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Just like planting seeds Organic SEO as an internet marketing strategy requires patience, but the rewards when reaped are plentiful. Although organic optimization is not the first choice for many (depending on the brand and business model) organic search does have inherent benefits that are unparalleled by sponsored or paid advertising tactics.

Conversion is all About Trust

The distinction of hearing something directly from a trusted third party referral is one of the oldest and most successful forms of market leverage a brand can develop. Particularly when purchasing decisions are being formulated in the mind of prospective consumers.

It is this element of trust (like hearing about a great coffee shop or restaurant from a friend) that encourages people to part with their hard earned cash and step up to try a new product, travel to a destination, try something new, etc.

With the obvious advantages of organic search (ranking highly in the natural search results) and the multitudes of low hanging fruit available for the picking (as far as keywords go).

Is it simply lack of patience, lack of brand flexibility or simple ignorance to the benefits of an effective organic search engine optimization campaign that keeps PPC in business or the people who use it so enthralled by it’s influence.

You have to consider the variables:

• Not everyone has content that is ideal or suitable for organic search.
• Branding may conflict with excessive verbiage
• Timing, market share and a fast yielding sales cycles may not provide ample time to wait on organic search results to mature

The entire notion of being select keywords and bid on them (based on competition and click through rates) doesn’t necessarily encourage businesses or webmasters to focus on content quality first, only cost per click & conversion.

Rather that viewing your marketing campaigns short-term goals using logic of PPC, the downside of PPC is just that, you have to pay per click.

Not a problem for a publicly traded company or a product with a high profit margin (since branding is important) as not all products can have 10 pages dedicated to them or an entire site wrapped around it to create relevance to develop the process of growing seed keywords into fully grown top 10 rankings. But for many struggling businesses the costs keep rising and just like gas prices, exorbitant fees are a result of supply and demand.

In contrast, the upside of Organic search engine optimization is, once you overcome the on-page (content) and off-page (link building) factors, you can potentially reap untold amounts of traffic from various long-tail keywords if optimized properly.

The Bottom Line, It’s all about the Brand Strategy

It’s not always what you sell, it’s how you sell it that determines if renting via Pay Per Click (PPC) or owning/developing brand equity (Organic SEO) is the right decision for your business.

I wanted to use an example to elaborate such as the difference between “high self monitor advertising” and “low self monitor advertising”.

A high self monitor mentality is akin to a stark Madison avenue ad where images are the brand, the feeling they create is what they are selling, where the person transposes themselves with the subject or theme of the ad. They envision the fulfillment and how the use of the product or service will impact them. Which type of consumer are you or does it depend on the product?

An example of a “high self monitor ad” would be a new fragrance launch employing the advertising angle of a young, attractive, successful couple relaxing on the beach scantily clad in casual attire, the girl wearing a designer bikini and a few pieces of glamorous jewelry, the man ideally wearing a $30,000 Rolex watch, shirt open, pants rolled up and barefoot in the sand, exhibiting playful demeanor and expressions of care free abandon as they frolick through the beach.

Then, naturally, “THE BIG FONT” with a stylish Name (after months of A/B testing, focus groups and rounds of review of course) and actual fragrance product/bottle are the only things in sight. The Price tag (doesn’t matter) and you probably wont see one until you go to purchase it, it’s the lifestyle your buying into.

Whereas a “low self monitor advertisement” and low self monitor consumer would focus on the product (why is the bottle so strange?), the details, what’s in it, how much does it cost?, do I need it, why in the hell are they on a beach with perfume?, etc. Clearly the needs of the consumer dictates the marketing method employed in the brand strategy. Which one are you?

Organic search and sponsored internet marketing are no different. There is a clear-cut method that appeals to each type of consumer, so based on the product you are selling it really boils down to if the ends justify the means and who benefits. It’s all about building pre-qualified traffic that inherently has a need for your product or service vs. window shoppers or tire-kickers if your business model utilizes e-commerce.

Conclusion:

Organic SEO is fine if you;

1. Have a product that you can dedicate 300-750 words to to describe it’s value.
2. Can exhibit supporting materials images, references and materials that emphasize the products benefits.
3. If you can shroud it in semantic synonyms or jargon (essentially keywords consumers might use to find it) in enough frequency, that it can leverage a high-ranking organic search result.

Aside from that, if you have a product that has a high price point, where there is some wiggle room for how much you are willing to spend to keep the cost per sale within bounds, then by all means pay per click advertising is a viable solution. Another alternative is possibly a hybrid of the two (organic SEO and PPC) to find which method has the highest conversion for your brand.

At the end of the day, if you’re in business, you have to weigh the advantages of how your marketing strategies and profit margin impact the bottom line. In closing, one key factor to consider is with organic search results, the keywords branch out over time, so dozens of the keywords you pay for every time someone clicks, you could achieve through an organic search engine optimization campaign. If you have the time and a great product that is news or review worthy, ultimately, the choice is yours…

Author:  Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

Groupthink is fairly common in the board room but more and more I’m starting to see it in social media too.

Groupthink is defined as “a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas.”

Basically what this means is that people will avoid putting forth opinions or viewpoints that are not likely to be popular with the group.

Groupthink has been thought to be the cause of such major disasters such as the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster and the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

And lately, I think that there is a propensity towards it in social media. In fact, I think it’s all in the way that Digg-like voting sites are designed.

Social media is designed to encourage Groupthink.
I’m not saying that Groupthink is intentional. It’s just that people use social media for more than just finding new content. It’s also social.

To gain social status within the group one must:

1. Submit new content on a regular basis
2. Vote often (people will look at the number of stumbles, diggs, or karma points you’ve amassed to determine how big a “player” you are.
3. Make lot’s of friends

I’m a little shy myself. I tend to vote often and submit little. The problem with that scenario in social media is that it’s not social enough. If you want to gain status in social media then participation isn’t enough. You have to submit content on a regular basis.

This part IS by design. Attracting new content is probably the single most key success factor of any online community. If a community does not appear to be active and fresh then people don’t have a reason to come back.

There are lot’s of posts that talk about the power Diggers, Stumblers and Sphinners. It’s always about how many submissions they have not how many votes they cast.

<Although if you look you’ll see that Power Users tend to give even more than they take…it doesn’t take 5 hrs per day to submit your own stuff. Voting takes the vast majority of this time>

So where does the propensity toward Groupthink Come in?

There will always be ho hum content submitted. Whether it’s because competition for truly great content is fierce or because we all have a different benchmark for what great content is. Either way, somebody is going to think that something is ho hum.
Pair this with the NEED to be social.

Whether it’s a psychological need or a forced need by the mechanics of the social media. People will submit less than stellar content and people will vote for that content. And I’m not even going to get into whether they read it first or not. That’s already been well discussed.

Some people vote for ho hum content because they don’t want to hurt the submitter or writers feelings. Others are more calculating and want to be able to count on that vote later on. Regardless of your motivations, social media is designed to be social.

Lot’s of Content + the Need to be Social = a Propensity towards Groupthink

Over the long term Groupthink has a harmful effect on the community. In fact it can destroy a community. As the scenario above is played out many times a day, quality of content becomes the understudy as social pressure takes Center Stage.

After a while your most loyal community members (those with Stumbles or Diggs in the 5 digits) will start to get disillusioned. They will begin to miss the early days when the media was “pure” and may begin to resent the people that they see as ruining it.

Sides emerge, in-fighting becomes abundant and your most active members eventually leave the group to become the early adapters in the next new thing.

How does a Community Avoid Groupthink?

Through strong, visible Leadership.

It should be clear who the leaders of the group are. The rules should be clear to any newcomer and it should be clearly dictated what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.

Warning, strong leadership takes time. Moderators need to be selected from people who are already very active in the community. They’re already investing the time and exhibiting leadership qualities. Let the natural leaders lead.

But it’s not just about rules, we all have a personal responsibility to act accordingly. What is right and wrong in the off line world applies online as well.

• Do challenge content that you don’t agree with. But be RESPECTFUL of others feelings. Open honest debate can take thinking to the next level.
• Don’t take shots at the writer / submitters themselves. This is hateful and non productive behavior.
• Do respect the community and it’s focus. Only submit content that is appropriate to the community.
• Don’t intentionally classify content wrong to get more eyeballs. Solicitous Spamming drives people nuts.
• Do read the guidelines for a submission before you submit. If you make a mistake people have to go in and manually fix your mistakes. The moderators time could be better used participating in group discussions. Helping to gently reinforce codes of conduct.

So listen up Kevin Rose, Garrett Camp, et al, you started these communities. Now that Digg, SU, etc, are successful and you’re Gazillionaires, your job isn’t done. Provide some leadership. Be accessible. Listen to your community.

And if you are too busy on a beach drinking margaritas, then pay someone else to.

Author:  Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

Since you are reading this article, I know you are looking for a way to make money. I figure you would prefer something that doesn’t already have 8 billion people doing it and with a little effort, you have a realistic chance to make money. I am about to introduce you to what you are looking for plus it’s relatively new and it’s in high demand (aka a hungry market).

Before I get into the details here’s my prediction. 2008 will be the year flippers make a lot of money — it’s a hot and growing market with a ton a demand.

You might be wondering what is flipping and also what is Squidoo. If so, I will give you a brief overview of each.

Squidoo

Squidoo is a Web 2.0 social site that allows user to create their own content. This in itself is no big deal but the real attraction to Squidoo is both the user base is growing dramatically and Google loves Squidoo pages. I get front page Google results quite often with a good Squidoo lens. This all leads to explosive opportunity for high volume traffic. Of course, traffic or even the potential for traffic has tremendous value to buyers.

Flipping

Flipping a Squidoo lens is the same concept as flipping a house. You simply build a great lens and then sell it for profit. Like picking a good location is important to flipping a house, you need to pick the right niche, keywords and content to maximize your sales price with a lens.

So how do you do this flipping stuff?

First, you head on over to Squidoo and set-up a lens so it is optimized for sale. This includes picking a niche along with selecting the best keywords related to the niche. You want to select a topic where there is a hungry market. If you are not sure where to start for topics, you can head over to Amazon and look over the non-fiction best seller list to see if you can come up with ideas. There are many other ways to find niches but I will save that for another article.

Once you have your lens set-up, you are ready to add content and further tweak it. The content you add can make or break you — so it is important you add quality content. The nice thing about a lens is you do not need to add a lot of content. Usually one or two 300-500 word articles is sufficient. You will want to add affiliate links for products that target your niche. You can also use polls to generate affiliate revenue.

The last step is to carefully review your lens for perfection. Just like you would wash, vacuum and wax your car before selling it — do the same with your lens. Make sure it shines. Review it for typos, add images where appropriate and confirm the layout is good.

The next step is to promote your lens. The more you can promote it the more traffic you will get. Naturally, traffic will lead to affiliate sales. With both traffic and sales, you will have driven up the value of your lens. Keep in mind, you do not have to have traffic and sales to sell your lens but you will get a better price and more buyers if you do.

You can promote your lens in a lot of different ways. Add it to social bookmarking sites like Stumble and Digg. Write articles and submit it to directories like Ezinearticle.com, Goarticles.com and SearchWarp.com. You can visit relevant forums and be part of the community there. Add your lens in the signature of your forum posts. The more promotion the better.

Ok, so now you have both built and promoted your lens. Now you are ready to sell it. There are numerous sites for selling including eBay, Sitepoint, forums and many other locations.

This article is a starting point for flipping a lens. I hope you have found this interesting and useful. Now go flip!

Author:  The author Tyler Monesy is an expert in Internet Marketing. For the complete details on flipping a Squidoo Lens head on over to Flips That Lens and can grab his free cheat sheet for selling a lens here: FREE Lens Cheatsheet

Your site is only as strong as it’s weakest link. Depending on your traffic development strategy, it’s possible to eclipse and exceed traffic from Google, Yahoo, MSN combined using alternative high-traffic funneling strategies such as web 2.0 based social media and links from propagating exposure through RSS Feeds and articles.

Fact: - If you write world class content, that alone is enough to build quality links to your website or blog using RSS feeds.

Why? Because people are looking for material on a daily basis to;

1) Report
Ranging from professional editors, influential bloggers and webmasters alike. Content makes the web go around, so those who can capitalize on being first to scoop the latest industry news can be the fortunate recipient of tons of backlinks and a social media traffic stampede from trusted sites with authority such as Sphinn, StumbleUpon, Digg or Blinklist just to name a few.

2) Integrate into Their Own Sites, through links or RSS
Webmasters know the value of fresh content and are constantly trolling article directories that offer RSS feeds for related content in their industry.

When you don’t have time to write, this sure-fire method (using RSS feeds to supplement content) will at least keep your pages looking fresh and can essentially sustain your relationship between your pages and search engine spiders (who love fresh content).

In order to capitalize on this you can promote your own pages by burning your feed at feedburner or offering a widget or link code to stream your content via RSS. Make it Easy for other’s to download and this can be a great positioning strategy as well. One great source is widgetbox.com that allows you to stream the latest 10 headlines from your blog (you can see an example on our homepage of this widget).

3) Share
People are constantly searching for great content to share by email, IMS (instant Messaging Services) or blogging to friends or their own readers if topics are sympathetic to their audience. You never know how many referrals you can receive from a well written post, article or link bait, so put your best foot forward and let your blog, your admirers or your competition build links on your behalf.

Here is a Wordpress Plugin by Cavemonkey that pulls 5 related posts into your feed every time someone publishes it. That’s 5 times the links with a broader range of topics to act as linkbait. Just make sure that you have a few links in your posts pointing back to your website, or to key pages that are related with the highest relevance so that way the link juice finds it’s way home (as a benefit of the exchange). You need backlinks, they need content so this essentially is a constant that is a given on the web.

Instead of thinking quantitatively here, if your pages reach the right person (an editor for an industry trade publication for example) who can truly leverage your content and position your posts or articles in front of a much larger audience. All it takes is one good high powered link to pull your pages up 50-60 results in the search engine result pages for a competitive term (particularly if it is from an industry authority).

So, if you are looking for ways to expand your RSS reach through submitting your blog to RSS directories or using viral marketing tactics, then you should make use of all potential means.

4) Make Blog comments
Blog comments are another way to build links via RSS. Link building through blog comments can add valuable one-way links back to your site to enhance your sites global profile. Despite the fact that most blogs use the no-follow tag, remember that only applies to Google. Yahoo, MSN, Ask and other search engines still see a link as a link and just for the record, in my opinion a sliver of link juice still gets through despite the no-follow. Not to mention a growing number of bloggers use do-follow links.

In summary, leaving a worthy comment to complement a great post, done in a timely fashion, can be another method to generate short-term traffic. Initially from those reading the post (short-term) and the long-term benefits are more apparent when the link goes out via their RSS feed.

Conclusion:

All links age, so in the event that they are do-follow links coming from sites that rank higher than your own, in a few months when they mature and get more link juice, they can be a great source of enhancing your rankings as a result of an authority link pointing at your pages. Once again, with so many ways to build links, you have to think outside the box.

Each link is just one more opportunity to funnel traffic to your site, the key to link building is website authority and link IP diversity (the more varied the IP addresses, the better). Obviously, not all links are going to be from editorial giants in your industry, but every link helps to seed link popularity in search engines. Also, just in case you missed out latest guest post by John Lamansky, you should check out his informative post, 20 Practical SEO Tips to Super-Charge Your WordPress Blog!

Author:  Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

Email marketing is one of the forms of direct marketing, which is done via Internet. Emails are sent to potential customers to boost the business, and gain the trust of the customer by disclosing relevant information and help them to make good shopping decisions. It also enhances the relationship with a current customer, by repeating business with them. In simple words the procedure of sending emails to customers is known as email marketing.

The major advantage of email marketing is that it doesn’t consume a lot of time, is minimal resource consuming and is also cost-efficient. Within a short period, a large audience can be targeted. Features such as Subscriptions, bounced messages, web bugs, and click through help enables businesses to track potential customers. Since the customers can be directly reached, feedbacks can be collected with ease. In terms of cost also it is not as expensive as newsletters. Reports have proven that this is the next best marketing technique after search marketing. It is effective in tracking the returns on investments.

Email marketing is a modernized version of mail marketing. The advantage over direct mail marketing is that it takes less time to reach a customer than mailing. Like people check their mailboxes daily, inbox is also checked by majority of the Internet users on a daily basis. Over the period of time, lots of helpful tools and web services have been developed. List host is web service that provides lots of options to the marketers like managing huge emails and email address database. If the budget is more, list managers can be hired who can be given charge of opt-in-email newsletters and managing databases. Software is also available in the market that does this job too.

When the customer fills the form for the first time, there are check boxes to be ticked which reflects their interests. Depending on these choices, an advertiser sends information to them, this is known as opt-in-email advertising, because the customer has opted to receive emails and marketing like this isn’t illegal. The content of the email can be elaborate, but it shouldn’t be too long as people are really busy for that. The call to action, also known as effective words, in the email should be chosen with care. It’s not necessary that the content should revolve around only one item; related product’s information can also be included. This is known as cross selling. By using email blasting or sending an email to multiple customers at a time can save a lots of time and will also increase the efficiency.

The dark side of email marketing is spamming or also known as bulking. Some companies collect email addresses of people illegally and send irrelevant mails to them, which can be very annoying. Some hackers design an email like an advertisement, but when clicked on downloads adware and viruses that can destroy a computer, which makes it even more dangerous. To make matters worse, the Direct Marketing Association of America has petitioned to make spamming legal. Some prohibitions are also placed on providers who help out business organizations to manage their email marketing by giving them already prepared email templates.

Most of the mailing websites have added the facility of separating spam from genuine email by creating separate folders for both and this is known as spam filtering. But in case of large number of spam mails, a useful mail can go into that folder and can go unnoticed and gets deleted with the rest of the spam mails. This kind of mail is known as false positives. But the chances of this happening are rare. There are many laws against spamming like United States’ Can-Spam act, Europe’s privacy and electronic communications regulations. According to these laws, the companies should get their return address authenticated, false physical addresses should not be included and a one click unsubscribe link should be place in the email. The lesser penalty involves companies sending spam to be blacklisted and on a larger scale, they can be heavily fined.

Author:  Anne Ahira Marketing Guru of My 1st Internet Guru. Anne offers a plethora of inside marketing information and step by step guides to make your online ventures more successful.

A Checkout process can be a number of steps, and each step is its own little mini-conversion. You really want to know where in the shopping cart process folks get frustrated enough to say goodbye, because that’s the point where the carts conversion process is failing. If you’ve got a tidy little cyber shop and still want to improve your shopping cart abandonment rates, then here are some ideas on how to fix your cart:

1. Check how many steps are in your checkout process. This is usually a prime knee-jerk target for results. But we have found that whether you have one step, or seven, it is not all that critical. We had one client whose checkout process we were able to bring down from six steps to one, but there was no correlation in reduction of the abandonment rate to the number of steps. Once people found what they came for, they found a way and the time to checkout no matter how many steps were involved. Should you change the number of steps? No. It may not be worth the time, effort, and expense of trying to reduce the steps in the checkout process. Try some of these other ideas first.

2. Include a progress indicator (e.g., step 2 of 5) on each checkout page. No matter how many steps you have in your checkout process, keep shoppers oriented by letting them know exactly where they are in the checkout process by step number. Be sure to clearly label the task to be completed at each step. Always give them an opportunity to review what they did in the previous steps and a way to return to their current step if they do go back.

3. Provide a link back to the product. When an item is placed in the shopping cart, include a link back to the product page, so shoppers can easily jump back to make sure they have selected the right item. Your own experience probably parallels ours. Recently, while shopping for a CD/DVD printer, we wanted to know how many and what color cartridges come with the printer. It wasn’t obvious where we should click to review what came with the printer, so we had to navigate using our “back” button until we were able to get our questions answered. Not all consumers are willing to take on this navigational challenge and choose, instead, to abandon their carts.

4. Add pictures inside the basket. Just as adding a link back to the product details page inside the checkout process reduces abandonment, placing a thumbnail image of the product inside the basket can increase conversions by as much as 10 percent.

5. Provide shipping costs as early in the process as possible. If possible, provide an estimated cost while they browse. Your visitors want to buy; they just want the answers to all their questions, when they want it, and total cost is one of those critical questions. Also, if the shipping information is the same as the billing information, include a box that shoppers can check to automatically fill in the same information. Don’t waste their time while testing their keyboard skills.

6. Show stock availability on the product page. Shoppers should not have to wait until checkout to find out that a product is out of stock. One thing that we also like to see is “Estimated Delivery Date” or this product usually ships in x days. Deal with the “I want it now” mentality, and let them know when they should expect to get their product.

7. Make it obvious what to click next. Include a prominent Next Step or Continue with Checkout button on each checkout page. If possible, give the shopper a visual cue as to where they are in the process. Make the button you want them to click next the most obvious. One Top 50 e-tailer mistakenly placed visually similar Remove from Cart and Checkout buttons right next to each other. As you can imagine, many people click before they read. At this site, they ended up clearing their cart. And when they want to checkout and found nothing in their shopping cart, they immediately abandoned the site in frustration.

8. Make it easy for the shopper to edit the shopping cart. If a product comes in multiple sizes or colors, make it easy to select or change values in the shopping cart. How many times have you bought a pair of trousers online, and wanted the same shirt in two different colors? Make it easy for your consumers to add to and edit the contents of their shopping carts. It should be simple to change quantities or options or to delete an item from the shopping cart.

9. Make it your fault. If information is missing or filled out incorrectly during checkout, give a meaningful error message that is distinctly visible. It should clearly tell your visitor what needs to be corrected. The tone should intimate that the system was unable to understand what they entered, not that they made a foolish mistake.

10. Make shoppers aware that you are a real entity. Checkout is the time when peoples concerns start to flare up. Let them know you are a real company by giving full contact info during the checkout process.

Look out for part 2 of Increase Conversions by Decreasing Shopping Cart Abandonment, where we have another 10 top tips for you to increase your conversion rates.

Author:  Andy MacDonald owns and runs his own website design company called Swift Media UK which also incorporates logo design & reliable web hosting. Also checkout our SEO Blog which is updated regularly with posts to help you achieve a top search engine ranking.

People get worried when they hear about terms such as SEO and LSI, and when they try to find out how to use latent semantic indexing, they get even more worried when they get conflicting messages. On the one hand some say that LSI doesn’t exist and therefore can’t be used, while others, on the other hand, state that it is critical to your website’s success with the search engines.

We all know what computer people are like, the way they try to make acronyms of everything. LSI is one of these, although not quite what you would call an acronym. LSI does exist, but not in the form that Google would have us believe, and not in any form that you can use to make your website ‘LSI compliant’. Anybody claiming that they can do that are simply playing Google’s trick and using big names for what is a very simple thing to do.

LSI or LSA?

Without going into any detail as to the mathematical background of LSA, it can be used, and is used, to determine the relevance of a passage of text to any given topic based upon a keyword or multiple word search term. LSA was, incidentally, patented by a group of people in 1988, although the basics were known prior to this. LSI is nothing more than the use of LSA in the indexing and retrieval of information. It is therefore a concept, and you cannot make a ‘concept compliant’ web page.

However, it is all semantics (ha-ha!) and the meat of this article is not to knock holes in the way the terms LSA and LSI are being wrongly used by SEO experts, but inform as to how you can make your web page more likely to be considered relevant to the main keyword for which you want your page indexed. This is very simple and does not warrant all the books now being offered on the subject.

The Development of Adsense

Latent semantic analysis is used by Google primarily to detect spam, in respect of excessive repetition of keywords in order to fool the search engines into providing a high listing for that keyword. There was a time when smart people could indeed achieve this simply by writing a meaningless template with rotating synonyms into which any keyword could be multiply inserted by means of software. Thousands of pages could be generated in minutes, each targeting a different keyword. Some were making $thousands daily from Adsense using this method.

In fact the principles of LSA to determine the content of web pages were used by a small company called Oingo that changed its name to Applied Semantics who developed a search system to determine the relevance of page content for specific advert placement. They called this Adsense. This company was in turn bought by Google in April, 2003, and Adsense used to replace their own system which was still under development. Adsense, then, was not developed by Google, but purchased by them.

BigDaddy and Character String Analysis

The principles were also applied to determine the relevance of on-page text to specific search terms and used in the web indexing algorithm called BigBaddy, used by the Googlebot to index your web pages. BigDaddy appears to view links and relevance as the two major factors among many others that determine your listing position in the index for any specific search term as used by a Google customer.

Back to spam. Your web page content is now analyzed by the statistical mathematical analysis tool known as LSA/LSI and indexed according to the meaning of the words in your text. It goes further than just checking for the excessive use of specific words, and no longer searches only for indices of your stated keywords. LSA informs Google of the true meaning of your text, and you cannot hide this by repetitions of a single key phrase. Let’s call it LSI because that’s what Google calls it. LSI analyzes the character strings in your text and compares them to a large database of words, the meanings of which have been defined.

Same Words - Different Meanings

LSI is used to determine the true meaning of homonyms, heteronyms and polysemes. Homonyms are spelled and pronounced the same, but have different meanings, such as lock, with three meanings. A heteronym is a word spelled the same as another, but with a different pronunciation and meaning, such as lead: a metal or to be in front. Polysemes are words spelled the same, and from the same root, but used differently such as a mole - a burrowing animal, or a mole - a spy deliberately placed in an organization. Both moles have the same root, but the words are used in different contexts. LSI or LSA can be used to determine the difference by means of analysis of the other words in the text.

If your page has been written around the keyword lock (my usual example of a homonym), without any decent content the reader would find it difficult to tell what type of locks you were writing about. The LSA algorithm would be looking for words such as canals, keys or hair to tell the difference and know where to list it.

All you need do is to look up thesaurus.com, and then use plenty of alternative vocabulary in your content that explains its meaning precisely. You can also use the tilde (~) in a Google search for your keyword. While Google does not highlight exactly correct synonyms, it will give you an indication of what vocabulary it regards as being equivalent. If you do that with ‘locks’ all you get are ‘lock’ and ‘locks’, and all are security locks. Interestingly, when you do it with ‘canal locks’, Google also highlight ‘narrow’. This indicates that if your topic is on canal locks, using the word ‘narrow’ will be to your advantage.

Semantics and Vocabulary

If you keep in mind that the main purpose of the LSI component of BigDaddy is to detect keyword spamming, and to determine for what search term the page should be indexed, then it should be obvious to you that the sue of contextually related vocabulary will reveal the semantics of your page. Semantics is nothing more than the meaning of the words you are using, and where your keywords could have more than one meaning, you have to make the meaning clear through the use of related text. Nothing more than that.

If you write naturally, as you would if you were talking to somebody, and trying to explain your subject, then you will not have any problems with the LSI algorithm. There is no need to use an SEO expert, since they are not necessarily qualified in their knowledge and use of language. A thesaurus will do the job fine.

Keyword Density is not What it Was

Do not overuse your keywords, and the old adage that you should have between 1% and 3% keyword density on your page no longer applies. Use it often enough to stress its importance, which means as the page title, as the heading in H1 tags, and in the first 100 characters and in the last paragraph. Google will check all four of these, and will regard any words it finds there, other than fillers and stop words, as being important. Use it again every 300 words or so and that is enough.

SEO and LSI are not really related since the term LSI is used in the wrong context here. However, in the way that it is used, if you use good vocabulary, contextually relevant to your keywords, then you will also be using good SEO. How to use latent semantic indexing properly is irrelevant in pure terminology, since you can’t use it on your web page. Google can use it in their algorithm, and you should make your vocabulary as understandable as possible by means of simple words that express the meaning of your text.

Author:  Pete has his own theories of the way that SEO and LSA can be used to improve your web page listing positions, and more information is available on his website SEOcious and his blog SEOscopy where you will find how to use these concepts to their maximum effect.

You can put any number of snazzy features on your website. If you ever meet with a web design firm, your sure to hear about all the cool scripts, animations and other interactive add-ons that can go on your pages. Some pizzazz isn’t a bad thing, especially if you’re just starting out and need to set yourself apart from the competition.

But the website features that count toward your bottom line are the ones that attract and retain customers and entice them back to you regularly. Along with the bells and whistles, your business home on the web needs to have some basic must-haves that shoppers expect. Make sure that your site meets the minimum daily requirements. This article describes ten specific features that help you achieve these objectives.

Secure East-to-Remember URLs.

Names are critical to the success of any business. A name becomes identified with a business, and people associate the name with its products and its level of customer service. When a small company developed a software product called Lindows, giant Microsoft sued initially, but eventually paid $20 million to stop the infringement on its well-known trademarked product Windows.

Write down five or six names that are short and easy to remember and that would represent your business if included in an URL. Do a domain name search and try to find the one you want. Try to keep your site’s potential name as short and as free of elements like hyphens as possible.

Provide a Convenient Payment Method

Shoppers go online for many reasons, but those reasons don’t include a desire for things to be complex and time consuming. No matter how technically complex it may be to get one’s computer on the internet, shoppers still want things to be quick and seamless. At the top of the list of seamless processes is the ability to pay for merchandise purchased online.

You don’t have to get a merchant account from a bank to process your own credit-card payments. You don’t need to get point-of-sale hardware, either. The other day, Greg paid for a heater from a company that sent him to PayPal’s website. PayPal began as an independent company, but it became so popular among members of the auction site eBay that eBay eventually purchased it. Chances are that many of your prospective customers already have accounts with PayPal if they use eBay. Greg did, so his purchase process was completed in less than a minute. Set yourself up as a seller with PayPal and accept money orders & personal cheques.

Promote Security, Privacy, and Trust

Even shoppers who have been making purchases online for years still feel uncertainty when they type their credit-card number and click a button labelled Pay Now. We’re speaking from personal experience. What promotes trust? Information and communication. Shoppers online love getting information that goes beyond what they can find in a printed catalogue. Be sure to include one or more of the following details that can make shoppers feel good about pressing your Buy Now buttons:

• An endorsement from an organization that is supposed to promote good business practices, such as investors in people, business in the community, or by your own customers.
• A privacy statement that explains how you’re going to handle customers’ personal information.
• Detailed product descriptions that show you’re knowledgeable about a product.

Another good thing that promotes trust is information about who you are and why you love what you do, as described in the ‘Blow Your Own Trumpet’ section, later in this article.

Choose Goods & Services That Buyers Want

Every merchant would love to be able to read the minds of his or her prospective customers. On the internet, you have as much chance of reading someone’s mind as you have of meeting that person face to face. Nevertheless, the internet does give potential buyers several ways to tell you what they want:

• Come right out and ask them. On your website, invite requests for merchandise of one sort or another.
• After a purchase, ask customers for suggestions about other items they’d like to buy from you.
• Visit message boards, newsgroups, and websites related to the item you want to sell.
• Make a weekly (remember that Saturdays & Sundays are the best days for auctions to end) search of eBay’s completed auctions to see what has sold, and which types of items have fetched the highest prices.

Have a Regular Influx of New Products

With a printed catalogue, changes to sales items can be major. The biggest problem is the need to physically reprint the catalogue with inventory changes. One of the biggest advantages associated with having an online sales catalogue is the ability to alter your product line in a matter of minutes, without sending artwork to a printer. You can easily post new sales items online each day, as soon as you get new sales figures.

One reason to keep changing your products on a regular basis is that your larger competitors are doing so. Lands’ End, which has a well-designed and popular online sales catalogue, puts out new products on a regular basis and announces them in an email newsletter to which loyal customers can subscribe.

Be Current with Upkeep & Improvements

Do you have a favourite blog, comic strip, or newspaper columnist that you like to visit each day? We certainly do. If these content providers don’t come up with new material on a regular basis, you get discouraged. Your loyal customers will hopefully feel the same way about your website, eBay shop or other sales venue.

We know what you’re thinking: You’ve got so many things to do that you can’t possibly be revisiting your website every day and changing headings or putting new sales online. You can’t be in two places at once. But two people can. Hire a student or friend to run your site and suggest new content for you. In a five-minute phone call, you can tell your assistant what to do that day, and you can go on to the rest of your many responsibilities.

Personally Interact with Your Customers

The fact that personal touch counts for so much in internet communication is a paradox. With rare exceptions, you never meet face to face with the people with whom you exchange messages. Maybe it’s the lack of body language and visual clues that make shoppers and other web surfers so hungry for attention. But the fact is that impersonal, mass email marketing messages are reviled while quick responses with courteous thank-you’s are eagerly welcomed.

You can’t send too many personal email messages to your customers, even when they’re only making and enquiry and not a purchase. Not long ago, Greg asked some questions about a heater he was thinking of buying online. He filled out the form on the company’s website and submitted his questions. The representative of the company got right back to him.

‘First of all, let me thank you for your interest in our product,’ the letter began. She proceeded to answer his questions and then finished with another thank-you and ‘if you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.’ Greg didn’t hesitate: ‘He asked more questions, she answered and again said, ‘Don’t hesitate to ask’ at the end. It’s possible it was all ‘form letter’ material, added to the beginning and end of every enquiry, but it makes a difference. Greg eventually purchased the item.

Post Advertisements in the Right Places

When most people think about advertising on the internet, they automatically think about banner adverts placed on someone else’s web page. A banner advert is only one kind of online ad, and possibly the least effective. Make use of all the advertising options going online brings you, including the following:

• Word of mouth: Bloggers use this method all the time: one person mentions something in another blog, that blogger mentions it to someone else, and so on.
• Exchange links: ‘You link to my website, and ill link to yours’, in other words.
• Multiply Websites: if you have two websites, you immediately have two sites linking to each one of yours. Your ability to exchange links with other websites triples, too.
• Get listed in search engines: Make sure that your site is listed in the databases maintained by Google and the other search engines.

Blow Your Own Trumpet

Sam Walton founded Wal-Mart, and the Walton family still runs it, but 99 percent of the shoppers who flock to megastores every day don’t know or care about that fact. Wal-Mart is a well-established brand with a physical Presence. Your fledgling online business has neither of those advantages. You need to use your website to provide essential background information about yourself, why you started your business, and what your goals are.

Your immediate aim is to answer the question that naturally arises when a consumer visits your online business: ‘Who are these people?’ or ‘who is this guy?’ The indirect goal is to answer a question that the shopper doesn’t necessarily ask consciously, but that is present nonetheless: ‘Why should I trust this place?’ Be sure to list your experience, your background, your family, or your hobbies - anything to reassure online shoppers that you’re a reputable person who is looking out for their interests.

Create a Well-Organized Website

A well-organised website isn’t quite as essential as it used to be, because you can establish a regular income on eBay without having any website at all. But even if you become a well-established eBay seller, you’re going to want a website at some point or another. How do you make your site well organised? Make sure that your site incorporates these essential features:

• Navigation buttons: consumers who are in a hurry expect to see a row of navigation buttons along the top or one of the sides of your homepage. Don’t make them hunt; put them there.
• A Site Map: A page that leads visitors to all areas of your site can prevent them from going elsewhere if they got lost.
• Links that actually work: Nothing is more frustrating than clicking a link that’s supposed to lead to a photo and/or a bit of information that you really want, and to come up with a generic page not found error message
• Links that indicate where you are on the site: such links are helpful because, like a trail of breadcrumbs, they show how the customer got to a particular page. Heres an example:
  Clothing > Men’s > Sportswear > Shoes > Running

When your site grows to contain dozens of pages and several main categories, links that look like this can help people move up to a main category and find more subcategories.

So there I have given you information on the 10 must-have features for your website, follow these simple rules and you will have a website which customers will love, and a website which over-time will grow and achieve the goals you set out to achieve. good luck with your web site’s and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me or leave me a comment.

Author:  Andy MacDonald owns and runs his own website design company called Swift Media UK which also incorporates logo design & reliable web hosting. Also checkout our SEO Blog which is updated regularly with posts to help you achieve a top search engine ranking.

You’ve done everything right to grab targeted visitors to your website. Finally! You sit there basking in the glow of satisfaction when you check out your web logs. Your eyes roll to the back of your head… you’re not thinking lots of traffic. You’re thinking hordes of it with plastic in hand. And you can’t wait to check your orders and optins. Then?

Awful, gut-wrenching reality sinks in.

Nothing. No orders. No optins. You double check your traffic logs. And it looks a lot like your visitors cannot wait to get outta town! It’s like your site is coated with Teflon instead of super glue. Ever heard the saying… slicker ‘n a mouse’s lip?

But wait… don’t throw your self into the oncoming rush hour traffic. Here’s what you can do today to remove the slippery stuff and send the mouse packing.

Every visitor arrives at your website wondering just one thing: How will this place benefit ME! It’s me, me, me. “I hope this place has what I’m looking for.” So?

Tell them. Be upfront about it. This is no time to be shy… to be the staid marketer. Let them know the reason for your website’s existence. Maybe you’re thinking… ‘well, my domain has keywords in it. It’s at the top blazoned in size 26 cool-looking font. They can see all the product pics everywhere.’

Ok. So are you telling me you’re just like everyone else selling the same stuff you do? There’s nothing utterly unique about your business, your offer, your terms, your customer service, your customer retention or appreciation programs?

Nothing?

Better find something fast because if not, then you’re just like everyone else and so it really doesn’t matter if they do business with you.

Be very clear about what you’re selling. Try not to think about you or how cool your graphics and soft-focused pics are. That’s all nice. But you want the truth? They don’t really care half a wit about it. You’re right…

Appropriate amounts Do help create a professional image. But try to add a dose of moderation. Be tasteful about it. Not overwhelming.

If you have a serious business with serious content, then don’t hide behind the curtains. Peeking around to see who’s there.

Remember, among other things, you’re trying to build trust. And people will trust you a whole lot more if they know who the heck is running the place. “Who OWNS this place?” So let them see your lovely mug… your face. Make it easy to contact you. Give ‘em a number to call, an email or warm and friendly form to fill out… the best you can. How about letting them know where on the planet your business calls home? Stuff like that. It’ll go a long way to help build credibility and trust. If you’re not hiding, then people will naturally think you have nothing to hide. Makes sense to me. So they’ll start thinking maybe you can be trusted with their money or optin info.

I remember being at a software site. And I really, really wanted this software. And this is the absolute truth: I spent almost 10 minutes finding the order link. It was maddening! But I wanted that software so much I became obsessed with finding the order link.

It was on the second page in the middle of the page. I was floored. I actually wondered if it was some very unwise joke or the guy was just totally bereft of any marketing clue.

I bought the software. Great software. Dumbest site navigation I ever witnessed.

Moral of the story? Don’t be like that, please.

Related to that has to do with giving your eager buyers as many ways to part with their hard-earned cash as possible. Ordering options. You’ve used them before. Right? An 800 number, order form, credit cards, paypal, how about… snail mail.

Options are cool. Be cool and you’ll get more orders.

How about leveraging your customers? Have strategically placed comments from your legions of happy and satisfied buyers. Social pudding with heavy doses of proof in it! That’s a winning recipe, for sure.

There it is, pals. Those are but a smattering from my personal bag of tricks. But they’re really not tricks. Just what works.

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

Stuck in an auto responder rut? Are you out of fresh ideas? Ever wonder where you can go next with your auto responders. Marketing through auto responder series is a popular strategy to increase repeat website visits and sales. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut with only your initial set of e-mail touches going out regularly? Get out of the rut with some of these ideas for auto responder improvements. Here are 12 customer building strategies.

Top sales pros confirm that on average, it takes seven or more communications or sales messages before prospective customers make a purchase. They also confirm that it’s generally easier to sell to a referral, because someone they know gave positive testimonial about their products or services.

Do the Two-Step!

What would happen if you combined both of these powerful ideas? An electronic two-step so to speak. Try these two-step tips:

1. Collect leads with your auto responder. Ask for mailing addresses and telephone numbers, too, for additional ways to follow up with each person. When you download the e-mail digest of everyone’s e-mail addresses and other information from those who requested additional information from your auto responder, follow up multiple ways. Send postcards. Call. Mail sales letters and other promotional pieces.
2. Publish a price list of all the products and services that you offer in an insert, direct marketing package and/or PDF to be made available via auto responder. You could also include order forms, product descriptions, and other sales material. Then send to the people in #1 above, monthly updates, announcements of new sales and products/services, and a request for referrals.

Ezines Book

Instead of trying to publish a small daily or weekly eZines, try publishing one large monthly eZine (similar to a monthly magazine) as an e-book format delivered via auto responder, preferably an Adobe .pdf file. You could have it made up of a large number of articles per issue and insert regularly featured areas throughout like inspirational quotes, industry tips, favorite sites and advice from the pros. You could also insert full-color graphics, multimedia components like audio / video file links and ads. Then you can charge a monthly rate, with an annual discounted package purchase, and sell advertising spots to sprinkle in your auto responder announcements for each issue and with an informational series to announce your monthly eZine to new prospects.

Other Good Things You Can Do With An E-Zine

1. Provide back issues of your eZine archives via your auto responder instead of hosting all your archives online. This will give your subscribers and web site visitors easy access to them and offers a chance to include graphics, audio and video and other components all rolled up in pdf files for quick, easy download.
2. Help with tech issues and publish your entire web site, save it in a pdf file, and load it into an auto responder. Sometimes visitors don’t have enough time read your entire site or they lose their Internet connection or time online. So this way, they could print it out and read it offline.
3. You could offer your eBook via an auto responder. Often your visitors won’t have to download it or have the software to read it right away, so this way they can take it “to go”.
4. For a handy and nice legal touch, you could include the terms and conditions to purchase transactions and load them into an auto responder that is triggered with each purchase. This could include return policies, purchases, refunds etc.
5. Publish free reports to send via your auto responder. The reports should be related to your business or web site and contain info, ads and links to your sites. People love getting freebies.
6. Collect vital customer satisfaction information by publishing a survey. Send this to via auto responder to those who sign up on your site in exchange for a free eBook, software or trial period at your membership site. This type of information will help you understand their needs, wants, likes and dislikes better.
7. Instead of answering each customer question that is e-mailed to you, publish “Frequently Ask Question