miércoles, 4 de febrero de 2009

MAKE SEARCH ENGINES LOVE YOUR SITE

Organic traffic generation, that is, traffic from search engines is being missed by so-called webmasters because they fail to implement simple tweaks that you can learn. Frankly, they have forgotten the basics.

With the proper know-how and the tools you can make your site beat your competition every time and wind up on the first page of results.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term commonly used to make something simple look complicated. It sounds "geeky" but it's really simple when you peek behind the curtain and see just how easy it is to learn.

Think about how you, yourself, use search engines to find stuff. I know I am like most most people. I scan the ten top search results on the first page and, if I don't find what I want I might move to the second page or just type in a new search term. So, getting your site listed on the first page, if possible in the top three listings, is always the goal. To reach that goal you need to learn the codes that the search engines want to see.

Now, the word "codes" might scare you but, in fact, "codes" means "words". That's right, words! You need to know where to put the right words on your site that will help you make it to the first page of results.

Why learn how to do this? It's simple. The higher you rank on the first page, the greater the likelyhood of your link being clicked on by someone seeking exactly the information you offer. In other words, the more traffic to your site, the more business you generate for your products and services and the more money you will make.

This is easier than you might think because most websites are not using solid SEO techniques and can easily be knocked out of their top position. Once you learn how to look at their words in the code and on the site, you will be able to find what they are missing. Use that information to code your site and you will beat them to the top within hours!

Remember: Search engine traffic is free traffic. It's called "organic traffic." It's traffic you do not have to spend a penny to get. It's traffic that automatically finds your site when the right "words" are there in your code and on your site. With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume for free.

It's a number game you see. The more traffic you get, the better chance of making a sale. It's that simple.

Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site get a top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself on the first page, better yet in the top half of the page, will ensure that your site will be seen by more surfers and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to greater income. That's what it's all about: Traffic equals Sales!

Initially, editing your web site does require some work on your part. For each of your websites, you need to implement some simple tweaks, but, tweaks that take some thought to maximize your results. And, again, this is not geek stuff at all. The tweaks you can make are simple and, once implemented, you can forget about your site and move on to build even more sites that will rank high in the search engines.

There are several aspects you have to change in your site, or add, to achieve strong search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your niche or theme and placing that information into key sections of your site.

You may also need to edit your sites content so that you can place the right keyword phrases in your content without making your site look too commercial. The idea is to give visitors a quality experience with a soft sell approach.

Want to know how well your site stacks up right now? Just type in your current keywords into Google and see what comes up. Are you on the first or second page? Probably not because you have not known about rewriting your site to attract search engines.

If you spend a little time and search the internet you can find free guidance and tutorials. Read as many articles that it takes for you to understand how to optimize your site for better search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather, the better. Apply your new knowledge to help you in getting those higher rankings. This may require a little time and effort on your part but the benefits will be seen in your bank account.

Now, if you have a little money to invest, there are tutorials and software that can help you learn search engine optimization much faster. There are also many tools that find profitable keyword phrases that will help you decide the best changes you can make to your site. There are also content writers that have lots of experience in writing keyword laden content of good quality, the kind of content that search engines love to see. The better the quality of your content, the better your ranking will be.

SEARCH ENGINE KEYWORDS FOR HIGH TRAFFIC

Landing on the top pages of major search engines is a goal to achieve by almost all online marketers with a web site. Being on top would mean more traffic and gradual increase in sales. It is a known fact for every one who is into online marketing that keywords are the main factors to a successful web site. However, we are not only talking about any keyword here because you ought to use targeted keyword in order for your site to have better advantage against your competitors. To look for top search engine keywords, you would need a tool to help you know what words are getting top searches daily.

In using this tool, you look for words or phrases related to whatever it is that you are promoting. Then, you can concentrate on using these words or phrases in your web site so that you can further optimize it for better rankings. You only choose those that get a good number of searches. Otherwise, maybe just less than five persons will get to visit your site in a month's time. This is absolutely a time waster. Successful targeted keyword may be difficult to take hold of since there are just thousands of online marketers who are also bidding for it.

You just need to be optimistic and persistent in looking for the right search engine keywords. They are the ultimate key to your site's success. Just keep your focus on targeted search engine keyword that garners many searches in a month. Your first few try may not instantly give you the results that you are hoping. Marketing with keywords is a critical aspect of your online business. Somehow it is important that you use highly targeted search engine keywords so that you can get better results in terms of search rankings and traffic. There are several ways to market your site using top search engine keywords that are relevant to your business.

One of which is thru building links in other sites that are related to your business. You can use your keyword to redirect people to your own web page. You have to invest some money if you want to use this technique. This may be costly but when you have done it in the right manner, then it will definitely be worth your investment. Do your best to only use profitable keywords so that you won't be wasting your time and effort in bidding for the wrong ones. With the help of a tool, you would be able to decide whether certain words deserve to be on your bid or not.

When you have determined which phrases or words you may use, you can start making contents for your web pages that would include these search engine keywords that you have chosen. Come up with good contents spreading the keywords on each of your pages. This way major search engines would recognize your web page. Better yet, submit your write up to popular article directories. You can have a link posted there and readers could just click on it if they are interested to learn more about your business. Invest time, effort, and perhaps some money to come up with targeted search engine keywords for your site.

Surely, it will work your way when you know you are doing the right thing.

INTERNET MARKETING TIPS (FIRST REPORT)

It's terribly easy to get distracted and sidetracked online if you are working as an online entrepreneur. But the highest achievers I know online find a way, no matter what, to make themselves productive online. More specifically, they make sure they spend their time on marketing activities. Many entrepreneurs spend a lot of time creating their product but it doesn't sell. Why? Because of poor marketing!

If you go hard on marketing your product, you will never go poor.

Let's look at some ways you can go hard on your marketing and experience amazing results. First, article marketing. You probably know all about writing titles, how to write articles, how to write subject boxes. Well, here is the simple rule that matters more than any of that - double your output and your traffic will double. Yes, simple rule, but the difference it can make to your life is astounding. I know; I have personally experienced it. So what do you do? Well, if you are writing 3 articles a day now, start writing 6, somehow, someway.

Now let's look into pay per click advertising. This is one advertising strategy where you can go hard initially, then go easy and let the system produce traffic and leads for you. Work hard on compiling a comprehensive keyword list, write killer ads, and spend a little time each day refining your system by eliminating poor performing keywords, changing your bids and split-testing ad copy.

The last marketing activity you will want to go hard on is seeking joint ventures. Joint ventures are perhaps the quickest way to get hundreds or even thousands of visitors overnight. You can literally bank a 4-figure payday off the back of your partner's list! So go and get more JV's. Devote time every day to this marketing activity.

If you go hard on these 3 strategies, you will always have an iron rice bowl.

TYPES OF EMAIL MARKETING

Before you begin your email marketing campaign, you have to consider just what your objective is. Of course, you want to sell, but the business of marketing is a little more subtle than that. In fact, there are many ways to go about selling your product or service via an email campaign. As it were, email, besides being extremely cost effective is also quite flexible.

Direct Email: A direct email approach is pretty straightforward. It consists of sending out a promotional message in an email. The information contained in the email can simply be an announcement of new items, a special offer or discount, or it can be a friendly introduction.

Retention Email: The retention email takes on a different character. In this instance, you're trying to keep customers coming back. You want loyalty. So, instead of a simple promo, a retention email should aim at developing a long term relationship with your customers. It should offer something more than just advertisements. You want to give your customers valuable information. You want to entertain your customers, keep them smiling during the day.

Once you determine what sort of email campaign you want to design, there are many different approaches you can take.

Email Newsletters: An email newsletter doesn't focus directly on sales. The purpose of a newsletter is to foster a relationship with your customer. You do this by giving them information that's of use to them, whether it be a weekly column about how to stay in shape, or a monthly recipe special. The content should be entertaining, easy to read, and thoughtful; it should reflect the core values of your company. Newsletters are an excellent opportunity to develop your brand, to make it stand for something. In the end, a good newsletter will lead to an indirect increase in sales.

Catalog Emails: An email catalog is an electronic representation of your product listing. This approach is more direct than a newsletter; it gets straight to the point. Of course, you do want to deliberate carefully about the design and aesthetics of the catalog. If your email catalog is hastily put together, without thought or care, you might as well abandon your email campaign and start over. Design is everything.

Best of Email: This approach goes along the lines of a catalog, but rather than displaying all your wares, you showcase a selected few that you have handpicked. The structure is fairly simple-all that's required are a few promo shots, some quick copy and links to process orders.

Top Ten Emails: If you don't want to do an all out newsletter or if you want to simply mix things up, you might want to think about sending a top ten email. These consist of facts and tips that will promote your product while giving customers helpful information. Any variation, e.g. top five ways to save money and look beautiful, or seven can't miss tips, etc., works well too.

How To Email: This is very similar to the Top Ten approach, except rather than offering a list, you offer a tutorial. Show your customers how to make a birdhouse or knit a sweater, for example.

Press Release: A press release are the perfect way to get your company news coverage. This is especially useful if you have media contacts.

There is no one size fits all solution. Try out different methods to see what works best for your company. Get creative. Just remember to keep your customers at the forefront.

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF EMAIL MARKETING

Our purchases are a pattern of behavior most of the time, that is why programs such as TiVo can suggest shows you might like based on the shows you have programmed in. People are not too hard to figure out in some respects and purchasing behavior is one of those fairly predictable areas of human nature. This predictability is what programs such as email marketing software operates on to a large extent.

When companies are trying to reach out to their customer base or create new customers they can email their information and materials to all of the addresses they are able to acquire. In order to do this more effectively, businesses can purchase email marketing software. This kind of software comes with all kinds of special features to help maximize the effectiveness of a company's marketing. Depending on the price, the software can come with all types of bells and whistles for businesses to analyze their email advertising.

A hurtle that companies come across when using email marketing is that the customer has to authorize that materials can be sent to their email address. There are many laws and regulations surrounding business marketing emails but once a person has provided their email and agreed to its use, companies take full advantage of it. A company can buy email marketing software for anything from it being free to the software costing five hundred dollars, but the price is directly relative to the quality and ease of use of the product.

The software lets companies take their customer database and organize their email addresses into an easy, usable format. The scheduling feature of most software allows businesses to direct their attention to other details while the system takes care of sending out emails. By using information from the customer database the software is able to make personal messages to send out to customers with suggestions of what products to buy or what they might be interested in. This feature illustrates the pattern of personal buying behavior and how businesses can use technology to capitalize on it.

Email marketing software also manages the emails that bounce back as well as keeps an account of how many emails were opened and the number of times customers used hyperlinks in the messages to look at the websites. The software can also handle when people choose to unsubscribe and removes them from the customer list, which is something the program can import as well. The software can also help a business appear more professional and well put together. The design options allow companies to use templates in order to create more impressive emails.

As email marketing becomes more and more popular the software that supports it will become more advanced and intricate. Customers will be studied by people and technology alike in order to determine the best way to encourage consumers to buy a certain product or request a particular service. email brings marketing right to the target audience and oddly enough the software adds a bit of a personal touch.

OBAMA WON BECAUSE OF EMAIL MARKETING

Have you seen Barack Obama's website? It's pretty impressive. His home page is actually a squeeze page.

Have you signed up for Barack's newsletter? If you haven't you should. He does a terrific job of demonstrating the powers of email marketing.

I wonder who is advising him with his internet and email marketing. If Barack Obama wins the election, his masterful job of email marketing will definitely help.

Along with his email and internet marketing efforts. Obama has a terrific grass roots ground operation. He takes his supporters from registering online, to offline.

Some of the things I like about Barack's emails are the following

1) Asks for $5-$10 donations consistently. He keeps asking me to donate! A lot, but a small amount. No wonder he is breaking records in the donations category.

He is mastering the art of the "first offer", something inexpensive that any one can afford.

2) Asks you to participate. He wants you to be part of this election. He wants you to interact with his campaign and interact with his website etc.

This gets you to participate. The more time you spend with him, the more likely you are to donate. If you donate, the more likely you are to vote.

Imagine someone donating $20 to Barack Obama, and then voting for Mccain. No way, that will never happen. When someone donates, even if it's only $5, they are basically giving their vote. Barack Obama is selling their vote to the American people. The best part is, they get a voter, a loyal contributor, and along with $5.00...

They are not buying votes, but are selling them!

3) The emails are very personal and current. After every debate or event in the news they would email you!

So you will know what's going on in the campaign, the election and the US as a whole.

When Joe Bidden got nominated as Barack's running mate, Joe introduced himself in a personal letter to the people on Barack's list! What a way to make a connection.

A SIMPLE APPROACH TO EMAIL MARKETING

Today's marketers can easily approach a pool of potential or existing customers with a survey or other response vehicle that provides them with instant and beneficial feedback. They can do this through several methods, but the most popular is through an email marketing device. This is usually a link to a survey which is sent out through an email to a large number of addresses. When the recipients agree to take the survey by clicking on the link embedded in the original email, the results are recorded and can be accessed by the sender of the email at a later date.

Sounds great, right? It is, but the catch is that most businesses and organizations don't have the "set up" for creating such a simple system. So, what's the answer? Luckily there are many reliable and easy to use email marketing services that supply the tools and templates for creating such powerful marketing materials.

Email marketing services offer far more than just access to survey creation and tracking however, and anyone involved with marketing on a small or large scale should investigate the potential such a service provides. For example, many marketers hesitate to jump into an email campaign because they are afraid their efforts are going to wind up in many "spam" folders on a recipient's email server. The better email marketing services however have success with a large number of ISPs because they are known to be trustworthy sources of valid information, and not the dreaded spam.

Additionally, the better email marketing companies provide wonderfully easy to use templates from which a professional marketer could create a whole range of direct email marketing pieces. Just think, these services allow the download of many email address lists. Each list could have a customized template created with very specific language, surveys and relevant information. Any responses are then tracked by the service's system and the user can then create reports and assess the results of their completely controlled campaign.

With email marketing it is nearly impossible to lose. In fact, statistics have documented that email marketing provides the highest ROI (return on investment) out of all the direct marketing approaches. Add to that that this is now considered the preferred advertising method of choice by more than 80 percent of professional marketers in the United States.

Email marketing simply makes sense because more than ninety percent of all Internet users have access to an email account. This is a very direct way of communicating with millions of people for very little cost. This is easy to illustrate through a discussion about surveys. As stated earlier a survey is a great way to drive customers to a business or site, and to get direct feedback. Before email marketing allowed for electronic surveys, a company would have to design the survey, print it, mail it and provide for a postage paid response vehicle. They would then have to manually enter and study the data gathered from the surveys to generate a report. With email marketing the surveys are sent without postage, paper or processing and the results are tracked and reported on with only a few clicks of the mouse!

MAKE YOUR PAGE ATTRACTIVE

Want to make your web page or website attractive? Then it's time to learn on how to use free blog themes.

Most of the webmasters spend a lot of time and energy on making their websites as attractive as possible to maintain and capture a sizable traffic for it. They also make the website as accessible as possible to improve web traffic. For neophytes, this task may be very challenging as well as hard. But there are a lot of ways to make our sites attractive and to catch sizable traffic.

Free blogs themes are the easiest and the most convenient way to decorate and make our web pages attractive and up to date. It offers a lot of choices for all types of users and tastes and most of all it's free. It offers users a very easy way to maintain and keep their websites. It also offers a whole make over to our blogs like changing its background, its font and even its color, just by several clicks.

Before, it was so hard to make blog themes because one has to make it from scratch. But with a lot of people making the free blog themes, it became easier to utilize. This is made simple because it doesn't use HTML codes and scripts that are usually very hard to understand and what more to use. That is the reason why free blog themes became so popular that even the mediocre users of the computer can use them and place them in their very own websites.

Free blog themes are readily available for download in various sites in the internet. Just knowing where to find the best theme can make a difference in anyone's blog or webpage. They can also be changed easily from one theme to another. The best thing about it is that it's free and doesn't require any subscription or membership fees. All you have to do is look for a site that offers free download and start creating and recreating your web page. There would definitely no boring days for you and your webpage.

Free blog themes are also very easy to use. They only require programs like WordPress to integrate the new look into your site. All you have to do is to download the blog theme into your computer (which is normally a ZIP file), extract and view its content. Then all you have to do is import the theme onto your blogging application without manually inserting the images one by one.

Free blog themes are totally not boring since they are simple, easy to use and flexible. Right. They are flexible. Even by using these free download, they can be changed and edited to integrate more of your style into your site. These download help by actually letting you use your imagination and your taste into creating and recreating your website. These downloads are not hard to use and they will allow changes into its design and layout to make you choose the best look for you.

If you want some free blog themes, feel free to check http://jump2top.com/themes

HOW TO WRITE INTERESTING BLOG CONTENT

Blog is a free platform where you can write almost anything you like. Now everyone can create a blog and starting posting on it. However, it is your content that determines whether you can make money with blog or not. Below are some tips to help you to create profitable blog content.

According to studies, most readers love to read light and relax materials. So, the next time you publish your blog post, write things that appeal to your readers' interest. Let your readers get the necessary information and enjoy their read.

The next thing you need to know is that every bloggers have their own style and you might have a different opinion on some matters. You can express your personal opinions in your blog and your readers will appreciate that you show them a different side of the story. So, show your unique personality in your blog content.

Most of the writing guides nowadays agree that you need to address your readers as 'you'. This is because people like the feeling of being special. When you address your readers as you in the blog content, they will think that you are giving them your full attention. When you are able to make your readers feel special, they will visit your blog regularly.

Speaking of attending to your readers, you need to add some human touch to your blog content to make it interesting. Always remember that your readers are real people with real emotion. Your job as a successful blogger is to rouse their emotion and one of the best ways is to add some sense of humor in your posts.

Sometime your readers will be bored with your writing. Relax. Your blog content is still interesting. Just that they grew bore of looking at words. So, it is good that you can add videos, audios or search engines as your content once in a while so that your readers will feel something fresh from your blog.

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HOW IMPORTANT IS YOUR BLOG LAYOUT?

Your Blog layout is of the utmost importance. It should be designed around what is called 'minimalism' this means you should not "cram" your Blog pages too much because this makes it difficult for visitors to decide what to read first. It is easy for them to get lost if the main content of the Blog is not clear to them and if they can not decide what it is they will find in the other pages of the Blog.

So many Bloggers are so engrossed in driving people to their Blog that they eventually forget how they should treat them once they are there. Even though when it comes to blogging, a Blog publisher must keep in mind that though there is one contributor and many readers there should be some level of interactivity. So the layout of the Blog must have a prominent "comment" space for the visitors. This will ensure a long term residual traffic to your Blog consisting of visitors who are really interested in the kind of content you keep posting.

If you have a business Blog you must keep in mind that people do not like to do business with anonymous people. You will need to add credibility to your business Blog by displaying your contact information prominently. This sends out the message that you are approachable and available should your visitors need any assistance. A business Blog bust be crisp and to the point, much like a business letter. Remember business letters are concise and precise, there is no 'Hello, how are you' and 'what is the weather like?' in business writing. The same holds true to a business Blog.

The fundamentals of blogging will dictate that the links that take your visitors to other pages of the Blog must be places at the top or the side of the page where the visitors can easily see them. You could have an attractive banner at the top of the page and any advertisements if any, just below the additional links towards the right side of the page.

In the end it is the layout of your Blog that will prove to be of most importance to your traffic. They must not get lost among irrelevant content and know at once that the various categories of your Blog are structured in a regular manner.

YOUR BLOG AS A SHOP

We constantly hear the mantra "Treat your blog as a business", and of course, if we are here to make money from blogging, then that's exactly what we should do. So I started thinking about what exactly that might mean, and that lead me to think about Henri.

Henri owns the hardware store in my village, and he has a fantastic business, despite the fact that there is a cheaper, much bigger DIY superstore a few kilometers away. His business is great because he (and his wife who works there part time) give amazing personal service. Let's analyze what he does and see if we can relate it to giving great service to our blog "customers".

He has Incredible Product Knowledge

Even when you don't know exactly what you need to fix that tap, or make that joint, Henri does. I've rarely seen him defeated, and even when he is, he'll find a workaround to the problem. When he's not serving customers, he's reading DIY manuals or websites. When a new tool comes in, he takes it out of the box and learns how to use it. He's passionate about his subject and proud of his knowledge.

As bloggers, we need to follow his example - we need to invest time in learning our craft, both as writers and as experts in whatever field our blog is all about. We do this by reading other blogs, researching our subjects and investing our time and money into learning other people's knowledge.

He has the right Stock

The store is one of those old fashioned places, with hundreds of drawers full of little washers that cost 3 cents! He also has a huge basement area full of other hidden treasures - his stock taking must be a nightmare, but I have never caught him out! Staples for an ancient Stanley staple gun? Of course! Left hand widget for a pie flange? How many would you like?

Our stock is our content, and it does take time to build. The trick is to stay broad within your niche, if that makes sense. There may be one area of your niche you are particularly interested in, and the temptation is to keep writing on that, but you need to open up your stock by blogging about all the other areas as well. Have a look at Problogger for an example - that is a well "stocked" site - you could actually spend a week in there searching on various terms!

He's Open When We Need him to be

Henri opens all over the weekend - which is when we need his stuff!

We don't open and close our blogs, but we should aim to be there when our clients are around - that means being on hand to answer comments quickly, and that can be pretty inconvenient, but so what? If you're posting your blogs at 7PM because most of your readers are in the US and you're in Europe, then you need to be online at 7PM!

He interacts with his customers outside work

Henri is a big personality in the village - he's in the cafés, the bars, the bakery - he has coffee at the same time every day, and lunch in the plaza. He knows everybody and we all know him, and we all join him and chat with him about football or local news.

We have Twitter, Facebook and a number of other platforms which allow us to interact with our clients outside of our blogs. So if you're not a social animal, it's time you became one - use these platforms to start to establish your online personality by doing things other than Tweeting about your latest blog post - people buy from people they like.

He has Time

Even if you're just buying a box of screws, Henri has time for you. He'll ask about the family, he'll greet you when you walk in and he'll say goodbye when you leave.

We should also give people our time, no matter how busy we are. When you answer comments or questions, invest your time and effort into what you write, and think about the impact of what you say.

He Sells Add-Ons

Henri is brilliant at turning a one product sale into a two or three product sale, by simply asking a question - "Do you need a new brush to go with that paint?" "Have you got the right socket for those nuts?" As a customer we don't feel we're being sold to, more often than not we're grateful to be reminded of the extras we need.

We can learn from this in two ways. One is to add related content to our posts, and that means actually checking our past post inventory to see what would benefit a reader of this new one. The other way we can learn is to start to link our products together in packages. I sell some excellent TV viewing software via one of my blogs, and it took two minutes to add a link to sell the cable people need to connect their PC's to their TV's - result? Just over half the buyers of the software also order a cable! Look back through your pages and see where you can add related sales.

He's a Nice Guy and a Real Person

Henri is a good, honest, likable guy. You instinctively know that he's not trying to rip you off, he's straightforward to deal with and when he occasionally gets something wrong he rectifies the situation. It means people keep coming back to him, year after year.

If we're going to successfully draw customers to our blogs and sell products to them, we need to adopt some of that style. We need to cut the hype, get rid of the bullshit and offer our clients value for money products which we know will work for them and give them real benefits. That way, they too will keep coming back to our blogs, year after year.

Have you seen examples in other businesses which have lead you to apply the principles to blogging?