here are a few to get you started:
aageneral@yahoogroups.com
Free-Content@yahoogroups.com
article_announce@yahoogroups.com
ArticlePublisher@yahoogroups.com
aabusiness@yahoogroups.com
I_Need_Content@yahoogroups.com
articlesubmission@yahoogroups.com
QC_Reprint_Articles@yahoogroups.com
Remember to include a resource box with your contact information at the end. Your copyright notice at the end of the article is a must, too. Before you know it, your articles will be appearing in newsletters and on Web sites around the world.
3. Write a compelling signature file for all your e-mails. The signature file is what you see after someone’s name in an e-mail. It is not meant to be a blatant advertisement, but rather a quick intro of who you are and the benefits you offer. Make sure you include your web site and contact information. Keep it to six to eight lines. Any more than that is considered very poor netiquette.
4. Write letters to the editor. Let the members of your community see where you stand on matters of local or business interest. Sign your name and your business name if your comments are business related. This will go a long way in creating visibility for yourself in your community.
5. Express yourself in a handwritten note. Anybody can use e-mail. Someone who takes the time to sit down and write a note the old fashioned way really stands out from the crowd. “Thank you, “congratulations,” “nice meeting you,” “loved your presentation” are all great openers.
6. Post to discussion lists where your target market is active. Offer helpful suggestions to your list mates. Build credibility for yourself by offering help and expecting nothing in return. You’ll quickly build a reputation as someone in the know.
7. Become the newsletter editor of your Chamber of Commerce, Women’s group or professional association. This will keep your name in front of the membership on a regular basis. Looking for newsworthy articles to write about members’ businesses will give you a perfect reason to stay in touch. Doing so allows you to build both name recognition and relationships.
8. Write a regular column for a trade magazine that caters to your target market. You HAVE identified your target market haven’t you?
9. Send press releases any chance you get. Launching a new business? Send a press release. Adding a new service? Send a press release! Sponsoring a contest? Send a press release! Delivering a workshop? Send a press release! How do you think newspapers get their information? From press releases! Whom do you think they interview? People who send press releases!
10. Give written testimonials. Yes, you read that right. GIVE testimonials. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll get back.
Your written words are constantly being recycled and seen by fresh eyes every day.
If someone likes an article they’ve seen in a newsletter, they’ll hit their e-mail “Forward” button. If they see something in the local newspaper that strikes a chord with them, they’ll cut out the article and mail it to a friend.
Your testimonial on someone’s Web page will be seen by thousands. Notes get passed around by proud recipients. Magazines sit in doctor’s offices forever.
Get the picture?
Ready? Set? Write!
Author Bio:
Leni Chauvin is the creator of the popular “Attract Clients Galore Program” for entrepreneurs and independent professionals who want to attract more (and better) clients, make more money, and have more fun while they’re doing it. She is a certified Professional Coach and Business Building Specialist who has helped thousands of ordinary people build extraordinary businesses. Info and newsletter at http://www.superstarnetworking.com
Peak Cycles are Driven by Timely Content
The very first time I had ever experienced this phenomena online was in December of 1996. In those way-back days, I ran a site focused on selling Christian t-shirts. Back then, I had posted Christian based poetry on my website to draw traffic to the domain. Over the two days leading up to Christmas and the two days following Christmas, I had served as much traffic as I had in the previous nine months of existence!
Fast-forward to April 15th, 2004. I currently have more than one dozen articles on my website dealing with 401k retirement funds and 401k tax issues. These articles are the third most frequented topic on my site as the traffic is generated from the search engines. Beginning on April 12th, my site traffic started to climb beyond its average level. It then peaked on April 15th. Of course, the vast majority of this traffic was visiting my site to find my tax related content.
Although the traffic to these tax resources comes from many sites beyond just the search engines, as many people have linked to these articles, one site in particular is the tax related site for one of my article distribution clients. My client had decided to leave his articles off of his site, and to link to his articles on my domain. Between April 12th and April 15th, my site received 448 unique visitors from my client’s domain alone. (http://www.investsafe.com/articles.html) On the 15th, my site served 90% more visitors than is average on any given day.
So the lesson I have learned here is that if I have date targeted materials on my site for several different dates, that I can actually draw more people to my site during these peak time periods. While the time dated traffic may not generate immediate sales, it will allow me to garner more recognition in the marketplace. Over the long haul, this extra recognition serves to generate more referral traffic that has proven to be the basis of my business model. 95% of all of my clients have come to me directly by referral.
Author Bio:
Bill Platt owns The Phantom Writers, a company committed to helping people to establish an Internet presence & promote their businesses through the use of Free-Reprint Articles and Press Releases. Articles are distributed to 6,000+ publishers & webmasters as part of the package. http://thePhantomWriters.com Do you write your own articles? Let us distribute them for you.
Ways To Promote Your Business
A business, more often than not, has a very limited budget when it comes to advertising. The business owner needs to make the public aware of his or her product or service at the lowest possible cost.
There are many ways. A pet breeder in a large city was struggling for several years-until he came up with a novel idea. He started giving away customized “birth certificates” for the pets he sold. Almost immediately, his sales rose more than 10 percent.
The owner of a new home cleaning service was trying to attract clients. She couldn’t afford much advertising, so she began offering “home cleaning seminars” to civic groups. After two months of seminars, she was swamped with inquiries and clients.
Promotion often makes the crucial difference between business success and failure. Customers or clients must know about a business or product line before they’ll buy and they must have a reason to buy.
GIVEAWAYS. People love to receive “free” items, especially items they can use to gain knowledge or improve their lives. You can base an entire promotional campaign on this desire. If you’re running a furniture repair business, for instance, you could give away a furniture repair brochure, free furniture planning guides, or color swatches. Once you begin giving away authoritative information, customers will begin to perceive you as an expert in your field.
NEWS CREATION.Want to get your business in the local newspaper or TV? It may be easier than you think. If you don’t have any news to report to the local media, create some. One man hired a team of beautiful girls outfitted in skimpy bikinis and had them waving signs in a busy part of town announcing his new Web site address. Did it get attention by the media? You bet it did!
EVENTS.You may be able to attract the attention of the media or a crowd by staging a special promotional event. If you run a fitness classes, for instance, you could stage a celebrity instructor day. If you’re promoting a new real estate business, you can offer tours of a model home in the area. If you’re selling children’s products and it’s springtime, you can offer lunch with the Easter bunny. Get the idea?
CHARITY TIE-INS.Are you launching a new product? Trying to increase visibility among a particular segment of your community? Offer your product to one or more local charities as a raffle prize or for use at a fund raising event. You’ll receive lots of exposure among people who buy tickets or attend the event.
CONTESTS. Offer a desirable or unique item-or even several items-as contest prizes. First, find a contest theme that tiers into your business. A caterer might offer a quiche-eating contest. A photographer might offer a young model contest. A mail order craft firm might offer an “Early American” handicrafts contest. Invite contest submissions and offer prizes to the winners. Do contests attract attention? You bet. All it takes is a few signs, a small press announcement or two, and the word will spread throughout the community grapevine.
COMMUNITY SERVICE.Nothing brings you to the attention of the people faster-or more favorably-than community service. Ask yourself how your enterprise can be a “good neighbor” to your community. If you’re running a lawn care and gardening service, perhaps you can offer one season’s services at no charge to a needy charitable organization or nursing home in your area. Hundreds of people will hear about your work in the process. Volunteer for various community causes. If appropriate, you can step in during community emergency, offering products and services to help an organization or individuals in need.
COUPONS. Americans are very coupon-conscious. Test the market: at what level will coupons increase the volume of various product or service lines? When you get some tentative answers, start distributing coupons that offer a discount on your services. Distribute them to area newspapers, on store counters, in door-to-door- mail packets (which can often be quite inexpensive), at the public library, at laundromats, at any location where people congregate.
BADGES AND NOVELTIES.You can easily and inexpensively produce badges, bumper stickers, book covers, and other novelty items for distribution in your area. You can imprint your business name and the first names of the customers on many of these products at little cost and distribute them for free. Or you can tie your novelty program into a contest: once a month, you can offer a prize to any individual whose car happens to carry one of your bumper stickers or badges with peel-off coupons, redeemable at your place of business.
CELEBRITY VISITS.With a bit of persistence, you may be able to arrange to have a local media celebrity, public official, or entertainment personally-even a fictitious cartoon character or clown-visit your service. The celebrity can sign autographs, read stories to children, perform cooking demonstrations, or perform any one of a hundred other traffic-building activities.
By all means, advertise in the media if you can. But don’t neglect your greatest promotional asset-your mind. Ponder the products, services and events you can offer the community and devise a creative promotional strategy around them. You’ll have to invest a bit of time and energy in the project, but the payoff will be worth it. You’ll save hundreds-or even thousands-of advertising dollars and better yet, you’ll travel a well-worn shortcut to profit.
I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions.
Author Bio:
Serge Daudelin of WSPromotion.com is a top Marketing Agent Regulary putting on marketing seminars and working for one of the largest Advertising Agency in Canada.
What is Link Popularity?
Link Popularity refers to the number of links pointing to your site, from other sites on the web. The Search Engines consider your site important and rank it higher if several other sites link to your site.
You can search for the sites that link to your site by typing the following command in Google Search
For a detailed Link Popularity report, you can use our Link Popularity Analyzer Tool, which checks the link popularity of your site across various search engines like Google, MSN, AltaVista, HotBot, Yahoo and AlltheWeb.
History behind Link Popularity and Google PageRank
Web, by its very nature is based on hyperlinks, where sites link to other prominent sites. If you take the logic that you would tend to link to sites that you consider important, in essence, you are casting a vote in favor of the sites that you link to. When hundreds or thousands of sites link to a site, it is logical to assume that such a site would be good and important.
Taking this logic further the Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page formulated a Search Engine algorithm that shifted the ranking weight to off-page factors. They evolved a formula called PageRank (named after its founder Larry Page) where the algorithm would count the number of sites that link to a page and assign it an importance score on a scale of 1-10. More the number of sites that link to a page, higher its PageRank.
Google’s PageRank is important because it is one of the primary off-page factors that influences your page’s ranking in the search engine result pages.
PageRank in Google’s own Words
Google explains PageRank as follows (http://www.google.com/technology/):
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.
For more information on Google PageRank, go to
http://www.google.com/technology/
http://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html
Benefits of Building Link Popularity
Building Link Popularity is one of the most important and critical aspects of any effective Search Engine Optimization campaign today. The ‘off-page’ factors such as link popularity, PageRank and Anchor Text in incoming links play a major role in your site’s ranking in the search engine results pages (SERP).
Search Engines consider your site more important if more links point to your site. Building link popularity improves the PageRank of your web pages (Read more about PageRank). The higher the PageRank of your website, the higher its importance for search engines and higher it gets ranked in the search engine result pages. Search engines also take into account the PageRank of the pages that link to your site and its industry relevance to your own industry. Links from higher PageRank pages and industry relevant sites give your site a higher value.
Note: Search Engines need to ‘learn’ all the links you have created pointing to your site, in order to reward your website. Patience pays.
Types of Links
There are two types of links you can establish on the web. One way is to trade links (Link Exchange), where you give a link from the links Page on your site to the partner sites. The second method is to establish ‘only-incoming’ links also called ‘one-way links’ or ‘Non-Reciprocal links’.
Only-Incoming Links
Only incoming links are the links established on the other websites where you do not need to link back to them.
There are various compelling reasons and methods to establish such one-way links which include linking back from a different website that you may own, publishing articles on sites, content syndication, listing in trade directories and giving out press releases in news networks.
Link Exchange
Link exchange is an easier way to establish links from other websites to your website. In link exchange process, you trade links with prospective partner sites by offering a link to their site from your own site. This method is faster and a good way to establish several hundred links to your website without big efforts.
Only Incoming Links vs. Link Exchange
Google developed the PageRank algorithm to provide authentic and quality information while making it difficult for webmasters and site owners to contaminate the search results by artificially inflating their PageRank.
The new algorithm came into effect with the launch of Google in 1998. Google’s PageRank was based on the logic that more the number of sites that link to a page, higher its PageRank.
As Webmasters realized the importance of PageRank, they found ways to artificially inflate their PageRank by manipulating direct link exchanges. This defeated the very essence on which the Google PageRank algorithm was build. To counter this, Google has constantly been fine-tuning and updating its algorithms. Read about Google’s latest algo updates.
The search engines are aware that a large number of sites are deploying link exchange campaigns to boost their site’s PR. Search engines are working towards fine-tuning their algos to discount direct link exchanges in order to preserve the effect of their link popularity related algorithms and rationalize artificially inflated links popularity of sites.
While the algos are yet to reflect this change, we believe that it may happen soon enough. In the long run, we recommend investing your resources in an ‘only-incoming links’ campaign for your website which is likely to benefit your site more as opposed to a direct link exchange campaign.
Important Parameters to Consider while Building Link Popularity
Some of the important parameters that you need to consider while establishing links with any website are discussed below:
PageRank or PR of the Linking Page
PR of the linking page is one of the most important factors. PR of the linking page determines how much value of importance is passed on to your page. Higher the PR of the linking page, higher the value you get. The home page PR is not as important, but it is an indicator of how much PR a linking page may jump to, in due course of time. For instance, if the PR of the site’s link page is 0, but the home page PR is 6, then, there is a bright possibility that in a month or two, the link page PR may also jump to a PR of 4 or even 5 due to the internal linking structure of the partner site. While sites would be happy to give out links from a PR 0 page, you can estimate that in two months time, this link page can jump to a high PR, giving you great value in the future.
Identifying Total Number of Links on the Link Page
The value your web page gets from a linking page is equal to the total PR value of that page divided by the total number of outgoing links on that page. Getting a link from a PR4 page that has only 20 outgoing links is much better than getting a link from a PR4 page that has 60 outgoing links. With the same philosophy, it is better to get a link from a PR2 link page that has only 10 outgoing links than getting a link from a PR4 page that has over 100 outgoing links. It is therefore as important to evaluate the total number of outgoing links on a links page, as it is, to evaluate the PR of the linking page. This is where many people often falter, as they usually insist on getting a link from a high PR page, but if that page has 100 outgoing links, your page would only get 1/100th of that value.
Industry Relevance
Search engines give high importance to links pointing to your site from your own industry segment as opposed to those from an un-related industry. For instance, a hotels and reservations website is likely to benefit more from links pointing from a related industry site like travel, vacation packages or cruises, than those from an unrelated industry like a drug site.
Industry relevance also needs to be given a high weight while creating resource directories. For example, if you have a site related to hotels, then you can create a resource directory related to your business that could be pertaining to travel, tourism, cruises, vacation rentals, vacation packages, car rentals, food and beverages etc.
Page Relevance
Most sites offering links have several categories listed on their sites. Try and get a link from a category that closely matches your own industry. For instance, if you have a site related to hotels, then, on your partner site, a tickets site for example, try and identify a resource directory pertaining to hotels, resorts, reservations, vacation packages, travel, tourism, food and beverages etc. If the concerned site has a directory on hotels, you should request a link in that category, as a link from that page would be relevant to a hotels site, thus getting you more benefits. An algorithm called ‘Applied Semantics’ determines the industry relevance of a page within a site. Applied Semantics algorithm studies various keywords on a web page and tries to determine the industry or business segment of each page. Applied Semantics estimates the industry segments that are relevant to a particular page. If the link to your page is coming from your business specific segment, then you are likely to draw more benefit.
Anchor Text
Anchor Text is the visible hyperlinked text on a web page. Since anchor text is very important, make sure that your most important keywords appear in anchor text from the link pointing to your site. You should try and work with at-least 10-20 keyword and link text options. If you are creating a large number of links using only one standard link text, then the search engines are likely to detect a pattern. It is possible that future algo updates may do away with all repetitive and similar looking links to your site.
You can also refer to our article on Anchor Text Optimization for more details.
Pre-Indexed Pages
Try and find link partners in Search Engines like Google and Yahoo, and check if the links page is already indexed in the search engines. Search Engines frequently re-index the pages in its database. They are likely to detect your link faster on a page already existing in their database as compared to a ‘yet-to-be indexed’ page. The safest way to check is to copy the prospective link page URL and paste it into Google Search. If the page is indexed, Google would show a result in response to your search, otherwise it would respond with a ‘no result found’.
The robots.txt file
robots.txt is an exclusion file that contains specific instructions for search engine robots regarding the content they are not allowed to index. Links placed on a page that the search engines robots are not allowed to index, would not benefit your site. Considering the importance of robots.txt file, it is a good idea to study a site’s robots.txt file to identify the excluded pages before approaching a site for establishing links with your site. Read our article on Working with robots.txt file.
Dynamic Link Pages
You should also watch out for any link pages that are generated dynamically. Chances are that such pages would not get indexed soon enough, which means that a link from such a page would not benefit you. Some dynamic link pages are intentionally generated in such a way so as to prevent them from getting indexed. Some unscrupulous webmasters do this to trick you to prevent any PageRank leaking from their site to yours. Links from such pages therefore do not give you any benefit.
Java Script Link Pages
It is also important to identify pages that are generated through Flash or a Java Script, as Search Engines cannot read flash pages or the links embedded within flash. These are some of the tricks unethical webmasters use. While a site can claim to have placed a link to your web page, in effect they are not giving you any benefit.
Re-Directed Links
A link that is first re-directed to another page within your partner site before pointing to your site is a re-directed link. You should watch out for such links, as search engines do not give weight to re-directed links. It is very unlikely that your site would draw any benefit from a re-directed link.
Frame Sites
Avoid getting links from framed sites as search engines cannot read texts within frames. A link placed on a frame site would not get your site any benefit, as search engines would not be able to recognize such a link.
Directory Depth
It is important to evaluate the depth of the directory of the linking page. Avoid getting links from pages that are embedded in a very deep directory or pages that are more than two directories deep (e.g. www.domain.com/dir1/dir2/dir3/linkpage.htm is not a good link page). Deep directories seldom earn high PR. They are also slow in getting indexed, if at all.
Building Link Popularity is a great way to help your site gain competitive PR. Links from other sites also sends direct human traffic to your site. Observing a little care in developing links will go a long way in getting your site rank high in search engines.
Author Bio:
Harjot Kaleka is an SEO Copywriter at www.SEOrank.com, a leading Search Engine Optimization services company. She has a Masters degree in Mass Communications and Copywriting.
