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After several months of steady blogging and regular newsletters, you may be running short on ideas. When work picks up and you’re running from one project to the next, your readers usually take a backseat. Besides, when your creativity is already stretched to the limit, conjuring up ideas can seem like an impossible task.

Unfortunately, your readers may have already moved on by the time you’re ready to start writing again. With new blogs and newsletters popping up daily in every industry, your competition could be taking advantage of your dry spell.

Rather than letting your blog or newsletter go for weeks or even months without updating, spark your inspiration with these simple tips:

Get to know your audience

For any publication to succeed (and yes, your blog or newsletter is a publication), it needs to deliver content readers actually care about. In order to do this, you need to come up with a reader profile. Hopefully you did this when you first started your blog or newsletter. If not, this is a great time to re-focus and help get the creative juices flowing again.

Think about your readers. What age group do they fall into? What are their interests? Are they working in a specific industry? If so, are they managers, CEOs, financial officers?

Create a clear picture in your mind of your top readers. Imagine a person to represent each of your top 3 audience groups and write as though you are speaking to these people.

Creating must-read content

Once you define your reader base, you need to focus on topics they want to read about. Ask yourself the following questions:

What problems are your readers or clients having? What issues do they care about? What trends can you comment on? Have your clients or readers asked questions or left comments that might make good article topics?

Stay current on the latest news

News items provide endless possibilities for content. Bookmark a few good news sources with interesting stories and look through them when you’re brainstorming topics for your blog. Weigh in on interesting stories, industry trends, and new techniques from your unique perspective. Also, by covering the latest trends, your blog or newsletter can gain a reputation for cutting-edge content.

Read what they’re reading

Browsing magazines, blogs, and other newsletters that your readers already love will give you an idea of what they are interested in. Consider spin-off stories related to topics you find in these publications.

Added bonus for blogs: If you write a spin-off story, you can comment on their blog and mention your article. Do this tactfully, and invite them to comment on your story as well.

Added bonus for magazines: If your content is truly high quality, consider pitching your story to the magazine as a column or special feature. Take a look at their writer’s guidelines and mention the article when you write to the appropriate editor. List a few points you cover in your piece and any credentials you have as a writer or expert in your field.

Branch out

Your existing material could turn out to be a gold mine for new article ideas. Look at old topics you’ve written about. Would any of the sub-points make good articles by themselves? You can expand previous articles into a series to cover things with greater depth, or cover an old article from a new angle.

This will also help maintain a tight focus for your blog or newsletter. However, take care that you don’t simply say the same thing over and over. Each article needs to have a unique focus and provide useful information for new and old readers alike.

Keep a topics list handy

A little brainstorming on a regular basis can go a long way towards maintaining a fresh stream of content. You may see a news story or read an article that would be perfect material for a blog or newsletter article.

If you don’t have a single place to store these ideas, you’ll be back in the same spot again when inspiration runs dry. Keeping a “Topics” document in your newsletter file lets you jot things down as they come to mind, and prevents ideas from being lost.

If you’re running low on ideas, Chris Brogan has a list of 100 blog topics here: http://chrisbrogan.com/100-blog-topics-i-hope-you-write/. Check it out, and see if any of the topics spark something for you.

The world is full of useful ideas for your blog or newsletter. “I don’t have anything to write about” shouldn’t be an excuse any longer. Keep your blog or newsletter updated consistently, and you’ll keep a loyal reader base that could very well turn into customers someday.

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 to get crucial Internet marketing tips at Xeal’s free Thursday webinar at http://www.xeal.com/webinar.htm.

I can hardly bring myself to say the old cliche about content being… well, you know. I think it’s one of the original cliche’s in the SEO industry. And as redundant as it has become, for whatever reason we keep hearing it over and over again. And every now and then a new studies pops up seemingly proving proving, once again, that content is… uh, good.

But much like a TV producer suggesting “video is king” or a radio advertiser demanding that “audio is king”, so goes the SEO demanding the same about content. Content has its role–and an important one at that, but it’s not the be-all, end-all of online marketing. Not even close.

But the roots of the “content is” movement are important for our industry. The mantra was first heard in the early days of the search engine optimization industry when SEOs were doing nothing more than throwing a bunch of keywords on a page and hoping they rank well. Little or no thought or consideration was given to the readability of the web page. After all, it’s only rankings that mattered, right? But those of us who learned to game search engines slowly began to learn something that those in the marketing industry have known for years. Words sell. Or turn people off, depending on what’s written and how it’s written.

So the movement to developing good content–real content–was an important one for our industry. But to get there we had to have the content mantra beat into our head over and over (and over). We got it. We know.

The king is losing his grip on the kingdom

But like any worthy cause, we’ve reached a point where the mantra has been used and abused to the point where we use whatever we can find to prove once again that content is… y’know, that. Take a recent study by OPA and Nielsen//NetRatings that shows that Internet users are spending more time than ever on content bases websites.
Share of Time Spent Online
Commerce: 13.8%
Communications: 32.0%
Content: 49.6%
Search: 4.5%

That there seems to confirm what many have been saying for years. Content is… uh, great for web marketing. And I’ve seen a few posts around the blogosphere and forums using this data to make that connection. The problem is, it’s not really there.

With the rise in popularity of blogs and social media sites it’s no wonder that more people spend their time reading online than anything else. While time reading and gathering information online has increased, time spent shopping has actually decreased, down over 2% from a year before. But does that tell us anything about marketing online? No, not really.

We know people like information and we know they like to communicate. We also know people like to shop and online shopping has continued to increase year over year. All this study suggests is what we spend most of our time doing on the web. Well, true enough, I don’t spend most of my time shopping.

Since when is it the goal of ecommerce sites to get people to spend a long time on their site? Isn’t it more important to drive shoppers to the sale and get the conversion? Step 1: Get traffic. Step 2: Keep visitors engaged. Step 3: Close the sale. That’s not necessarily a process that necessitates long periods of time spent on a site.

In no way do I want to diminish the importance of content on ecommerce websites. Having a database of information that helps visitors make their decision, helpful tutorials, etc. can improve your visitor’s overall experience and keep them coming back to your site. But the goal of all of that is to lead people to the sale.

Community killed content and stole the throne

If I were to interpret this data I wouldn’t necessarily come away thinking content is… so very important. What I would conclude, however is that we need to build websites that meet a number of users needs. Adding more content to your ecommerce site is not the magic bullet. What is, however, is creating a great user experience and providing just the right amount of information and customer engagement that shoppers need to get to the conversion goal. That can be done through a number of means.

Many online stores are already paving the way by opening the door to ratings and reviews. Others are doing that by creating blogs to disseminate important and relevant industry information along with tips and tutorials. Still others do that by creating an information database that can visitors frequent to gain additional insights.

I might suggest that the best ecommerce websites are not those that build content around their products but build a community around the product interest. By creating a place where shoppers can come and gain information, learn more about the products and discuss or share information with others and then make purchases as well, will do more for sales than simply creating a shopping website.

By building a community you not only sell more products but you build brand recognition and customer loyalty. And both of those are worth far more than a single one-off sell. So while content may not be dead (not by a long shot, really), there is a new king in the online marketing industry. Long live community. Long live the (new) king.

Author:  Stoney deGeyter leads a spectacular team of seasoned marketing experts at Pole Position Marketing. Stoney started PPM in 1998 by finding the brightest minds in the industry and nurturing within them an intense desire to become leaders in their respective fields. With this team of professionals, he has built a wildly successful website marketing company that succeeds through both personal and professional integrity.

I’m always amazed when I come across a sales letter, usually online, and there are NO testimonials. They’re powerful response and conversion boosters and are so easy to implement. You’re only hurting your own marketing efforts, and leaving cash on the table, if you’re not using them.

If you have them, .make sure you’re using them the right way to maximize response. You have a lot more flexibility and available power with online copy. Simply because of more available formats.

The most powerful testimonials are video testimonials, and it’s easy to see why. They engage more senses and stimulation. People can see and hear it and videos add much more credibility especially if no editing has been done. It’s coming straight from the horses mouth.

The second most powerful testimonials are audio followed by standard text.

Today you’ll learn how to use text-format testimonials to give your conversions a big boost.

Try to get as much specific, relevant, and detailed testimonials as possible. This is much more compelling and stronger than general statements. Highly detailed comments are perceived as more believable. You’re giving readers something they can wrap their heads around when you use numbers, data, and specifics.

Some marketers may choose to extract ‘only the juice’ from testimonials and this is a huge mistake. A little bit of customer rambling, spelling mistakes, or poor grammar only adds to the credibility factor.

Use longer testimonials rather than shorter ones. This is related to the previous point about heavy editing. Don’t do something like this:

• :”great product!”
• “loved it!”
• “provocative, a real winner”

I think you get the idea here. When you cut and chop a testimonial it creates the impression that you’re leaving something out for a reason and that creates suspicion which is something you don’t want to do.

This next one is a bit of a no-brainer. But I’ll say it anyway…

Always use real testimonials instead of fake ones. I’m telling you, there’s something about comments made from other people that’s very difficult to emulate. People will sense it and see right through you. And you’ll be cutting your own business throat. More importantly fake testimonials are lies. It’ll find its way back to you, eventually, and it won’t be good. So don’t do it.

The visual use of your testimonials will have an effect on your readers. But there is some flexibility here. You can group them all together as a block of testimonials. Or you can scatter them throughout your copy. Then again, you can combine the two.

All three approaches can be effective. But the second and third call for more skill on the copywriter to blend them in for greatest impact.

One thing, leading with testimonials can be dangerous to your conversions.

When someone is fresh on your page, starts to read and the first thing seen is a testimonial…you’re risking losing that reader. Here’s why; People are skeptical, especially on the web. Lots of people are skeptical about testimonials and if their real, or not. One thing you want to avoid is building on that pre-existing skepticism.

The best thing to do is offer one or more testimonials after you’ve established some kind of relationship with the reader. If you’ve done a good job of that, then they’re more relaxed and open to your testimonial.

Testimonial identity and location.

Always, always get first and last names, and specific geographical location.
John Smith, Los Angeles CA.or California.

Please avoid being minimal here. Don’t do:
J.S. California

Not having ANY name or location is so worthless you might as well not have a testimonial to begin with. I’m serious! You’ll only be inviting people to leave your site. They’ll think, “Uh huh…sure.”

To spice things up a little you can blend names and locations with a comment:
John Smith, from Los Angeles California sent us his unsolicited praise for …blah.

These are all very basic and easy things you can do for powerful testimonials. Even though that’s true, I still see online businesses violate these common sense guidelines every day.

Don’t be one of them!

Author:  A former college dropout, Dan “The Man” Lok transformed himself from a grocery bagger in a local supermarket to an internet multi-millionaire. Discover how you can maximize your website profits in minimum time. For a limited time, you can test- drive Dan’s Insiders Club for 30-days Risk-Free and get $1,165 dollars worth of bonus gifts. Rush cover to: http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com/testdrive.html

Welcome to part 5 of this 5 part series.

Google AdWords is one of the best advertising tools on the Internet, but only if you know how to implement Adwords properly to achieve maximum potential. So what exactly should you be doing to ensure that you get the best possible results from Adwords? We have put together the following tips to help you get those all important click throughs and conversion rates.

1. Keep the user experience in mind

As you design or redesign your landing page and website, make the user experience a high priority.

Place important information and images on the top left, where the eye naturally goes first.

Help people get what they want in three clicks or fewer.

Cut out pop-ups and pop-unders.

Create a simple process for users to complete transactions.

2. Check your account statistics

Your CTR, minimum bid and keyword status are good initial indicators of how well your ads are performing. Your account statistics are reported at the campaign, Ad Group and keyword or site levels. They include clicks, impressions, CTR, average CPC or CPM, cost, average position, conversion rate and cost-per-conversion. Your most important statistic is cost per conversion. Never get carried away with clicks!

3. Avoid the ruthless pursuit of ‘main’ keywords

On Google especially, there is a lot of competition for high volume keywords. Thus, the price to compete for those keywords is very high. In many cases, you might drive volume with those keywords, but you won’t be driving profits because you will be bidding more per click than you are making per click.

4. Drive profit, not clicks (or revenue)

For me, PPC is all about driving profits. Revenues are nice, but if I’m not pulling out significantly more money than I’m putting in, then it’s not worth my trouble. In the quest to drive up sales volume it’s easy to spend way too much per sale until you are no longer profitable at all. Remember, profits first, volume second.

5. Optimize

We have given a large number of tips for setting up keywords, testing ads, landing pages etc. These tests are a complete waste of time unless you monitor them and act on the results. This is one of the most difficult areas of PPC. To do this properly you need to use statistical techniques, but you can make massive improvements using common sense and just scanning the numbers by eye. The following tips will help with this optimization.

6. Make an optimization diary

You need to document everything that you do and why. You need to set review dates and stick to them. Give your changes the chance to work.

7. Review bids

Following the first month (when you will be feeling your way into the market) review your bids once a week, at the same time. Monday morning is good because you will optimize based on a full week and then not pollute the next week’s figures with mixed bids. Don’t be tempted into doing this more frequently unless you are a professional and have access to advances statistics. You will get in a mess. Raise the bids on good performers and lower on bad performers. Remember that performance of a keyword is random behaviour. Some good keywords will have freakishly low weeks at times, and some bad keywords will get orders. Do not over-react!

8. Review Ads

Review your ads once a month. The first day of the month is good. Remove bad performing ads and replace them with elements of the good performers with changes. Discover what makes the good ads good. Note the changes in your optimization diary and write down your ideas. There is a lot to optimize and you will forget in 10 minutes, let alone 1 month.

9. Clean keywords

Clean the keywords daily in the first week, weekly for the next 3 weeks and monthly after that. Cleaning the keywords involves using advanced analytics and analysing the actual search traffic that comes in against the keyword. For example, you may buy the keyword ‘condom’ on a broad or phrase match. Analysis of the actual traffic may reveal that your ad is showing when people type ‘how to put on a condom’ or ‘condom pictures’. You need to spot these negatives and act on them. In all cases, note the changes you make in your optimization diary, and at the next optimization review, analyze the data from this date so you know that you are analyzing the figures at the new, optimized levels.

10. Is a PPC Agency for You?

Whilst some people can manage their own AdWords account and be very successful at it, complex campaigns often need an expert. There are many agencies to choose from but ensure that if this is a road you follow that you are armed with the right questions to make sure they are going to add value to your campaigns. Read our ‘Top 10 Tips For Dealing With PPC Agencies’.

By implementing all of our Google Adwords Top Tips you can achieve higher click through rates, more conversions and most importantly, increase your profit.

Author:  Dave McEvoy is an Adwords expert with years of experience in ppc management. For more information please come and visit our site.

The search engines play a crucial role in sending traffic to your website. In fact most of the websites depend on the search engines for their staple dose of traffic although these days it is advised that you should target other websites, blogs, social networking websites, three article directories, online directories, and online forums too.

In order to derive maximum traffic from various search engines you need to make your website search engine friendly and properly communicate to their algorithms what key phrases and keywords are important to your website. Let us quickly go through a few steps that can help you make search engines fall in love with your website.

Write for the people and not just for the search engines

Some people have this misconception that you need to manipulate text in order to rank well on the search engines; partially this is true but most often it is not. The best way to fair well in the search engines is to write and organise your content in such a manner that it is best suited to human reading. The more human-friendly content you have the more search engine friendly content you have. The search engines want you to write relevant, well-organised content so that they can present quality results to their search engine users.

Research your keywords in the beginning

You should be very clear about what keywords you want traffic from the search engines; focus on the wrong key words and all your effort will go to waste. If you’re not sure about what keywords to focus upon them go head and hire a consultant but never underestimate the importance of keyword-research. Don’t postpone the selection of your key words until the completion of your website because during many stages you will need to know what relevant keywords your website is trying to target.

Organise paragraphs under headings and subheadings

Headings and subheadings quickly tell your human readers as well as the search engine crawlers what your pages all about. The headings and subheadings often represent the gist of content so be careful what words you use when you formulate your headings and subheadings; preferably use your keywords and key phrases when writing them.

Emphasise your important words

When you highlight or emphasise your important words it conveys both to your readers and the search engine crawlers that these words are important to understand your message.

Give distinct titles to your web pages

Just as your name is important to your existence, the page titles are important for your web pages. Never have a single title — your company name, for example — for all your pages. Your page title should a property represent your web page and in fact use the central sentence of your web page as your page title. Avoid creating esoteric and confusing titles although they may seem attractive. Always use a title that clearly defines the message of your web page. Preferably use your keywords with creating your title but make sure you don’t unnecessarily stuff the title with all your important keywords: this will end up spoiling the effect of your title. Organise your keyword-distribution carefully Although he shouldn’t manipulate your content for the sake of search engines you can arrange your keywords without seeming spammy. For instance, use your main keywords a new title, in your headings and subheadings, twice or thrice in your first paragraph and then at least once in every paragraph, highlight your keywords once or twice on your web page, use your keywords as hyperlink text when you link to other pages of your website and when you are organising your thoughts using bullets then use your keywords did to.

Submit your link to niche directories

There are online directories available to all niche markets and some of these online directories are highly trusted by the search engines, that is, if your website appears in one of these online directories than it automatically gets a higher ranking in the search engines. There are many business and consumer directories; very carefully select the most appropriate category and then submit your website under that category.

Publish a blog

Not having some blogs is so passé; a blog is such an effective marketing, branding, combination, awareness and SEO tool that it is highly recommended that you have a blog for your business. Highly targeted blogs are quickly indexed by the search engines and whenever you post your blog posts they get the text quicker than your normal web pages. Also somehow the blog posts get ranked higher than the normal pages for the same sort of content. There are many other numerous benefits of publishing a blog but here are just talking in terms of SEO.

Use bread crumb navigation

Bread crumb navigation is a system that you often come across on category-based websites. Take for instance a directory listing: initially ago on the homepage, then you click one of the categories, then you click one of the sub-categories, then you click one of the sub-sub-directories — and so on — until you arrive at the desired page. On top of the page you will see something like Main->Clothes->Shirts->Men->Large->Striped. This type of navigation system allows you to click on a parent directory and immediately move to another section of the website. This is good for your SEO.

Search engine friendly URLs

You get an SEO boost when your URL contains some of your keywords. The search engines don’t appreciate dynamically generated URLs much; they prefer URLs that make sense in the real language. For instance, doublespark-seo.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation/ is always better than doublespark-seo.co.uk/page.php?p=34. Manually it is easy to achieve but if you are using a content management system that make sure that your content management system generates search engine friendly URLs and not dynamic URLs that require a parameter to access a page.

So these are a few things that you can do on your website that will make the search engines fall in love with it.

Author:  Gary Mattoc-03 is the CEO of Doublespark Cambridge SEO Services, a Cambridgeshire based Web Design Peterborough and SEO consultancy.