To get visitors to your webpage you really need to know what keywords people will type into the search engines to find the service or product your specific site or webpage offers. Before you say “Oh no, not another keyword research article”, let me just say you will learn exactly how to quickly and easily do keyword research and even create SEO friendly pages based on keywords you find.
Clearly one of the most beneficial ways to generate more traffíc to your site is to create backlinks to it. Backlinks from relevant sites helps to boost your page rank and can even get your website, or a particular webpage, showing on the first pages of a Google search for that keyword.
Now you don’t want just any old backlinks but ones that contain specific keywords you have optimized a particular page, blog or website for. Lets say your website is about “dog training”. A common and highly sought after keyword, but one that a new or even established site is going to find hard to be ranked high for.
Now we all know that trying to get a webpage ranked in Google for one of the primary search terms is a real challenge. Those keywords are in effect, out of the range of most marketers, both in time and money resources to try to rank for.
So the best possible way to raise search results and rank in your niche is to select secondary keywords that still get a lot of searches but don’t eliminate you from the possibility for ranking for them.
Stick with me here because this isn’t as hard as you were perhaps ** lead ** to believe.
Now the first thing you should do is to narrow down the keyword(s) that you want to build or optimize a webpage for. You can do this very easily by going to the following website SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool and typing in a primary keyword in the search box.
In the results that show, you are going to get a good líst of the highest searched for keywords related to the primary keyword you entered in the search box. You will also find a lot more information presented that can really help you narrow down your selection. You are looking for phrases that contain part or all of the primary keyword that you started your search with.
The next thing you must do is determine what keywords are being used successfully to market products, services or websites online. To do this, I suggest you use the Google Adwords search term tool.
You can simply copy and paste a keyword from the líst into the form, hit enter and get a listing of keywords based on the one you input and also provide a líst of additional keywords to consider that expands the possibilities even further. Most importantly you will see a listing of keywords followed by a box filled in with the color green.
If you’ve tried your hand at building an Internet-based business but haven’t yet reached the success you want, find out about these 11 deadly mistakes and how to avoid them.
Mistake #1 - Not Treating What You Do as a Business.
The difference between a hobby and a business is that a hobby doesn’t make you money - it costs you money.
If you’re earnest about starting a profitable online business, approach seriously and focus on generating revenue.
Treat your online business as you would any regular business.
Mistake #2 - Being Distracted by Too Many Good Ideas.
You can light up a room with a light bulb, but you can cut through steel with a laser beam. The same is true with your effort and ideas.
Too many Internet-Entrepreneur-Wanna-Be’s lack the will power to stay focused. Chasing too many ideas at the same time often leaves them exhausted, frustrated, and with little result to show for their hard work.
The key to success is to select one business idea and to develop it completely before moving on to another project.
Mistake #3 - Not Selecting a Specific Niche.
Perhaps the biggest mistake of all is trying to be everything to everyone. You can’t - so stop!
It’s very counter-intuitive to focus on a smaller slice of the market and most people are afraid to do it. But when you do, your business will grow faster, and you’ll be more financially successful in less time.
Mistake #4 - Falling in Love With the Wrong Product Idea.
Even the most experienced entrepreneurs fall into this trap from time-to-time and develop products without doing any research. Before you devote any serious amount of time and effort to developing your new ideas make sure there is a demand for the type of product, information, or service you want to launch.
If you need help with selecting an ideal niche market for your business and finding out which products you should develop first.
Mistake #5 - Falling for the “Get Rích Quick” Scheme!
Remember the old adage “if something is too good to be true…”? It’s alive and well on the Internet.
Countless people buy into the idea of making millions online overnight. Sadly, they buy into programs hyped up with empty promises only to find themselves “out of cash and out of luck” a short while later.
Be aware of spammers, illegal money-winníng scams, and buying “ready to go businesses” that are “hot but will sell for cheap”!
Before you fork over your money investigate if those hot businesses have ever made a dime for their current owner.
Doing your homework will save you valuable time, money and many sleepless nights!
Mistake #6 - Going Into It, Instead of Growing Into It.
While the Internet makes it easier to reach your potential clients, you’re still building a business - and that takes time. Don’t tell your boss you’re quitting today because you started this hot new online business last night and you’ll be “rolling in dough in no time flat!”
First make sure your business idea works and is profitable.
That’s one of the advantages of Internet Business - you can start small and step-it-up as your business starts getting sales and generating profíts.
Just be sure you can consistently replace your current income before jumping ship and telling your boss to “beat it”!
Mistake #7 - Being a Copy-Cat!
Quickly - what is the most popular business on the Internet? You guessed it - it’s how to make money on the online!
It seems that everyone who has bought a course on making monëy online is credible enough to teach this subject a week or two later!
Don’t fall for the allure of easy money - because it’s only a perception. In reality your chances of having a successful online business are much greater when you are different from the pack.
Mistake #8 - Wasting Time and Money on Developing Pretty but Useless Websites.
A bad idea is a bad idea - no matter how pretty you dress it up. Many people waste precious startup dollars on expensive but needless graphic design work, pretty logos, and complex web design.
In reality, many businesses can be simple and inexpensive to get off the ground. In fact, a simple site with little or no graphics will often make more money than one with all the latest bells and whistles flashing all over the page.
Think - what is the core concept of your business. Outline it on a single sheet of paper, then implement it fast in it’s simplest form. You can always give it a makeover and make it prettier if it’s successful and profitable.
Mistake #9 - Not Building Relationship with Clients.
“Even though you don’t know me from Adam, I want you to take out your wallet and give me $20 - in exchange I’ll make you the King of the Universe!” What!? You don’t want to give me your $20? What a surprise!
Most people think about starting a business onlíne in terms of getting a quick sale - with no prior relationship with their potential clients at all.
In reality, you’ll be more successful when you make your first goal to collect contact information from potential clients and follow up with them on regular basis.
It’s much easier to “sell something for Free” than trying to convince people to give you money at first.
Make it your goal to prove your credibility online and make your business all about relationships with prospects and clients, and you’ll build a thriving online empire.
Mistake #10 - Calling It “QUITS” Too Soon!
If your new online venture isn’t makíng money at first, don’t walk away from it too soon. Many entrepreneurs have multiple “failures” in their background - which in reality are lessons in what didn’t work.
Evaluate your ideas and get help with gaining a new perspective on what you’re doing. With some new ideas you might find a new way to position your business differently and make it profitable.
Or maybe you simply need to give it more time to gain the traction and momentum you want.
Mistake #11 - Being too cheap!
While it’s a good habit to be thrifty with your dollars, don’t confuse saving money with being cheap. Remember the price you’re paying for things isn’t always expressed in money. It’s also the time, effort, and lost opportunities you can’t take advantage of because you lack the know-how or are busy doing low-level tasks.
Smart online entrepreneurs continually invest in their Education. They buy marketing training programs, time-saving software tools, and systems that allow them to grow businesses faster with less effort.
The best news is that getting good basic training in how to start your information marketing business doesn’t have to be expensive.
Online Marketing Secrets @ 19 May 2008 04:00 pm by admin
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Seo optimization
Internet Marketing has grown phenomenally over the last few years but the shift has quite clearly moved to a market that is driven by the consumer and that is no longer dictated by journalists and corporates. Online consumers are responding more favourably to non-intrusive, relevant and socially attractive campaigns and have quite frankly had enough of intrusive, forced online advertising campaigns
The top 10 internet marketing tips for 2008 are:
1. Optimize your website’s content
2. Create a content development strategy for your website
3. Invest in a paid search (pay-per-click) campaign
4. Publicize your website through article marketing
5. Develop a social media marketing strategy
6. Create a Company Blog
7. Experiment with video marketing
8. Engage your audiences with web widget marketing
9. Discover the benefits of mobile marketing
10. Create an effective email marketíng strategy
Let’s look at each of these in more detail:-
1. Optimize Your Website’s Content:
First and foremost, get your website content right. Make sure it is easily read by both humans and search engines. An essential variable applied by Search Engines in the way in which they rank websites is based on the relevancy of the content that the search engine is indexing.
2. Create a Content Development Strategy for Your Website:
In addition to optimizing the existing content on your website, it is essential that you develop a strategy to continuously grow your website’s content on an ongoing basis. All new content should be written specifically with the web reader in mind and should also be optimized for the search engines.
3. Invest in a Paid Search (Pay-Per-Click) Campaign:
When you pay for traffic (visitors) that click on your advertisements that are being advertised on search engines, this is called pay-per-click or search engine advertising. Paid search allows you to quickly leverage search engine traffic by bidding for keywords that are related to the products or services that you promote and sell on your website. Paid search advertising is particularly beneficial to companies who are not yet well ranked on search engines through natural search.
4. Publicize Your Website Through Article Marketing:
Article marketing is regarded by Internet marketing experts as one of the most effective promotional methods to publicize your website and to grow the number of back links (incoming links) to your website content. To ensure ongoing awareness, articles should be submitted to suitable article directories, content publishers, article announcement lists and content syndication (RSS feeds). Each article should be published on your website first and should include a bookmark button to encourage social bookmarking.
5. Develop a Social Media Marketing Strategy:
Studies show that by the end of 2007 more than 60% of top global companies will have had some form of social media marketing strategy in place. Corporates and small business owners should create a clear social media marketing strategy as part of an integrated communications and marketing strategy. Social Media has become an essential component of online marketíng and search engines are adjusting their rankings to include search personalisation. One of the effects of the social media revolution is an exponential growth in the amount of content online.
6. Create a Company Blog:
In the past, corporates have focused marketing and communications efforts on becoming faceless. This has changed significantly. Where the online consumer has become very much in control, companies will no longer be able to connect with their customers in a meaningful and emotional way without having a personality. More and more companies are starting to realize the significance of establishing a company personality and we are starting to see more Corporate Blogs coming alive. Business Blogging will continue to become more lucrative as more and more people look to new media such as Blogs and social websites for insight.
7. Experiment With Video Marketing:
There is tremendous power and revenue-generating potential in Video Marketing. With the rapid ongoing growth of YouTube’s traffic in addition to the emergence of Internet Television websites, streaming video is dominating the international web and marketers are quickly scrambling to capitalize on this exciting channel. As companies seek to simplify video sharing, video marketing will become more interactive which could have huge implications for Affiliate marketing.
8. Engage Your Audiences With Web Widget Marketing:
Widgets have made significant strides as an accepted marketing technique in recent months. Many new Blog oriented services are launching Widgets providing businesses with the opportunity to quickly introduce their services and new products to audiences.
Web Widgets are small applets that live in HTML and provide miniature versions of a specific piece of content outside of the primary web site. Web Widget Marketing is not only an exciting new marketing technique; it is fast becoming one of the leading brand-building marketing strategies for businesses advertising online.
9. Discover the Benefits of Mobile Media Marketing:
Mobile media marketing has continued to grow at a meteoric pace as many web companies recognize the huge potential in mobile marketing. As new technologies emerge and standard websites are converted to ones that can easily be accessed by mobile devices, companies will need to ensure that their websites are mobile-friendly. This leads the way for new and innovative opportunities to provide the consumer with improved brand and marketing experiences.
10. Create an Effective Email Marketing Strategy:
Introduce an effective Email communications strategy as part of your marketing strategy to grow your existing customer base and to expand your client base significantly through permission marketing and regular targeted communications. Engaging your customers with relevant, targeted information when, where, and how they want it is crucial to marketing success. By combining technological advances with tried-and-tested best practices, the future still looks bright for email marketers.
To conquer commercial combat, a significantly powerful Internet presence, supported by a brilliant E-Marketing Strategy, is paramount to ensuring that you remain competitive, grow revenue and magnetise your customers!
Now more than ever, if you want to be a successful business owner, you need a successful business website. Which means you have to make nice with the search engines. And the long-standing rule of search engine friendliness is to create inbound links — links from other sites pointing to your site.
Ten-ish years ago, when Google started the shift away from code to content (including inbound links) as the preferred way of determining “relevance,” the world changed. Immediately, businesses owners started scrambling, and begging, for every link they could get. Thank goodness that’s not the case anymore! But inbound links are still important. In many ways they’re more vital than ever.
How then, does one go about getting those precious nuggets of hypertext anchor tagging? Social Media maven and “Chief Nut” Kevin Skarritt, our good friend and strategic ally at Acorn Creative, offered up these 10 strategies on his “Nuts and Bolts of Brand” blog. Good guy that he is, he gave us permission to share those key linking strategies with you here. Hit it!
1. Blog Comments
Go out of your way to read other people’s blogs. Your Mother always told you that reading is good for you. She was right! But, when you do so, be sure to productively interact with those bloggers. It makes them feel good. It validates what they’re writing about. It starts up a relationship between the two of you. AND, here’s the best part, it gives you an inbound link to your site.
2. Blog Trackbacks
Start a blog and refer to all of those blogs you’re reading in the form of a “trackback” in your posts. Don’t know what this means? Check out the entry for “trackback” on Wikipedia, or go deeper with a Wordpress.org tutorial. However you learn more about this linking strategy, please do, because it’s a smart, easy, and effective way to get your website lots of inbound links.
3. Pay Per Click Advertising
Yes, PPC advertising is indeed an added marketing expense. However, it’s a controllable, predictable means to build ROI, and a great way to build inbound links where you have control over the text used in the link tag.
4. Participate On Industry Forums
Similar to blog comments and trackbacks, participating on industry forums will get you hooked up with other like-minded professionals, keep you abreast of current trends, and you get to build your inbound links in the signature line of your posts.
5. Build Other Pages
Some new social networking sites on the web allow you to create content and post it in their domain as new pages. One great example of this is Seth Godin’s Squidoo.com. By creating “lenses” that focus readers on a particular topic of interest, you get to engage readers and create more inbound links to your main site.
6. Wikis
The concept of a wiki (like wikipedia.org) is that readers also become content contributors. Anyone who is registered can log in and change content. Understand that other readers of this information-rich content have zero tolerance for salesy/advertising tactics, so, be careful with this one. Be purely informative and helpful with your newly posted content. If the content survives peer scrutiny, you’ll have a nice little inbound link that’s potentially seen by millions.
7. Social Networking
MySpace and FaceBook for sure, but there’s an explosion of social networking web sites out there. Dive in and start participating. Doing so allows you to interact with other professionals and, you guessed it, builds up inbound links.
8. Social Bookmarking
Different than social networking, social bookmarking is similar to how you used to bookmark sites in your browser but, instead, you bookmark your favorite sites publicly, in sites like de.licio.us, ma.gnolia.com, spurl.com, rojo.com, Google bookmarks … the list goes on and on. The goal is to have people discover these bookmarks, and then your site. An added benefit to social bookmarking (and blog posts) is you get to “tag” your content with words and phrases that are relevant to the content. These tags are used to identify the content in the search process.
9. Organized Surfing Sites
This is a variation of social bookmarking. There are sites that organize how people surf the web in an effort to make the process of finding the right content faster and more focused. StumbleUpon.com (available as a Firefox plugin) is one of my favorites but others like Technorati (blog content), Digg (blogs, articles and news stories) and newcomer Trailfire (another Firefox plugin) allow users to power-surf, finding your site via inbound links.
10. Link Begging
Don’t discount it just yet. Asking another site owner for a link sometimes still works. However, with all of the other options listed above, you’ll quickly learn that this tactic is largely time-consuming and unproductive.
Any good car salesman will recite the old adage, “plan your work and work your plan.” This especially holds true for your inbound link strategy. Whether you focus on one or set up a tactic to diversify, divide and conquer, don’t wait. The success of your website — and ultimately, your business — depends on it!
So you’ve optimized your website, done the keyword research, got the backlinks and everything is ethical. You’re sitting proudly on the first page of the search results. Or you’ve set up a pay per click campaign, bid on your keywords, created some ads and performance tracking is in place. Again, you’re at the top of the pile. Either way, you’re visible and people are visiting your website. But visitors aren’t converting into leads, prospects or customers. What’s going wrong? Well your website may be visible, but is it connecting?
Having attracted visitors to your website through prominent search engine placements, it is vital not to lose them by failing to connect. Different visitors will have different priorities and levels of satisfaction. In order to reach and retain as many as possible and to maximize the chances of conversion, you should consider your site’s usability and accessibility.
Web Usability
Usability is all about providing your visitors with an effective, efficient and satisfying experience. It’s common knowledge that visitors tend to glance at, and scan, pages rather than study them in any great detail. If the message and options are not clear, they may leave. If they don’t leave, the chances are that they will click on the first link that seems to be most relevant - it may not be the right one. Repeat the process a few times and soon a visitor can be lost, confused and frustrated. Either way the result is the same - missed opportuníty and little likelihood of a return visit.
The more self-evident your pages are, the greater the chance of converting the visitor into a prospect or customer.
12 Simple Tips for a More Usable Website
1. On the home page make it clear what the site is all about.
2. Make the purpose of each page obvious.
3. Use hierarchical headings to give clear structure to the copy.
4. Make the navigation and links obvious.
5. Use clear unambiguous wording.
6. Make the options and next steps obvious.
7. Remove any wording or imagery that is unnecessary, confusing or distracting.
8. Use consistent conventions throughout. 9. Include site search and a site map.
10. Make information such as contact details, pricing and delivery charges clearly accessible.
11. Make the pages printable by including a cascading style sheet for printing.
12. Don’t allow careless errors to make your site look unprofessional.
Browsers Create Their Own Set of Problems
One more tip - just because your website works fine in your browser of choice, do not assume that it will work equally well in all browsers. In fact it is not even safe to assume that it will work equally well in different versions of the same browser. Web designers who have had to cope with the incompatibilities of IE5, IE6 and now IE7 will no doubt testify to this point. It is vital to be sure that your website works on all the popular browsers. As well as IE and Firefox, don’t forget Netscape and Opera on Windows and Safari on the Mac. And just to muddy the waters a bit further, Apple has recently announced Safari for Windows.
So now your website is usable, but is it usable by everybody? For some, usability is just a small obstacle when compared to the barrier of accessibility.
Web Accessibility
All businesses in virtually all countries have a legal obligation to make their websites accessible to people with disabilities, otherwise they are discriminating. Given that something like 15% of the population have some sort of disability, that’s a sizeable market proportion. If you’re not reaching them, your competitors probably are.
One of the many myths surrounding web accessibility is that blind people are the only ones who need to be catered for. Whilst blind people and their use of assistive technologies to read web pages are an obvious and important example, consider also people with other visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive and neurological impairments.
How does a color-blind person cope with page colors?
How does someone with a mobility impairment manage without being able to use a mouse?
How does a deaf person gain access to auditory content?
How does someone with attention deficit disorder make sense of the pages?
Web pages should be accessible to all of them. And it’s not just disabled people who will benefit. Older people, people with low literacy levels, people who are not fluent in the website language, people with low bandwidth connections, people using older technologies and people with short-term injuries and illnesses will also benefit.
9 Tips for a More Accessible Website
1. Provide all images with an alternative text description. If the image does not convey any information, provide null (blank) text rather than no alternative text at all.
2. Provide transcripts of audio content.
3. Ensure that the contrast between text foreground and background colors is sufficiently strong.
4. Do not use color alone to convey information. There should also be some other form of visual indicator such as additional characters, images or font changes.
5. Place column headings in the first row of a table and place row headings in the first column. If headings are ambiguous, use the HTML scope attribute to clarify.
6. Never use the HTML blink and marquee elements. For animated GIFs or other moving objects, the flicker frequency must be less than 2 Hz or greater than 55 Hz. But better to have no moving content at all.
7. Link text should clearly state the purpose and destination of the link. Phrases like Clíck Here may mean nothing to someone listening to a screen reader.
8. Provide an option to skip navigation on all pages. This will save screen reader users from having to repetitiously listen to the same navigation, and keyboard users from having to repetitiously tab through every item. Use hierarchical headers to provide the same benefit and to enable navigation through copy.
9. On forms, always associate prompts with controls so that each control is adequately described. Use the HTML fieldset and legend tags to give structure to complex forms.
The Importance of Web Standards
Usable, accessible web pages can only be achieved through strict compliance with the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium. They provide a platform for consistency, compatibility, stability, flexibility and extensibility. Implementing standards throughout a website’s design will address many usability and accessibility issues by default
Last and Certainly Not Least
Usability and accessibility alone will not suddenly convert all your visitors into customers. Content is vital to a website’s delivery capability. But at least those visitors may now stick around long enough to look at the content.
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