Archive for April, 2007

The Importance of Keywords for Your Website

Did you know that 85% of individuals use search engines to track down the information they require and that only 1 “hit” out of 15 will actually bring the results the individual is actually looking for? An individual with a website should be determined to make the search engines a successful tool. Establishing a top listing on the search engines can turn into a goldmine and can be surprisingly affordable for Web promoters.

People do not control search engines, computers do. Computers are designed to look for certain keywords or phrases, which make your keywords an extremely important strategy to drawing attention to the Internet market. The best strategy is to recognize your important keywords and simple phrases so they will become recognizable by the search engines.

It is not only vital to produce successful keywords for the search engines but also you must produce successful keywords that people can relate to. You must try to imagine yourself as an Internet surfer who is seeking information on your specific product. What would you type into the search engines to find information or the product you are looking for? For example, let’s say that you all are planning a vacation in Las Vegas, Nevada and you are looking for things to do. Many people will search “things to do in Las Vegas” and the search engines will bring up hundreds of pages for you to look at. Most people (including myself) will sort through the first page or two before they discover what they are looking for or move on to a different search. This is the reality!

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Internet Search, Like Politics, Is Local

Local search is all the rage. At the 2007 Search Engine Strategies event in New York City there were presentations and exhibitors touting the importance of local search strategies and tactics.

It’s like the presenters and exhibitors just discovered that people are really mostly interested in finding products and services nearby.

I guess what’s really going on is that finally technology, or its application, has caught up with what people really want Internet search to do for them.

I use Internet search for everything - especially local! We haven’t had a copy of the Yellow Pages (or white pages) in our apartment since we got high-speed access.

We Google directions to the Gap across town. If a movie is playing in Brooklyn we Google directions to the theater and buy the tickets online - so we can get in after we make the trek.

As a user we know all we need to know about local search. We type in what we want and where we want to get it and bingo - here it is and a map’s included. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

So, what’s the big deal for business owners when it comes to local search in 2007?

It’s leveling the field - putting the Main Street Companies we love doing business with right up there with their big box rivals.

How’s that possible you ask? Well, here are three simple ways to maximize your over all search results using a local search focus.

Differentiation:
What makes your company different? What are the local aspects of your business? That’s how you differentiate yourself from your competitors. Local search ads and placement provide the opportunity.

Would you rather eat spaghetti at a local franchise of a national chain or a locally owned Italian restaurant that’s supported the community since 1963 - who supplies pizza for the area football team parents night and whose grand daughter won the state’s citizenship award competition?

We do business with our friends. Local search provides us with the information we need to do so.

Reach Buyers When They’re Ready To Buy:
Let’s say I was looking for a health club membership to begin addressing my 2004 New Year’s resolution. OK, so I’ve put it off a bit - but now I may be ready, so what’s my number one criterion?

Location. It has to be as close to me as possible - so I’ll be more likely to show up.

I may have been introduced to a certain company via their TV commercials. In our many walks around the various communities in New York I may have passed dozens of their health clubs. I may even know people who have a membership at one of them and swear by it.

But if I’m going to join one - it has to be in my neighborhood.

So I go online, do a local search, and find that they have a brand new heath club only a few blocks away. They even have printable coupons for various membership types. I’m doomed - my last really good excuse is gone.

Leverage All Your Touch Points
If your online goal is to simply drive people physically into your place of business you can provide them with directions to your place, a map, when you’re open, etc. with your local search strategy.

Perhaps more importantly you can offer your customers additional options for doing business with you - which they did not know about.

Let’s say you sell cement to contractors and homeowners. Your customers get it delivered to the job site or in their driveway - most of the time. No one ever comes by, even though you have people working there twelve hours a day seven days a week.

Local search can be used to tell people that you’re open in case they need to pick up a few extra bags of Quickrete over the weekend. Or they can place an order online or on your 24 hour a day voicemail for next day delivery.

Effective local search tactics reaches local searchers when they are ready to buy - with every way that it is possible for them to buy from you.

At the Search Engine Strategies event the experts told us to adopt a search marketing strategy that has global reach (hey, you never know), regional implications, and connects with our local buying audience.

How is that possible? Let’s take a top down look.

National Campaign:
For most companies this is best left to their manufacturers. Let General Motors create the buzz, show the new models, pitch the extraordinary value, and the environmental friendliness of their vehicles.

Let them do national TV and spend a bazillion dollars on search engine optimization, just push them to link to your company while they’re at it. Hey, it’s their brand; so let them do the branding.

You spend your money and energy with actions that result in sales for you.

Expanded regional Area Keyword Search:
There is an Auto Mall on I71 North of Cincinnati. I bet the dealers there sell most of their vehicles to folks who live north of downtown all the way up maybe 25 to 40 miles north of where the Mall is located.

People living a little farther north of that line may turn right when they get on I71 and head toward Columbus. People south of downtown Cincinnati cross the bridge into Northern Kentucky. On the east side of Cincinnati there is at least one huge Auto Mall siphoning off potential business as well.

Out of area local search can target these buyers telling them to come by your dealership for a comparison before they buy. If they do you guarantee to make it worth their time.

Tell them how long it will take on I275 from different parts of the metro area. And if they buy a new vehicle you’ll give them an extra $500 off if they live more than so many miles away. You get the idea.

What’s it worth to your business to increase your traditional marketing area by another 25 miles in every direction?

Local Relevance Promotions:
Don’t forget the importance of dominating the market you’re already in. A local search marketing strategy will help you solidify your base with a reminder that you’re still there.

As a local business owner you are sought out by every community endeavor for your support. Local search provides an opportunity improve on your local relevance - why people should support your business. Local search gives you a chance to remind people of your commitment to them.

As with the Italian restaurant - I’ll pay more money for new tires if given the chance to buy them from the nice people who sent the local high school band to New Orleans to play in the Sugar Bowl parade - even if it was a decade ago.

Compare that to saving a few bucks from a giant store where I am just a number and actually had to be there before 10am to qualify for the special price anyway.

Here are three things to keep in mind when considering your local search marketing strategy.

What do you really want?
How far can you haul gravel and still make money? How far can your service technicians travel and still at least break even? Do you simply want to dominate your traditional selling area or do you see local search as a way to gradually and systematically expand you company into a wider and wider area? Knowing this will help you when it comes to budgeting the resources required.

Who’s willing to help you?
Will you highly respected manufacturer link to you in a way that helps raise your status with the search engines? Or will other companies join you in an effort to build your presence online collectively? Consider the Auto Mall - there must be a dozen of more dealerships all in one place. Working together with ad buys and pooling resources to hire SEO experts will benefit them all.

What’s your budget?
Where’s the money going to come from - your major distributors, your manufacturer, our your wallet? What’s your stomach for online advertising? Do you have the people and the interest to do pay for performance ads? Or do you feel more comfortable with the idea of doing whatever SEO you can do easily, buy ads on a fixed rate basis like in the Yellow pages - and move on?

What it all boils down to is what’s important to you.

For some maybe reading this article is enough. When they do whatever marketing and/or advertising they do in the future they’ll factor some of these thoughts into their decisions.

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Affiliate Internet Marketing Tip - How To Cash In With Bum Marketing?

I see dozens of questions asked everyday on how to get affiliate internet marketing tips, how to improve article writing, USFreeads, how to create effective Bios and how to make more money with affiliate marketing from using the bum marketing method.

Did you know that one of the most remarkable aspects about Bum Marketing is to realize the entire method revolves around writing compelling articles and USFreeads?

Your articles and USFreeads are “at the heart” of how the method generates cash whether from affiliate sales, your own products and or AdSense income.

A single article I wrote has now made over $1200 straight into my PayPal account.

To this day this compelling article brings in residual cash every single month.

Two outstanding Bum Marketing articles I just wrote are #7 & #8 for Google Search results out of 63,200,000 competitors!

These two compelling articles drive an average of 100+ unique visitors per day to one of my profitable AdSense niche sites!

Many internet marketing have now discovered a breakthrough formula from testing and comparing results of these cash generating Bum Marketing articles.

Most marketers don’t know the shocking truth of why their articles and USFreeads are not producing instant results.

I’ve been wondering why some internet marketers are not getting remarkable results from this surprisingly simple method called Bum Marketing.

I’m revealing to you powerful closely-guarded secrets I’ve discovered writing Bum Marketing articles and USFreeads!

The Bum Marketing method is the affiliate internet marketing tip of the year.

Most Internet marketers kept very quite about this method because it can be so profitable when you have the top search results with the search engines driving targeted traffic to your own sites and affiliate products.

I’m constantly looking for dynamic ways to improve and expound upon this proven method by developing techniques to increase productivity and to make the Bum Marketing Method as efficient as possible to drive targeted traffic and to boost affiliate sales.

This is a very valuable internet marketing resource tip to a formula for you to quickly increase your affiliate profits with these secret tips, tricks, tools and resources for generating explosive traffic from writing and submitting articles with “long tail keywords”.

If you do not know what Bum Marketing is all about you should take some time and start to research this method for driving targeted traffic by writing articles and to make money with affiliate products and services.

Article marketing is a simple step-by-step system that anyone can benefit from by using this affiliate internet marketing tip and breakthrough formula to build your own affiliate marketing empire.

Bum Marketing is NOT a fly by night fad. This method will be here for as long as the written word. What are you waiting for?

This is one of the most profitable affiliate internet markeing tips I’ve ever learned and you are actually seeing this exciting method right here put into action.

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Write Content For Visitor Not Search Engines

In an effort to rank at search engines for their keywords people have gone to such an extent that while writing content for their website visitor comes second in their mind. They are writing for search engines. Now let us see how this has affected the sites where content is written for search engines not for visitors.

At first they are not focused on visitor, their possible customer. The copywriter has focused on keyword density, on page optimization while the content should be more like a sales copy, which generates customer interest in your product or service. Sometimes while writing content for search engines the whole page is written in such a way that it takes visitor nowhere. We need to tell the visitor what we offer him without wasting his time.

While writing the content you should be talking to your customer, not to search engine spiders. The site structure should be designed to provide the customer proper navigation so that it becomes more convenient for him to find what he is looking for.

Page titles should be written for visitors, not the search engines.

If you do all these then you may get a better search engine placement as well because search engines are becoming more and more advanced and in an effort to provide more and more relevant search results they are gradually refining their search algorithms where any deliberate attempt to rank with keyword density will not give any results.

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Using Cartoons To Promote Website Traffic

Cartoons can be used as a tool to give you free advertising for your website or products you sell online. It’s called viral marketing and it works.

How often have you received a funny joke or cartoon in your email from a friend? And when you do, how often do you forward that same email on to friends of your own? If each of those friends sends it on to their friends, and their friends do the same with their friends, you can see how a funny cartoon can wind up being viewed by thousands of people.

Using this fact, you can do some free advertising for your website or for products you sell online. Just add a small line of copy at the bottom of the cartoon email, one with a link to your website or product. You don’t want to make it too hard-sell, just a brief note to entice some interest. Your note will then get forwarded along with the cartoon and you could reach potentially thousands of prospects.

It’s important to keep in mind, though, that cartoons are copyrighted. You can’t use them without permission, or you could subject yourself to serious legal problems. A good way around this problem is to simply contact the cartoonist for the cartoon you want to use. Ask him if you can put a link to his cartoon page in your email. In most cases they will be happy to do so. It’s free advertising for him. I do this with the cartoons on my website because I find it increases my own website traffic. Although I don’t charge a fee for this, some cartoonists might. It’s up to you to decide whether their fee is reasonable for what you expect to accomplish.

Your advertising message at the bottom of these emails can simply be a link to your webpage. If you have advertising on your website or you are selling products through affiliate links, this extra traffic can bring you some additional income. Some affiliate programs will also give you links you can use in your emails, and you could add one of those links to the bottom of the email containing the cartoon link.

In most cases you will not actually attach the cartoon to your email. If you do, spam filters will often block it. People are reluctant to open an email with an attachment because of the fear of contracting computer viruses. A far better solution is to send the email with a link to the webpage where the cartoon appears. In most cases you’ll be required by the cartoonist to do this anyway. That’s the only way he can benefit from your efforts.

How well this works depends on the cartoons you select. You want to select cartoons which are very funny, and which touch home with how people are feeling. These are the types of cartoons which will get forwarded.

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Internet Marketing Success - How To Quickly Achieve Internet Marketing Success

Internet marketing success can be achieved in a short amount of time if the proper care is taken to devise a plan of attack.

Many times, you can find yourself lost in the sea of internet marketing success due to not following a proven model.

You must have a strategy in place that will help you reach internet marketing success and the best way to do this is by following in the foot steps of people who are the leaders in your niche market.

It is much easier to achieve internet marketing success when you can learn from someone who has already succeeded at the exact thing as you want.

Research for these people by using the keyword search for your topic.

If you want an internet business that sells golf clubs, then seek out others who are successful doing this and learn from them.

You simply take the best parts from past success stories, drop the bad, and then simply follow.

You can also find mentors or internet marketing success coaches that can be a big help and steer you in the right direction.

Coaches and mentors are those who have a wide range of experience.

They have learned by trial and error and can help you stay away from the same mistakes they made.

Internet marketing success will come to you once you learn that you do not need to reinvent the wheel.

Remember that the only person that can stop you from becoming an internet marketing success is you.

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Online Marketing Plan - Why You Need An Online Marketing Plan

So you want to start an online business. Do you have an online marketing plan or are you going to go for it blind?

The truth is, if you do not have a solid online marketing plan you are destined to fail.

You should not go into any business without knowing exactly how you are going to run the show.

You need to research every aspect to lessen the chance of a failure.

Think about what you will need in order to succeed with your online business.

What type of product or service are you going to offer?

How are you going to create your website?

Can you write a sales letter?

Can you publish a newsletter?

How are you going to get subscribers?

What autoresponder system are you going to use.

How are you going to advertise your new online business.

All of these questions and more need to be written out and explored.

That is why you need to have an online marketing plan.

You need to be in proper order and have each corner firmly tucked in order reap the rewards for your efforts.

Too many times you can get lost in the hype and excitement of owning an online business and go in without a solid online marketing plan.

Then when it is too late, and you have spent a ton of your hard earned money, and you have nothing to show for it, is when you will see why you needed to devise an online marketing plan.

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Do You Buy Traffic? Making A Decision To Buy Traffic Or Not

The success or failure of one’s Internet business depends on whether the business is getting enough targeted traffic or not. If you buy traffic, is this traffic targeted? Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. Every Internet entrepreneur has thought of buying traffic before, because many Internet businesses are in dire need for more traffic to their website.

There are a few places where you can buy traffic. Adwords, the Google advertising platform, is one of them. Safelists and traffic exchanges are other places where you can also buy traffic.

Pay Per Click advertising like Adwords is worth spending money on. This is because the traffic is extremely targeted. The user has already typed in his search term and knows what he or she is looking for. Moreover, you only need to pay if your ads are clicked upon.

Safelists and traffic exchanges, though, can be a different story. These places play a numbers game. Your conversions will be terribly low, and it is up to you to make a decision on whether using these advertising avenues is worthwhile. For most people, it is not. Usually, offers on how to increase traffic get the best response from these advertising platforms. You also need to write very good copy to get the clicks, since your ad will be flooded amongst countless others.

As you can probably tell by now, Adwords is the best place to buy traffic. I would suggest reading up on Adwords books and articles on how to use this great advertising avenue to it’s fullest. It will really benefit your business if you know how…

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Fast Web Site Design - 8 Steps to Web Site Design

Creating a website doesn’t have to be overwhelming—try these eight steps to making a clean website for yourself or your business.

1. Keep it simple. You don’t want to have flashing graphics and loud colors if you’re trying to keep people logged onto your page. Make your web site design easy on the eyes to keep visitors attracted to your site.

2. Make it understandable. Don’t use a lot of jargon or vernacular—be user friendly!

3. Think about how we read. People read left to right and top to bottom—on websites people read in an “F” pattern. Plan your web site design accordingly.

4. Color coordinate. No one can read yellow text on a white background, but there are websites out there that do just that. Spend an hour researching color theory for your website design.

5. Don’t make people wait. Many of the introductory screens contain flash movies and other bells and whistles that make people wait for your website. Do you like waiting?

6. Make the graphics appropriate. If you are selling paper weights, it won’t help sales to put your prize muscle care on the home page. Remember to keep your website design relevant.

7. Make uniform pages. If you have several different levels of communication on your website, at least make your website design match page to page even if you change color slightly.

8. Keep your website updated. Nothing frustrates visitors more than broken links and outdated information.

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Is Adsense Dead Or Alive?

This is a question that has been thrown around in debate recently. Google have reduced the amount paid out per click on their adsense ads so is it really wroth even having them on your website anymore?

The amount paid out may have been reduced but the fact that you do still get paid for clicks has to mean something. If it wasn’t worth having them, people wouldn’t still be using them.

Whether you can make a large income or a small income using adsense will really be determined by how much traffic your website receives. You will only ever make a good income with adsense if you have a lot of traffic coming through your website.

Having your site optimised to increase your page ranking is vital to ensure a rise in page rank and result in an increase of traffic.

Using good, unique content and a good use of keywords throughout your website is highly important.

Search engines love good content and lots of it. Be sure to constantly add to your websites content, usually by adding articles to your site.

Article marketing is a highly effective way to increase traffic to your website. As well as adding articles to your site you should also submit your articles to article directories.

Article submission will increase your traffic in two ways. Firstly when people read your article in the directory, if your content is good they may follow your link back to your website. Secondly, you are increasing the number of backlinks to your website which will ultimately help to increase your page rank and your traffic.

In conclusion, using Adsense is still a very good way to earn income online as long as you get the steps right in setting up your website for search engine optimization and keep working at adding content to your site and building backlinks to your site.

Sheryl Polomka is the author of Income With Adsense. The ebook that reveals the real adsense secrets. The missing step that is vital to having a successful adsense website.

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