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Want a soaring Pagerank? How about in 200 days. Read on and I’ll eat my moldy hat if my secret advice fails.

BRIEF INTRO. PageRank is google’s valuation of your website. Your pagerank comes pegged on a scale from 0 to 10.

Uh - okay… so what?

Let’s make it so easy that even your cat would meow.

Think of Pagerank like real estate pricing. The higher your site ranks on that scale, the more valuable it is in Google’s eyes. You, the webmaster, enjoy explosive benefits the higher your pagerank: your site gets indexed more often, you appear in the top ten placements and people will kill each other to advertise their site on yours. To the tune of thousands of greenbacks a month.

Bottomline: websites of considerable persuasion and influence boast high pagerank.

If your site has less than a Pagerank 4, you’re a nobody. Pagerank 5 means you’re a rising hotshot. Folks would pay $30 a month to place a link on your site. Pagerank 6 means you’re almost a god. Not only would you rank in the top ten search engine rankings for chosen keywords, you’d rake in lotsa moolah from ad revenue.

Are you meowing like a cat yet?

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s hunker down to getting you a Pagerank 7 in 200 days.

CREATING A SITE OF MASSIVE INFLUENCE

1. Raid a few webhosts that allows you to buy domains on cheap. I’d recommend godaddy.com or doteasy.com Purchase at least 40 domains across different C Class IPs. The .info , .mobi and .biz variety go for a dime a dozen. Register them and build up a single page on each one. Fill the pages with quality content. No scraped info or you’ll get deindexed. Your bucks would go down the drain faster than cash at a casino. Hire a ghostwriter if you must.
2. Create backlinks to each of these sites from domains that wield extremely high pagerank. It’s easy to accomplish with Netscape.com and NewsVine.com. Now before you get all excited, understand that this tactic will work if you judiciously pick profitable tags. The tag ‘business’ ranks a whopper of a pagerank 7 at netscape. (http://www.netscape.com/tag/business). Listing your 40 domains under this directory gets a pagerank 7 backlink!
3. Amp the power. List your domains at DMOZ and Relmaxtop.com . You’ll garner at least a Pagerank 4 backlink to each site.
4. Post meaningful comments on one or two blogs listed here: courtneytuttle.com/blogs-that-follow/ These blogs have the NoFollow attribute disabled, allowing you to suck in more PR to each of your domains.
5. Post meaningful comments on mattcuts.com, pearsonified.com and scobleizer.com. Google ranks these sites at pagerank 8+. If your sensible comment is approved, you get more rank boosting.
6. Use this string in google search box to find high credibility .edu blogs where you can get quick backlinks from: [[site:.edu inurl:blog "post a comment" -"comments closed" -"you must be logged in" "Your-Key-Word"]] If your link appears on a .edu domain, Google accords your mucho respect. In spades. Ensure you write MEANINGFUL comments on these .edu sites, or I’ll disown you and send the Italian Mafia to kick your arse and sink you in the Ganges.
7. Wait for the next PageRank update. Twiddle your thumbs and get fat on some MacDonalds quarterpounders to pass the time.
8. Et Voila! After the next update, the Google Toolbar will indicate that ALL your 40 sites have achieved a shiny PageRank 3 or 4. Man, wasn’t that easy?? (FYI, google updates pagerank every three months or so)
9. Now that your sites wield considerable persuasive influence, I want you to create three new domains and have all original 40 sites link to these.
10. Wait for the next pagerank update and BAM! The three new domains now flex a Pagerank 5!. Hallelujah!! But wait. You don’t want a lousy 5. You want at least a seven. So what you do is to create two new domains and have the three pagerank 5s link to that.
11. Wait again. (do you get the pattern here?) Suck on some fries. Get more girlfriends. Take up racing. Then at the next pagerank update, the Google Tool Bar will bring you news that will wet your pants: GOODGRACIOUSGLORIOUSGOD! The two new domains are now Pagerank 6!! Wait. We’re not done yet. I want you to create a new domain. And guess what? I want you to link the two pagerank 6 sites to your new domain.
12. Wait again. Nuninuninu. By now you should have 10 girlfriends and boast a nice paunch from all those quarterpounders. But so what? After the next pagerank update, your new domain should now be a gloriously persuasive Pagerank 7. Ahh. Now you can kick back and relax. Because with this single website, any other website you link to will be transformed into an instant Pagerank 6. Everyone knows that sites these stellar command unbelievable advertising power. So what you do from here… well, it’s up to your imagination.

Disclaimer. Well actually its an apology. I promised you a Pagerank 7 in 200 days? Actually, make it more like 365 days because that’s how long it would take google to go through all those updates. But heck, what’s an extra 165 days between friends?

Fly high and rule the web world with persuasion and influence!

Author:  Joseph Plazo is a recognized persuasion expert … but can’t persuade his business partners and clients to leave him alone. You simply can’t be persuaded to miss out on his massive library of free Persuasion downloads.

Email marketing is one of the most effective communication and promotion vehicles in the internet marketplace. 90% of internet users and 56% of Americans use email on a regular basis (source: e-marketeer Aug. 2006). Hotels benefit from email marketing because it’s fast, direct, cost-effective, and builds loyal relationships. It is one of the lowest cost channels available to the lodging industry to book rooms and build customer relationships. High quality email campaigns can deliver effective messaging that drives action and manages customer relationships.

For email campaigns to be truly effective, they have to be managed properly and conducted in a professional manner. This article provides hoteliers with some practical tips for conducting effective email marketing campaigns that maximize their return on investment.

Building Reputation & Credibility

Your email marketing practices establish your hotel’s image and reputation in the minds of people of who receive your campaigns. By following simple guidelines, you can run more effective email campaigns and ultimately enhance your reputation.

Permission Email Vs. Spamming

Permission Email operates on the premise that the recipient of your message has in some way established a relationship with you by indicating an interest in your product or offer. Spamming is sending unsolicited commercial email using broadcast methods to multiple recipients without first establishing a relationship with them and without regard to their interest.

Sender Email Address

Make sure that the sender email address is a genuine email address and the recipients of the email can see the address and respond to the email by hitting reply on their email applications.

Unsubscribe

Make sure that all emails you send out have a clear “Unsubscribe” link where the visitors can click and choose not to get future mailings from you. While it may seem counter-intuitive, using this technique ensures that people do not regard your campaigns as spam.

4 Steps for Conducting Effective Email Marketing

1. Permission-based Email Database
2. Email Marketing Plan
3. Send Email Campaigns
4. Track and Monitor Results

Permission Based Email Database

For effective email marketing, it’s important for a hotel to develop a targeted, permission-based database. Email addresses can be collected on the hotel website or at the front desk when the hotel guest checks in or out.

Create an opt-in form on your website so visitors to your site can sign up for specials and promotional offers. You may want to offer an additional incentive to sign up, such as an entry into a raffle drawing for a gift basket or a percentage off their room rate. It’s good to ask the visitor to specify their area of interest, such as weddings, group meetings, skiing, or wine-tasting so that you can segment your email database by interest. This is especially useful in sending out targeted campaigns that meet the interests of your guests. Once a guest hits “Send” on the opt-in form, they receive an email confirmation stating that they have been added to your mailing list. If they are not interested in getting email specials, they can simply “unsubscribe.” Guests who do not unsubscribe become part of your powerful marketing tool - the opt-in email list.

You can also collect email addresses at your front desk during check in or check out. Ask your guests for permission on an opt-in card to send specials by email. If you have done a good job of treating your guests well, they will most likely want to hear about your future specials. Ask the front desk staff to enter the information of that guest on the website form. By following this process, you ensure all addresses are being collected in the central database and that they are legitimate email addresses following the opt-in process.

Email Marketing Plan

Once you have an email database, you are ready to conduct email campaigns. In this step you decide what campaigns you want to send and how frequently. From our perspective, there are two kinds of campaigns:

• e-Cards
• e-Newsletters

e-Cards are campaigns that promote one specific special or item. Some of the campaigns that we have found to be effective for the lodging industry include: Spa Specials, Ski Packages, Thanksgiving Specials, Holiday Specials, Christmas Specials, etc.

e-Newsletters contain multiple specials and news items.

The frequency at which campaigns are sent depends on the aggressiveness and the input of effort. We recommend sending out one campaign a month or less. Sending more often could alienate consumers on your list.

Design and Content of Campaigns

The design and content of e-campaigns are perhaps the most difficult part for hotels. Some hotels with an in-house designer and programming capabilities will develop their campaigns in-house. Most hotels will use their e-marketing agency for the design of the campaigns and will provide the content. Some e-marketing agencies, like Milestone, will provide content ideas as well as the design.

Send Email Campaign

A critical component of sending out campaigns is to determine which email marketing tool you use. There are several utilities that can be used to send campaigns depending on the cost and capabilities of the systems. In general, here are some of the criteria that could be used to select a system for sending out campaigns:

In-House vs. Outsourced

A critical decision that most hotels face is whether to outsource the sending of their campaigns to an agency or if they are going to do it themselves. If the hotel has resources with reasonable knowledge of html programming and some design capabilities, there are several solutions available that hoteliers can use to send campaigns. If the hotel decides to do this internally, it’s important to evaluate the usability of the system available. There are systems available that will enable the hotel to send out campaigns with relative ease.

Several hotels prefer an agency to set up the system for them, and the hotel to be able to send out the campaigns on their own. Mixed mode systems are effective in lowering costs. These solutions are fairly sophisticated, hence few in number, and can be procured from email marketing agencies.

Working with ISPs

Another important criterion for selecting a tool is based on how much technology is being used by the provider of the tool to ensure that the emails do not get stuck in the spam folders of the major email providers and ISPs, like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc. Good tool providers spend plenty of time working with email providers in understanding their spam guidelines and making sure that your emails make it to the consumer’s inbox. Good tool providers will specify the guidelines for the design of email campaigns that will follow the spam-checker guidelines. Once you have designed your templates and selected the tool that is going to be used, you are ready to send out your email campaigns.

Tracking Campaigns

Good quality email tools have sophisticated reports available that will tell you the effectiveness of your campaigns. The tools provide information on how many recipients of your campaigns opened the emails, how many unsubscribed and several other statistics related to the effectiveness of your campaigns.

One of the more effective reports indicates who clicked on which links of your email campaign. This gives you insight into the minds of your readers as well as their behavior. It also points to which particular specials in your email campaigns are most effective.

More sophisticated tools will allow you to set up the system so that the consumers who click on specific links can get a follow-up email that sell them only that particular special. This feature is particularly effective when you send multiple specials and you want to send out more targeted campaigns once you gain a better understanding of the interests of your target audience.

Using Email Marketing to Up-sell

Email Marketing can be used effectively to up-sell your hotel. Sending your guests an email a before their arrival at your property telling them about specials and packages offers an immense opportunity to increase the revenue generated per customer. State-of-the-art technologies will enable you to automate the process where all reservations received from all your sources – property direct, internet booking engine, and central reservation systems - can get such an email. Branded properties should exercise caution since some of the brands already send such emails to guests.

Email Marketing to Build Relationships and Get Feedback

Some hotels and brands will send their guests a post stay survey form to get feedback. This helps to build customer relationships and also understand what guests like and dislike about your hotel. Online surveys offer instant feedback to your hotel.

You’ve probably realized that email marketing is a critical piece of the online marketing puzzle. Email campaigns, when conducted effectively, can generate significant return on investment, build strong customer relationships, and help hotels understand their customers better. If you are a branded property, check the brand guidelines before embarking on email marketing. We recommend that hotels use this powerful distribution media extensively to book more rooms and build long-lasting customer relationships.

Author:  For your email campaigns to be truly effective, they have to be managed properly and conducted in a professional manner. This article provides hoteliers with some practical tips, the nuts and bolts, for conducting effective email marketing campaigns that maximize their return on investment. http://www.milestoneinternet.com

What Is Eye Tracking?
How a subject views a book page, a store display, an advertisement or other visual stimuli is measured using sophisticated tools that track eye scan, also called eye movement. These tools measure which design elements capture visitors’ attention and which don’t.

Eye tracking is used in virtually every kind of marketing – TV ads, billboards, product packaging and web sites – to determine what works and what doesn’t with consumers.

What Does a Visitor See on Your Site?
The layout of a site page is scanned differently by each visitor based on individual perception, interest, need, age, education level, computer monitor, browser settings and other variables that can be tracked in empirical, eye tracking studies.

The results of numerous eye tracking studies have been quantified, enabling web site designers and owners to optimize site pages for maximum impact and “stickiness.”

Single- and Multi-Variant Testing
Single-variant testing involves changing one site element and measuring the impact on conversion rate, for instance. Multi-variant testing employs a series of simple A/B comparisons conducted simultaneously or sequentially depending on what’s being tested.

Using statistical analysis, and eye tracking data across broad-spectrum demographics provides numerical sums based on number of observations and length of observations of different elements on any site page. That’s something you want to know. What captures the attention of site visitors? What is ignored?

Single-variant testing is the simplest to initiate and track. However it’s time-consuming and may lead to unsubstantiated conclusions. Multi-variant testing is a more efficient means of determining which site appearances and features deliver optimum results, i.e. the highest conversion rate.

However, multi-variant testing is more complex than changing a single variable and waiting to gather the A/B test results. It could take months to optimize a site for conversion. Further, single-variant testing often requires the tester to make certain assumptions that may or may not be true.

For example, a change in type font shows a boost in conversion ratio. Is it logical to assume the change in font style is responsible for the improvement? No. In fact, this fallacy is called “post hoc ergo propter hoc” in the world of statistical analysis. Roughly translated, it means “after this therefore because of this.”

Simply because something occurs (an improvement in conversion rate, for example) after a single-variable change has been made (the change in font) does not mean that the improvement in conversion rate is due to the font change. The improvement could be based on another factor entirely.

Planning Your Test Model
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

If you blindly (or wildly) change design elements without a thought to site improvements, all you’ve done is collect a lot of data. In order to determine which changes to a site improve conversion rates, it’s important to first define what you’re looking for – your test metric. What site element or elements will be compared?

Next, in order to develop useful data, you must determine how you’ll measure and compare functionality. What methodology or “conventions” will you employ to determine a reliable outcome?

And finally, you must be able to develop a strategy that optimizes site success, however that success is defined by you. Here’s an example.

Let’s say you want to determine which checkout software is better for your bottom line. Before you can conduct your test, you must first create a test metric – a measurement that defines the term “better” in your query.

Which checkout software is better?
You might determine the test metric to simply be the number of visitors who convert. That’s easy to measure, but it may not provide the complete picture. Perhaps a more useful measurement of which checkout software is better is the dollar amount each visitor spends. Or the number of repeat buyers you see. An increase in the number of page views, number of unique visitors or a jump in bandwidth, indicating an increase in downloads from your site – all of these are reasonable test metrics depending on your mission.

This leads to the next step in developing accurate statistical analyses: how will comparisons between the A/B elements be measured or quantified. What test “conventions” or methods will be employed? Will you count all site visitors in the study – even those that bounce – or will you limit the test pool to those who actually put something in their cart? Or actually reach the checkout but abandon the shopping cart? Or actually complete a transaction? Determining the methodology of your single-variant or multi-variant testing prevents jumping to unsubstantiated conclusions.

And finally, what steps can be taken based on the test results you develop? If you can’t answer this last question, why are you going to all the trouble to conduct the test and collate the data? If you get result Y, what can you do with that information versus result Z? This is where statistical analysis is turned into a practical, organized strategy for improving conversion ratios.

Once the test metric(s) and conventions are established, you run an A/B comparison test using the two different checkout models.

Checkout A requires two clicks to complete a transaction. Checkout B requires six clicks to complete the same transaction. Your test results reveal that the more complicated checkout model leads to a higher percentage of shopping cart abandonment’s. So can you assume that checkout Software A is better than Software B?

If your test metric was a simple count of software usability, Software A is the clear winner. But what if your test metric was to determine which checkout software led to the highest “per visitor” purchase amounts? And test results reveal that checkout Software B delivers fewer purchases but purchases of higher value. In this case, Software B would be the better choice. That’s why it’s essential to determine each test’s metrics and conventions.

Measurement Tools

There are a lot of software packages to help in gathering test data. One, called Crazy Egg provides different GUIs of site activity – an overlay view, a list summary and even a heat map showing what’s hot and what’s not on your site.

Easy and effective analysis
Another popular conversion rate analysis software is Click Density, which provides real-time visitor data to help improve everything from content architecture to link placements.

Click Tale tracks every movement of visitors as they move through your site. This data is then translated into animated graphics to help you understand visitor behaviors from the time they arrive until they leave.

Finally, consider using Google Analytics – the simplest statistical analysis tool available. And it’s free. Google Analytics provides snapshot views of your site’s activity, allowing you to perform tests and analyze data in seconds instead of spending hours poring through report after report.

The point is this: to improve site conversion rates requires an understanding of eye tracking and statistical analysis to produce a useful optimization strategy. The hit-or-miss approach is simply too time consuming. So, if statistical analysis makes you light-headed, hire a professional who can design and validate test metrics and translate those findings into actionable strategies.

That’s how you improve site performance systemically and efficiently.

Author:  Dave Davies is the owner of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning. He has been optimizing and ranking websites for over three years and has a solid history of success. Dave is available to answer any questions that you may have about your website and how to get it into the top positions on the major search engines.

There are no secrets on how to rank high with the major search engines because effective search engine optimizations are now immense. What is search engine optimization? Before we discuss that thing, you have to understand first how search engines work and a bit of know-how.

Search engines are into providing their users with the most relevant and up-to-date information to match the search term that was used. They are sophisticated pieces of technology which allow users to quickly find relevant websites by searching for a word or a phrase. Search engine results are useless to users if the information doesn’t relate to the search term, or if the results are old. People expect the most up-to-date and fresh information that is useful to them.

Updating your website everyday and adding some materials will help you get noticed by the search engines. So, if you are going to sell any type of product or service online, you have to optimize your website for the search engines, in order to boost traffic and sales. It is because over 90% of your business will likely come directly from search engine results. And for that reason, it is absolutely important to optimize your site for search engines for you to have the greatest deals in the entire world.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which webmasters or online business owners utilize strategic copy to augment their website’s status. It is certain that the internet has grown so fast over the years and the competition for the best search engine position has created an enormous market. Therefore, better understanding the fundamental elements of Search Engine Optimization is vital for an online business’ success.

Making use of effective search engine optimization techniques will improve the page rank of your website. There are many tricks that can be used to increase page rank; the most effective method is to provide high quality content consistently. This seems like a simple concept but there are many websites that fails to provide content that visitors find interesting. Sites which provide content that are interesting, well-written and regularly updated create highly engaged visitors who are more likely to return to the website in the coming days. So, if you can set your website apart from those boring, lifeless sites then do it. You’ll surely have a step closer to achieving high page rank through search engine optimization.

The next significant factor for an effective search engine optimization is to include keywords and phrases within your content. To make sure that you are properly targeting your market, you have to make sure that the keywords and phrases you have on your site are the keywords and phrase that your site is actually optimized for. The more keywords you use in your content, the more likely it is that online visitors will find your site when they do some research with those words. If you are unfailing with these techniques, then your overall search engine optimization will increase, boosting your page rank.

You should also have to develop a linking strategy as a part of your search engine optimization. Not only does this provide free advertising for your site, but it makes the impression that your site is imperative because of its affiliated links. For each link that you have pointing back to you, that is another chance for your potential customer to find you. The more inbound links that you have pointing to your site, the higher you will be ranked in the search engines.

Another is to develop a content stratagem. People who get to search from the internet are looking for information. The more information you provide for them and the more helpful it is, the more likely you will make the sale. Writing articles is the most effective way to build up content for your site. When writing articles to post on your site, make sure that you develop a clear means of arranging their content. You can do this by simply adding a new page to your site. This will allow room for extra articles to be added as you write them, and will allow you to build up an archive of articles which will maintain to draw online visitors. Make sure also that you have included your archived articles in a directory that is next to the root web of your site so that the search engines will catalog your online articles.

Always keep in mind that search engine optimization methods are important in developing your site’s status. With that thing in mind, make sure that you write high-quality, keyword rich content and link your site to and from a deliberate family of other sites. These things will help improve your site’s popularity and coerce increased business through your online business.

Author:  David M. Disch is owner of http://ddisch77.com.and City Affiliate Manager at Search Big Daddy http://www.ddisch77.com

Just 5 years ago getting a high ranking in the search engines was easy. As search engines have gotten smarter it has become impossible to get a high ranking in the search engines with gimmicks. Now the only way is to have one of the best pages about your topic and lots of people agreeing that it is one of the best by linking to it. Before explaining how to get high rankings in the search engines it is important to understand some basics about search engines.

If you were to run a search engine what would be your number one goal. This one is simple; you would want to be the most used search engine on the Internet. The only way to become the most used search engine is accuracy. People use a search engine for one reason and that is to find what they are looking for. When I first started using the Internet 12 years ago, it was difficult to find anything in a search engine. You would type in baby toys and get hundreds of sex toy sites with a few baby toys sites mixed in. Now you type in baby toys and you get baby toys. The reason Google became number one was that for several years they had the most accurate results. So if you want to get a high ranking in a search engine for the terms your pages are about then you must give the search engine what it is looking for.

The search engines became more accurate because now they look primarily at one thing. That one thing is content. The only way for a search engine to find out what a page is about is to scan the page and see what it is about. Yes, there a few other things the search engine looks at but none of those things matter if the content does not match what people are typing in a search engine. If you want to rank high in the search engines you must make a great page specifically about the topic that page is about.

Natural Language

It also matters how you put your content on the page. One of the things search engines look at now is natural language. You cannot just put a search term a bunch of times on the page. It is true than once upon a time that worked. But stacking search terms no longer works. Search engines look at how many times a term shows up in a sentence and how many times it shows up in a paragraph. In a normal paragraph you will not have a search term that shows up 6 to ten times. That is not the way a paragraph is normally constructed. When a search engine sees this it counts against you and not for you. The same is true about sentences. So be careful how you word your content. Try not to put the same term multiple times in a sentence or several times in a paragraph.

It is also a good idea to make sure you write in complete sentences and make you content read well. This is not just a good idea for search engine consideration but also for the reader of your page. You want them to find the page informative and easy to read. Having them come back and telling their friends about the page is important. If they find it interesting enough they may just give you that all-important link to your page.

Here are some other things to consider about content

The content of your page is not just limited to the words written on the page. Search engines also look at how you present your content and what you say about it. For example every page in your site should have a title. This is the first thing written on the page such as the title to an article. When you present a title you put as a heading. Heading tags are a way to tell the search engines this is what my page is about. To be effective your heading needs to be about the same thing as the rest of the content of your page. You can also put sub headings on the page. You can title different sections of the page with heading 2 or heading 3 tags.

Search engines also give you two places to tell them what you think your content is about. This is done through your meta title and description tags. These are the only two meta tags that most search engines look at as far as determining where it is going to index your page. I do not even add a key word tag to any of my pages. The meta title is the place where you tell the search engine what your page is about. It can be the exact same thing as the title on the page itself (your H 1 tag or page heading). Your description tag gives you the opportunity to describe the content of the page to the search engine. The description needs to be short and to the point. It should be no more than two sentences but preferably only one sentence. There is no reason a good description of a page cannot be made in one simple but complete sentence.

Last but not least is the overall content of the page. Make each page about one thing. The more topics your page talks about the less credit you get for each topic. For example you want to make a page about the three most influential people in medicine today. You can make your first page generic and mention the names of the three people and their general contributions to medicine while concentrating on making sure every paragraph is about the main topic of “most influential people in medicine”. Then if you want to go into detail about the three individual people make a separate page about each and having them linked to from the “most influential” page.

Author:  Rusty Ford Editor http://arthritis-symptom.com/

Just like the other websites, an ecommerce site also aims for a higher ranking on the search engines. To be able to do this, it needs search engine optimization. SEO helps an ecommerce site on its struggle to be on the top 10 of search results. It is important that your ecommerce site rank well on the search results in order to keep up with the tough competition of the World Wide Web. Getting on a better position on the search engines compared to your competitors, you are guaranteed of a better online business. How can you get your ecommerce site listed on the top of the search engines’ page results?

Optimizing an Ecommerce Website

In optimizing an ecommerce site, you have to remember three important elements. These elements will determine whether you will be able to achieve a higher ranking on the search engines. They will be the keys that will take your ecommerce site to the top 10 of the search results.

Here are the three elements you need to consider if you want to optimize your ecommerce site:

• Include a title tag that contains targeted keywords and keyphrases
• Valuable web content that also contains targeted keywords and keyphrases; and
• Incoming links from other relevant websites.

Basically, the elements mentioned above are the same elements that you will find in search engine optimization process for other websites. This is simply due to the fact that an ecommerce site needs the same things that other websites need – and that includes search engine optimization. Aside from giving your ecommerce site a higher ranking, these three elements are also essential in your goal to make your ecommerce site more search engine friendly.

Making Your Ecommerce Site More Search Engine Friendly

The search engines define a search engine friendly site as one that can be easily spidered or crawled. If your site is easily indexed, then you can rightly say that is search engine friendly. Aside from the three elements mentioned above, how can you make your ecommerce site more search engine friendly? Remember that your ecommerce site should not be restricted by cookies, sessions Ids and even long URLs.

Now that you know how to make your ecommerce site more search engine friendly, you can start your optimization process by checking how search engine friendly your site is now. You can do this by doing a search on the search engines like Google. To check, key in site:www.domain.com on the search box. Google will show you the pages of your website. How will you evaluate the result?

Evaluating the Search Result

After you have performed the search to check whether your ecommerce site is search engine friendly or not, evaluate the result. If Google has given you a page result containing all the web pages of your site, that means your website is search engine friendly and that Google has indexed all the pages of your ecommerce site. On the other hand, if Google has given you an incomplete result – meaning there are pages in your website that are not included – that means your site is not search engine friendly. You better do something with it – optimizing it is obviously a better choice.

The key to give your ecommerce site a higher ranking on the search engines and to make it more search engine friendly is one simple yet effective process called the search engine optimization!

Author:  This article is written by nPresence an online web marketing agency that specializes in Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click advertising, Content Management Systems, Web Design, Conversion Tracking and Analysis. For all your all your web marketing needs, please see Search Engine Optimization Experts.

Email marketing has exploded in growth over the past few years, as marketers have continued to see the benefits and outstanding ROI this marketing medium can bring. However, despite the great results being attained, many marketers still overlook a very important component of their email marketing campaigns: The Subject.

Just about everyone who uses email knows about the subject line. It’s the little bit of information that is displayed along with the ’sender name’ when an email lands in someone’s inbox. Some email programs show the sender name, subject and a preview of the message, while other email programs only display the sender name and subject. In these latter scenarios, the subject is an even more vital part of your email marketing campaigns because that may be the single biggest factor in determining whether or not someone will open your email marketing campaign.

Far too many email marketers spend a long time perfecting their message content (which is a good thing!) and then they simply gloss over the subject. An there’s the mistake. You may have the world’s greatest content, but if your subject line isn’t compelling enough to make your readers open the message, all that great content will just go to waste. With that in mind, here are a few tips for crafting your subject line:

1. Short & Simple: A Few Words Can Go A Long Way

A good subject line is short and to the point. Many email programs restrict the amount of characters that are displayed in the subject. What this means is that your subject may get cut short. Worse yet, you don’t really know where it will get cut off, which would lead to some highly unexpected results. Imagine sending out an email campaign to business professionals with the subject line: “Learn to Diversify Your Sales Strategy.” Now imagine if that subject gets cuts short by your readers’ email programs, and all they see is “Learn to Dive”. Chances are, your business-focused readers won’t care to open that message. On the other hand, if your subject is just a few words, and is direct and to the point, then it will be displayed fully and you will know with the utmost confidence what each recipient is getting the context of your email marketing campaign, regardless of their email software.

2. Pique Your Readers Interest Everyday

People receive a lot of email messages, so you want to make sure your email marketing campaign cuts through the clutter. For your email marketing campaign to succeed, you need to pique people’s interest. After all, it is their choice as to whether or not they open your email. And if the subject doesn’t elicit some interest or curiosity, then it can easily be skimmed over. The best way to come up with a captivating and interesting subject line is to put yourself in your readers’ shoes. Don’t tell them what you think they want to hear; tell them what they actually want to hear! This can be tough because you need to keep it short (as per point 1), but a few words is more than enough to get a reader’s mouth wet and make him or her want to know more. Remember, if your subject is dull, boring, or completely uninteresting, your reader will go looking for the delete button, and no email marketer wants that.

3. Cheesy or Overly Exaggerated Subjects Doesn’t Fool Anyone

If you send out an email and in the subject you promise that “all of your dreams will come true”, today’s consumer will likely delete your email marketing campaign prior to even reading another word. If your subject guarantees your readers will be rich beyond their wildest dreams, then it will almost always get trashed (not to mention classified as spam). Today’s consumer is very savvy and these cheesy, out-dated gimmicks simply don’t work. Before writing your subject, assume that each one of your recipients is very well aware that your product or service is not the miracle of all miracles. The moment you send out an email with an overly gimmicky subject, you are really shooting yourself in the foot. This is not to say the content of your message is not special, but with limited reading time for emails, people quickly dismiss anything that sounds “too good to be true”. Make sure your email marketing campaigns don’t get filed into this notorious group!

4. Be Honest: Describe Your Content

Your email marketing subject should not be conjured up in isolation of your actual email content. They should go hand-in-hand, where the subject nicely describes what the reader can expect in the body of your email marketing campaign. Far too many times in the quest for the perfect subject (and while following the points above) an email marketer will stray so far away from their content that the subject ends up having nothing to do with the message. This is a catastrophic mistake because in addition to the subject acting as a determining factor for opening your email, it also sets up the reader’s mentality for what they can expect to see in your email marketing campaign. If they open your message expecting to see tips for effective email marketing, but instead you give them tips for dieting, they will swiftly close your message. While a goal of the subject is to get the reader to open he message, you also want to set it up so that the reader keeps reading. And you can only do that when your subject is honest. After all, if you’re trying to fool your readers into opening your message, then you can’t expect them to be that attached to what you eventually want to say.

A good email marketing subject can go a long way towards boosting your results and helping you achieve your goals. This important part of every email marketing campaign should be given some serious thought and, when combined with the points above, will help more people open your email and read your content.

Author:  Robert Burko is the President of EliteEmail.com, the leading email marketing program, serving thousands of businesses across the globe. The EliteEmail.com email marketing service is part of the EliteAnswers.com family.

If you’ve been looking high and low for the secret of Web success, today is your lucky day. We’ve put a little something together that we call ‘18 Web-Marketing Concepts That Make A Difference.

Eighteen concepts tothink about that may just give you an edge on your competition; in fact these ideas may give you an edge, period. So if the same old left-brain thinking that everybody else is using just doesn’t get you where you want to be, try these creative concepts on for size.

1. Think Audiences Not Markets
What’s your market? Hire a consultant to help you with your Web-business problems and one of the first questions he or she will ask is, what’s your market? How about eighteen to thirty-four year old, single male college graduates with a dog named Spot; or maybe forty-five to fifty-nine year old married women, who hate their husbands and can’t get their adult children to move out of the house. Maybe, just maybe, they’re asking the wrong question.

The Web isn’t about markets it’s about audiences. Audiences need to be entertained, enlightened, and engaged, and if your website doesn’t, you’re never going to achieve what you want.

Time to rethink how you’re delivering your marketing message. Start treating Web-visitors like an audience not a market, and you might just find what it takes to be successful on the Web.

2. Think People Not Customers
You know all those visitors you attract to your website with your brilliant search engine optimization schemes, how many actually purchase anything? Stop treating visitors as if they are already customers and start treating them like what they are - people. That’s right, people. You know the two-legged funny creatures with wants, needs, desires, and maybe even a few bucks to spend.

Customers are always looking for a deal and they’re leery of websites that only want to take their hard earned cash. Treat your Web-visitors like people who can satisfy their wants, needs, and desires with your assistance and guess what? Maybe it will make a difference: one small step for Web-credibility, one giant leap for Web-success.

3. Think Experiences Not Features
Bought any good features lately? Didn’t think so. You would think the way business pushes the whole feature-frenzy thing that features are exactly what people are looking for, but nobody buys features, they don’t even buy solutions - boy doesn’t that whole solution provider nonsense really get to you after a while.

What people really buy are experiences, hopefully positives ones. Whether it’s soft ice cream or a new accounting program, what people are paying for is the experience your product or service provides.

Does your website offer an experience? Does it explain the experience your product or service delivers? If it doesn’t, then you really haven’t got anything anybody wants.

4. Think Emotion Not Logic
Think you’re a logical person, always making rational decisions based on practical criteria, and bottom line results. So tell me what was the functional thinking that went into the purchase of those leather pants you bought last year, or that sixty inch plasma television you bought just to watch the big game?

Let’s get real. You make purchasing decisions based on what you want, and then justify them with seemingly sensible rationalizations, just like everybody else. So stop trying to appeal only to the practical, logical, aspects of bean-counter sales, and start pushing the feel good aspects of emotional marketing.

If you’re trying to appeal to an audience that gets its only satisfaction out of acquiring the most features for the least cost, then your marketing to the wrong audience.

5. Think Memories Not Promotions
Most animals live in the moment, whereas human beings live in the past. Our here and now and our plans for the future are based on our experiences, our histories, and our memories.

We take pictures of our kids, holidays, and special events; we commemorate birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, and milestones of all kinds. Even the significance of our prized possessions is centered on the fact that those mere objects represent memories of the people, places, and events that shaped our lives.

Real marketing, the kind that creates long-term clients and customer relationships, is not about coupons, sale promotions, or deep discounts; it’s about delivering memories.

6. Think Marketing Not S.E.O.
Okay, here’s one you’ve heard from us before: think marketing not search engine optimization. Sure you’ve got to drive as many people to your website as possible, but if your marketing message is so confused, unfocused, and hard to comprehend because of all the keyword density and S.E.O. tricks, then what have you really accomplished other than wasting people’s time? And people really get upset when you waste their time.

7. Think Stickiness Not Hits
It’s not about how many hits you get on your website, it’s about how long people stay. If visitors remain on your site long enough to get your marketing message then you must have said something worth listening to, and if visitors get the message, your site has done its job.

If your website delivers the message, then you can expect the email inquiries and phone calls to start flowing, but it’s still up to you and your sales staff to close the sale: people close sales not websites.

8. Think Stories Not Pitches
Did you hear the one about the farmer’s daughter and the search engine optimizer … Stories, everyone loves stories. In fact before the invention of the Gutenberg press, oral story telling was the way knowledge got passed down from one generation to the next, and how news was sent from one region to another.

Now that we have this multimedia Web-environment, we can continue the tradition of real people delivering creative audio and video presentations that capture the imagination and drive home the marketing message so your audience won’t forget who you are. Nothing informs, engages, and entertains, like a good story: sounds to me like one heck of a way to sell to an audience desperate for meaningful communication.

9. Think Focus Not Confusion
There you go again, telling everyone who will listen all the wonderful things you and your company can do. Trouble is, telling them all those things just confuses them.

What is the product or service that is most important to your company, the one you are determined to sell to your audience? That’s the one you want to talk about. That’s the one you want to devote your marketing effort to promoting. That’s the one you want people to think about when they hear your name or see your logo. Focus your communication or your message will just be a forgettable, incomprehensible blur.

10. Think Campaigns Not Ads
Isolated one-time advertisements are like one-night-stands: exciting for a while but ultimately unfulfilling and devoid of meaning. Your audience is looking to get married, not a short-term fling. Your marketing has to woo your visitors with long-term campaigns that tell your story and deliver your focused message; audiences expect to be courted and counseled with meaningful communication. And that takes time and commitment.

If you’re spending money on just ads, you might as well be throwing that money down the drain. There is a better way. So if you’re looking for a long-term relationship with your audience, think campaigns not ads.

11. Think Message Not Hype
What message are you delivering to your online visitors? Are you telling them you’ve got the best product, at the best price, with the best staff, and world-class customer service? Is that what you saying? Guess what? Nobody cares, because nobody believes you.

There is only one way to show people you’re the best and that is to prove it, but here’s the catch, you can’t prove it until they become customers. Whoops. Okay, so what’s the solution? How about a real marketing message that speaks to what your audience really wants. It’s not about you it’s about them.

12. Think Personality Not Banality
Does your website just lie there like a lox; you know that cold, dead fish that often comes with a bagel? No personality, just more of the same tedious, dull, dreary, mind-numbing, tiresome, lackluster, monotonous, stuff everybody else has. Boring! This is the new Web, so if you can’t get with it, you’d better get out because you’re wasting your time and everybody else’s.

You’re so worried about downloading times that you forgot to put anything on your site worth seeing or hearing. Check your logs. If people are jumping ship faster than rats on a burning ship, it’s time to try something new; like, maybe some compelling content.

13. Think Branding Not Copyrights
Hay, I love the Beatles. I grew-up with them, and I have all their records - ya records, like vinyl dude, not CDs. And guess what, I’ve also got a Mac, in fact I’ve got a bunch of them, not to mention iPods and other assorted Apple gizmos and gadgets. And you know something, I’ve never once got John, Paul, George, or Ringo confused with Steve Jobs. Amazing!

Worry just a little less about all that small print stuff and more on building a memorable brand that people will remember, and that nobody will mistake for some johnny-come-lately imposter.

14. Think Positioning Not Slogan
It’s funny how people have a position on almost everything: you name the issue and people will have a definite opinion on what they think, except when it comes to their businesses. Just because you have a cute slogan that you print under your logo, doesn’t mean you own a position in your audience’s minds.

It seems businesses can’t stand to make a definitive statement about who they are and what they do. Why is that? Afraid they’ll lose a customer I guess, but if people don’t understand exactly what you do, and why they should be doing business with you, then they’re never going to be customers anyway.

No company can be all things to all people and companies that try, never go anywhere. Tell people who you are and what you do and forget about all the other stuff, it just gets in the way.

15, Think Sensory Appeal Not Cents Appeal
Do you want people to sit-up and take notice of what you have to say? Do you want people to actually remember what you’re telling them? While if that’s the case, you better appeal to their senses, and we’re talking about sights and sounds.

Deliver all your juicy, got-to-have content in an audio and video presentation that will stick in people’s heads.

If all you’re doing is appealing to their desire to spend less, then maybe they aren’t the customers you’re looking for anyway. Nobody can afford to sell for less all the time, every time.

16. Think Identity Not Logos
Is your company the equivalent of the invisible man? You’re on the Web, but nobody cares because you’re not saying anything worth listening to, and if they do see you, you are instantly forgettable.

You’ve got to have an identity, a personality, an image, and there is no better way to create that identity than with a video of a real person delivering your marketing message in an entertaining, memorable manner.

17. Think Entertainment Not Biz-speak
Speaking of entertaining, you cannot engage, enlighten, or entertain if everything you present sounds and looks like it came from some b-school text book, or from one of those self-help courses on direct marketing guaranteed to make you a millionaire in only three weeks.

Every business has a story to tell and they can all be presented in a compelling way with a little imagination and creativity. And yes, even b-to-b businesses can rise above the mundane and deadly boring, if only they take the time and make the effort.

18. Think Communication Not Copy
Last but not least, let’s all remember, that websites are about communication. If you’ve got nothing to say, nothing to offer, or are afraid to say what you can do for your audience, then how do you expect to be successful.

Filling your Web pages with keyword density prose and instantly forgettable sale’s copy is not going to win the day.

Whether you are presenting your case in text, audio, or video, it better be interesting and enlightening - even text can be entertaining if written with style and attitude.

When websites fail, they fail because they do not communicate a realistic, believable, convincing marketing message.

A Note To Website Adventurers
If you missed the discovery of the ‘Lost Brad Tapes,’ follow the adventures of fellow website entrepreneur, Brad, and how he tried to find the secret to website success. It’s time well-wasted: check-out http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads/BradTapes.

Author:  Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Perhaps you’ve been thinking about getting into article marketing. It can’t be that hard, can it? You just need to write up a few articles about your industry and distribute them to the masses, and the masses will come running to your website because they revere you as an expert now, right?

Ahem. If that image is in your head, get it out right now. Article marketing is a very beneficial practice, to be sure, but it’s not something you can just jump into without doing any research first.

Hey! Is anybody out there?

One fatal flaw many articles have is lack of a clear audience; that is, people who are going to be interested in what you’re saying. “An audience?” you might be saying. “Well, that’s easy. My customers are my audience.”

True though that may be, all of your customers do not fall into the same demographic. You’ll need to target your articles differently depending on if you want to talk to men or women, teenagers or parents, businesses or individuals. And you need to find your audience before you start writing your articles.

Correctly targeting your pieces can make the difference between publication and the slush pile. Here are a few tips for finding your audience.

Who do you want to read your articles?

If you say “everybody,” then you might as well just quit now. Yes, everybody wants to be read by the whole world, but the whole world isn’t going to be interested in what you have to say. By saying “everybody,” you’re dooming yourself to failure before you even start writing.

Targeting the entire world will make your piece so generic that nobody will give it the time of day. By targeting a certain audience, you ensure people will immediately identify with your piece, and you’ll make it that much easier to pitch to editors.

Who is your audience for your product and services? (Hopefully you figured that out before you even started business.) Those are the people most likely to be interested in your industry, but you have to be specific with your audience. The more targeted a piece is, the better chance you have of getting published.

What is important to them?

Your audience is more than just age and career brackets. New parents, parents of elementary school-aged kids and parents of teenagers may all be parents, but new parents would be more interested in breastfeeding than parents of teenagers. By recognizing what would be important to them, you’ll be able to get a good angle on your article.

If your product or service reaches across different demographics, then you have to figure out how to apply it to each of them. Your product might be perfect for stay-at-home mothers, churches and fundraising groups, but you’ll need different language and different distribution to speak to each of them. What’s important to one won’t be important to another, which will render your article ineffective.

See what others have to say

Believe it or not, you’re not the first person who’s thought about writing an article targeted to goat ranchers in their early 20s. Find other publications with the same target demographic, and read them to get an idea of writing style, other article topics and even possible distribution outlets. You’d be surprised how many niche publications are out there.

Taking the time to find your audience and target your piece will pay off massive dividends. It’s easier to write a piece that’s targeted, and it’s especially easier to market a piece that’s targeted to a specific audience. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by neglecting this vital step.

Author:  Jessica Cox and Michelle Pierce are graduates of the University of Oklahoma’s College of Journalism with a background in Internet marketing and writing for the Web. They currently provide PR services at Xeal Precision Marketing. Sign up for a free 25-point website evaluation and pick up crucial tips at Xeal’s free Thursday webinar at http://www.xeal.com/webinar.

Let’s get one thing straight, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), can be taught to the masses, but very few individuals are willing to methodically go through the steps, on a consistent basis, to achieve and maintain the ultimate ranking for their website.

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