SiteProNews

Do you know the open rate for your email newsletter? The open rate is the percentage of people who actually open and read your newsletter. Most better email distribution programs can give you fairly detailed statistics about your open rate, including the percentage that opened the broadcast, the links that they clicked on (called click-throughs), the specific subscribers who opened the ezine, and in some cases, info about which issues were forwarded to others.

A good open rate is considered to be 30-40%, which means that between 30 and 40% of your list is actually reading your broadcast. That number mean seem disappointing, as you want everyone on your list to read your ezine. Unfortunately, a 100% open rate will probably never happen for most of us, as most people are simply too busy to pay close attention to the bulk of email that they receive.

If you’re using your ezine as your “stay in touch” device for your email list as the way your prospects get to like, know and trust you so that you’ll be the top of mind person they contact when they are ready to fix the problem that ails them, then you want to ensure that as many of them as possible open your ezine when it arrives. It’s a crowded world out there in the world of email newsletters and can be difficult to make yours stand out above the rest.

Here are 5 strategies you can use to increase the open rate of your ezine:

1. Publish regularly. Your list needs to be accustomed to hearing from you, so publishing on a regular schedule is important. Many studies have been done to determine the “best” day to send an email broadcast, and as soon as a bunch of email marketers follow those guidelines, then the days change again according to another study. In my opinion, it doesn’t really matter what day you choose to publish — just do it the same time every time. The more frequently you publish (preferably weekly), the more quickly your list will get to know you.

2. Personalize your ezine headline and body. What happens when you see your name in an email? You look at it, don’t you? That’s why it’s so important to use the customization features in your email broadcast program to insert your recipient’s first name in the subject line and in the body of the email. Many readers aren’t savvy to the world of Internet marketing strategies, so they think that you’ve crafted an email solely for them. And, of course, to personalize the broadcast, you need to request both a name and an email address when someone signs up for your list.

3. Create a compelling subject line. A great subject line (or headline) is just like a book cover — it will make people curious/compelled to open the email, or not. The subject lines that get the highest open rate are consistent, or are formatted in the same way each week. Secondly, they give a glimpse of what’s inside the email. Lastly, they aren’t too long — no more than 50-60 characters, which is the average subject line length that most email programs will display. I used to publish a month/year of broadcast and an issue number of my email newsletters and quickly discovered that I was wasting my subject line space. Now, I’d suggest your format to be: [Ezine name]: first name, subject line here.

4. Identify yourself to your readers. When you send an email broadcast, be sure to identify yourself in the “From” line so that the reader knows exactly who is sending the email. If you think your reader identifies more with your company name, then send it using your company name rather than your name in the From line. However, the majority of clients of small service businesses identify more with the company owner’s name, so I recommend that you use your name in the From line of your email broadcast.

5. Highly useful content. Typically most ezine recipients will give you 1 or 2 chances to make an impression on them. If they’re not “wowed” by your content, then they do one of two things — unsubscribe from your list, or let your broadcast languish in their email inbox until they get around to reading it, which may never happen. Every time you send out an issue, you’re making a first impression, as you’ve got new readers who join your list every single week. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, so ensure every issue is your best issue. Your primary article needs to answer a key question asked or issue encountered by the majority of your readers.

Despite the advent of blogs and other social networking platforms, I still believe the email newsletter is a great way to stay in contact with your prospects. By using the strategies outlined above, you’ll have more readers opening your broadcasts than every before.

Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at http://www.OnlineBizU.com. Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at http://www.AskDonnaGunter.com.

Tags: article writing, ezine publishing

Blogs are powerful marketing tools that can help you reach more customers, establish credibility, increase sales, and share company news without having a huge advertising budget.

Blogs have a number of advantages that make them highly effective in promoting your business:

1. You don’t have to be a tech geek to start a blog.

Anyone can do it, and sites like Blogger can help you create and publish your blog in less than 5 minutes.

2. Blogs can boost your search engine ranking.

The content of your blog is ripe for the search engines and encourages other bloggers who write on similar topics to link to you. Regularly updated, keyword-rich content (not spam) and linking will help boost your site’s visibility and in turn attract more customers.

3. Blogs offer multiple ways to deliver your message. If you’re not the best writer, you can start an audio or video blog and can therefore still reach your customers in a personal way.

4. Blog posts encourage immediate responses from your customers.

Questions, comments and feedback from your customers can help you better address their needs, adjust your campaigns, and react to the market’s changing demands.

5. Blogs help you expand your reach online.

By pinging search engines and using RSS feeds you can syndicate your content online, boost your reach and influence, and allow customers to control their communications with your company.

6. Blogs increase transparency and help you establish credibility.

Blogs are much more personal than a corporate website and because they are regularly updated, customers can remain informed about your business and feel more connected to you. Your blog can be your selling point and can sway prospective customers to choose you and your services over the competition.

Blogs are about communicating and building relationships with your readers. Use your blog for branding your business, building your reputation and communicating with your audience ‘ not just for making a sale.

There are a variety of ways you can use your blog to communicate with your readers and promote your business, while unobtrusively going after the sale. You can use your blog to:

• Write product reviews and link to product pages (consider signing up to be an affiliate)
• Write insightful articles or tips relevant to your audience
• Recommend products and services (yours or someone else’s)
• Post and archive company newsletters
• Share company news and product updates
• Offer special incentives and promotions
• Ask customers to complete surveys and provide feedback

Generating new content for your blog does not have to be a daunting task. You don’t have to worry about writing it all yourself. Instead, you can directly post your company newsletters as well as relevant third-party articles, reviews, and links found using sites like StumbleUpon and Google News.

Remember to include links where appropriate to your own website and product pages. Having a blog also allows you to make regular updates quickly and without needing a webmaster.

A blog is a highly effective tool in promoting your business, so start now

Bjorn Brands is a successful entrepreneur who transitioned from having his own building company to a great online business. Check out his site and see for yourself how his FREE course can help you do the same. http://www.moneyacces.com

Tags: blog, blog marketing, blog writing, blogs

Ever wonder why Google ranking change so much from week to week, day to day, hour to hour? I know I have pondered that myself on a occasion. We I think we might have discovered a major piece of the puzzle with something called Google Previous Query. He is a snippet from SEL where Danny Sullivan discusses the new technology with direct quotes from Google’s Marissa Mayer. Bolding is mine:

For example, search for [spain] then do a new search for [travel], and you may notice how the ads will be targeted around Spanish travel (see also Google’s help page on this). Google’s never given this feature a formal name, but Marissa said internally the company calls it “Previous Query,” the first time to my knowledge that we’ve had some type of formal name put to it. Learn the name well, because Previous Query refinement is now coming to unpaid or “organic” search results, she said.

For example, if someone were to search for [spain] and then [travel] after that, BOTH the ads and the organic results will be altered to take the previous query into account. To some degree, it will be as if the second query was for [spain travel].

This is a big deal. Big deal. It means that the results for many “single word” queries, which can be hard for sites to rank for when billions of listings come back, will become queries involving two or more words - and much more specific ones.

Seems like this algorithm tweak was to improve the PPC ad relevancy initially and now is being introduced into the organic results. As you can see this layering of keyword phrases during your search session can greatly change what you see from minute to minute and hour to hour. This algorithm factor could alone be the reason for the radically changing SERP view that so many see.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Google, google rankings

Article marketing continues to be a proven method for generating traffic to our websites and developing good search placement, even after all of these years. I have been reading articles online since 1995, and I continue to read a few dozen articles per week on subjects that are dear to my heart.

Some Claim That Article Marketing Does Not Work

Now and again, I will read a thread in a forum somewhere where somebody claims that article marketing does not work.

Some article-marketing critics will admit that they have only distributed only one or two articles. Well yeah, I can see why article marketing did not work for them - because they did not work at making article marketing profitable for them.

Article marketing is like any other method of advertising. If you don’t make a real investment in it, then you cannot reap great rewards from it.

The Marketing Rule Of Seven

Advertising professionals speak of the “Marketing Rule Of Seven,” which suggests that a consumer must see your marketing message at least seven times before they start to pay attention to your message. The pros also suggest that once seven exposures have been achieved, the consumer will make a subtle, subconscious connection to the advertiser. Recognition brings rewards, in that after seven exposures to an advertisement, consumers will start to feel as if they know enough about the advertiser to trust their sales message.

If television, radio and print advertisers understand that a company’s sales message must be seen or heard at least seven times, then why would you - the Internet marketer - think that you can write a single article and see the full benefit of the medium?

Successful Article Marketing Requires A Commitment To The Reader

All commerce on the Internet is driven by information, such as written sales messages and information about products and services. Some websites also benefit from generic information concerning topics that their potential clients will be interested in reading. For example, if a website sells plumbing supplies, the consumer may find the availability of information about how to remove the old fittings and how to install the new plumbing equipment, as an essential element of their purchase decision.

Article marketing when done correctly will not be a boring, blathering of search engine optimized keywords related to a product or service line.

Article marketing, when done well, will provide information that will be of real interest to the person most likely to buy what you are selling.

For example:

Article marketing when used well can help a company establish itself as an expert in the field, and it can help show a reader why hiring the author’s service might be better than a do-it-yourself project. As an example, with the resume advice article, once the reader sees how comprehensive your knowledge is and how detailed a resume should be, the reader may just decide that using your resume writing service will be much more productive than the do-it-yourself resume.

Just Like Lawyers, Writers Specialize Too

Beyond the cost of labor, content development is usually the second most expensive expenditure made by the online vendor. It is important to note that just as there are lawyers who specialize in one area of law, there are also ghostwriters who specialize in certain types of content creation.

People who write sales copy are referred to as “copywriters.” Copywriters are people who understand the nuances of how to make people buy what you are selling.

They understand that replacing a single word in the sales copy could mean the difference between lukewarm sales numbers and red-hot sales numbers, and they know which words to change.

Some professional copywriters have a proven track record of writing sales copy that has generated millions of dollars in sales - people such as Frank Kern, Dan Lok, and Joe Vitale. These guys know the value of their copywriting skills, and they charge accordingly. If you ask them to write sales copy for you, don’t be surprised when they quote you a price in the range of $5-20 per written word.

Other writers might specialize in writing books, brochures, and articles. Some writers specialize in the smaller word counts, like the folks who write greeting cards and book jackets.

Finding The Best Writer For Your Needs

The kid down the street who writes part-time for the newspaper may or may not be the best person to write your online articles for you. One reason is that people who write for offline publications seldom appreciate the importance of keywords in an article for search engine marketing purposes.

Note this article for example. Our purpose is to show you how you can use article marketing as a successful marketing tool for your business. We also want to show how the articles should appeal both to the reader and the search engine algorithms.

With these thoughts in mind, when you are finished reading this article, read it a second time to see how many variations on the following SEO keyword phrases can be found in this article: article marketing, search engine marketing, keywords, advertising, content creation, writers and copywriting. Of course, copywriting is not the kind of writing we do, but people who do not understand the specialization of writing skills might type “copywriting” or “copywriters” into their favorite search engine to find someone who writes informational articles.

One never knows precisely what the public will use as their search keywords when they go to the search engine to find information. That is the very reason why a good online article writer must strive to showcase a range of similar keywords within the context of an article.

Your Article Marketing Strategies Influence Your Overall Success

We know that some people tell you that the only reason to write an article is to get a link back to your website. What most of these people don’t tell you is that most websites that accept reprint articles do so, only after a human has reviewed or at least scanned the article.

An article that does not read well will never be published on a top-tier website. Yes, some websites may accept a poorly written article, but more sites will only accept well-written articles.

A reader who is not impressed with your article will seldom reach your resource box, so the link back in the resource box can only give value to your website from the search engines - maybe. The search engines generally only give value to articles on good websites or those placements that have lots of links pointing to the article within the website. Bad articles don’t get published on good websites, and they do not attract links.

As the Marketing Rule Of Seven should indicate, multiple articles generate a long-term wave of new links and potential visitors to your website.

Consistency is also important to a successful article marketing campaign, in that releasing weekly articles will enable your readers to see your marketing message regularly.

Finally, the smart use of a variety of related keyword phrases will strengthen the ability of your article to appeal to the search engines and the people who use them.

If you can balance the needs of your article’s audience against your need for search optimized content, then you can benefit handsomely from your article marketing campaigns.

Hunter Waterhouse is a ghostwriter and editor. Put his name in quotes and run it through your favorite search engine, to see the quality of the websites that have published his articles, and you will know that Hunter knows what he is talking about when it comes to article marketing. If you need ghost written articles, visit: http://www.reprintwriters.com If you have hired anyone to ghostwrite articles for you, confirm their honesty and the uniqueness of your articles, with the free Plagiarism Check Tool.

Tags: article writing, seo writing, Writing

Recently I was reading an article about the trouble in Zimbabwe and how it affected South Africa. I was surprised to find that many people didn’t realize that South Africa was a country in its own right, but most thought that Zimbabwe was a country in South Africa. While I find this amusing (as both South Africa and Zimbabwe are very much individual independent countries) I did realise that not everybody is 100% clued up on their geography.

Okay so what does this have to do with search? As many small businesses are unable to supply the entire world with their product or service many try to localise their client base. This is carried over into their website. It’s not easy for a plumber in London to be making callouts to China. While this is an extreme example I think you get the point.

When it comes to optimising websites for local searches it is important to always include the area name in your key phrases. So instead of optimising your website for say “experienced plumber after hours” you might optimise it for “experienced plumber after hours in London”. But as you may have guessed that while the tail grows longer you are expected to have fewer visitors. Don’t forget that long tail keywords do convert better though. However at this point you may also have noticed that you could start to shorten your key phrase. Now it would be easier to obtain top rakings for the phrase “experienced plumber in London” or even at a push simply “plumber in London”.

However remember that while local search is intended for localised visitors not all qualified visitors will be locals. Okay, so that sounds a little confusing but consider the fact that not everyone searching for your services will be in the same town while doing the searching. Sometimes people need to do a search of a location and services that they may need while away on holiday, business or even for someone else. Imagine a chronic diabetes sufferer needing to know of the nearest doctor while on vacation or someone needing to know where the nearest laundromat is while on vacation in a small seaside town. Both of these searches may be done with only a little information on the actual location of where they may be.

I have often gone on vacation to small towns where many of the nearest services were in the next town. Often people won’t even know which suburb of a town your business may be located in. I think of Johannesburg and while I know that there are literally thousands of tiny suburbs, many people (and yes, even I am guilty of this) simply lump them all together as Johannesburg.

So what does this all mean for localised search?

Never assume that the visitors know exactly where you are. If your town only has a population of 75 and has never been a hot spot of any kind, then chances are nobody will know your town off hand. In these instances go bigger, optimise for the larger geographical area or town as well as the suburb. I know that this certainly has worked for smaller estate agent websites we have worked on based in a small suburb of a major South African city. While they rank highly for variations of their keywords for their specific town and suburb, the bulk of all traffic comes from the very broad searches as this makes a great starting point. While this traffic doesn’t convert as well, it certainly means that you won’t be missing a potential lead.

Always include area info. Once again as many visitors may not know the area very well it may prove very useful to supply a map of the greater area with a breakdown town by town. As mentioned earlier with many of the small towns that dot the map, many of the service providers may supply more than a single town due to supply and demand. This should help with two things. Firstly, it will help put distance and location of your business into some perspective in relation to where they will be. Secondly, this certainly won’t hurt in the search engines. Always remember relevant information is always welcome; just don’t cram it full of useless information.

Going back to the opening paragraph we must remember that not everyone knows their geography that well, and fewer still are masters of localised geography. Keep this in mind when optimising your website. Always try to think like an out-of-towner. Keep it specific, going broad when you must but always make sure that you have your bases covered for your local searches (although if you’ve done your offline marketing well this shouldn’t be a problem).

Robert Cerff is a search engine analyst and marketing consultant in South Africa for Prop Data Internet Solutions. He has ten years experience in e-commerce, online marketing and web development. http://www.propdata.co.za

Tags: local search, optimisation, optimization

In Part 1 and Part 2 of How to Optimize for Google I discussed general website optimization, links, and Google webmaster tools. In Part 3 we will look at a number of other considerations which play a role in successful rankings in Google, and also touch on some tactics which are best avoided.

Completing Optimization: Other Considerations

Redirects
If you need to use redirects on your site it is very important to use the correct one. If a page is moving to a new location, or being removed all together, it is very important to have this page redirected to either the new location or the next closest page using a Permanent 301 Redirect.

While rare, if a page is being moved to a new location for a short term, with the intent of it returning to the original location, then and only then, will you want to use a Temporary 302 redirect. For more information please see Redirects: Permanent 301 vs. Temporary 302

Non WWW Redirects
To help eliminate page rank split, and provide your site with a little extra value, implement a non-www redirect. What this redirect will do is change the URL to include the “www” whenever a URL is accessed that does not include it. This can help to consolidate links to the correct page and give your site some additional strength. For more help on Non WWW redirects please see: How to 301 Redirect Non-WWW to WWW URL’s

HTTP Headers
Check your page headers! If you have implemented any form of redirect on your site including mod rewrites, check your HTTP headers. You may be surprised at what you find. Some forms of redirects may use a 302 code where you really want a 301. By checking your headers you can ensure all is well, and troubleshoot problems. On our website we have added our own HTTP Header Checker for your convenience.

Home Page URL
Never have more than one URL for your home page. If your home page is available and displays on more than one URL, then utilize 301 redirects on all but the main URL you want to focus on - in most cases “http://www.domain.com/“. All your links pointing to the home page should direct to the exact same URL otherwise you will split the value of your home page into multiple duplicate URL’s.

Google sees “http://www.domain.com” and “http://www.domain.com/index.html” as different pages, but displaying the same content. This splits the overall value of your home page, and can decrease the chances of rankings. By keeping it consistent with a single URL, you remove this split and retain more of the strength.

In theory having your home page split like this could bring with it duplicate content penalties, however, I have yet to see this actually happen - that said, it is best to avoid the risk all together.

XML Sitemap
XML Sitemaps are great for ensuring that Google and the other engines are able to spider your entire site. While an XML sitemap will not directly impact your search rankings it can help as Google is more likely to see any SEO based changes more quickly, which in turn can have an impact.

Robots.txt
This is the first file all search engines look for every time they visit your site. While placing a blank robots.txt file in your root folder will not help with search rankings, it will help reduce 404 errors appearing in your log files.

It is also highly recommended that if your site utilizes an XML sitemap, to include a call to this sitemap within the Robots.txt file. Simply add the following line to ensure that the major engines (including Google) can find your sitemap:

Sitemap: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml

Potential Blockages
If you are finding that your site is simply not being indexed it is possible that you are blocking the spiders in one way or another.

Start with checking your main site navigation, if you are using Flash or some other fancy form of navigation that could be your problem right there. Next check your HTTP headers to ensure that your home page is returning a 2xx code which indicates that the clients’ request was successfully received. Finally take a look at your Google Webmaster Tools for any noted errors. If you are blocking Google, chances are you will be able to uncover the issue with these steps.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Google, optimize for google

Everybody knows they should be building a list of targeted, responsive subscribers, right? Well, if you didn’t, now you do.

But the fact is, building a list is harder than it used to be. Competition is high, and it seems like everyone is fighting for your subscriber’s attention. What this means is less people will join your list, less people will open your emails, less people will read your email and less people will ACT on your offers. All told, this means less money in your pocket from your email marketing efforts!

This problem hasn’t gone unnoticed. Over the years smart marketers have been offering free reports, free ebooks, videos or other ethical “bribes”. But in my opinion, there is no better method for building a targeted, responsive list than eCourses.

An eCourse is simply a series of emails sent to the subscriber with the goal of teaching them something of value. It is the REASON why a visitor to your site gives you their name and email address. They sign up because they want to learn something you are teaching.

Here are the 4 reasons I believe eCourses are best:

Ecourses Build A Highly Targeted List. This is not, “Sign up for my newsletter and I’ll send you a bunch of emails about anything under the sun”. There is a very specific reason for the eCourse. It is going to teach something about ONE topic. So, when someone subscribes for your eCourse, it is because they are interested in this topic and want to learn more from you.

This targeted list is a huge asset to your online business. You know EXACTLY what the subscriber is interested in. Therefore, you can design your lessons (and offers) to fulfill exactly what they want.

Ecourses Have A Higher Open Rate. Remember, there are other people competing for the attention of your subscriber. After getting people to sign up for your ecourse, getting them to open your email is the second big obstacle you must face. But, since they signed up for your eCourse, they WANT the information you are providing. Therefore, they are waiting for your email lessons. When they receive one, they are much more likely to open it!

More People Will Read Your Ecourse Lessons. Again, your subscribers asked for this information. They want to learn from you. They changed from someone looking for information to someone asking YOU for information. You bet they are going to read your lessons! While other emails go unopened and unread, yours is anxiously awaited and read.

Ecourse Convert Better, Making You More Money. Let’s not fool ourselves, you want to help people, but you also want to make money at the same time. This is why ecourses are perfect. Since your lessons are getting opened and getting read… you get a much higher percentage of people who ACT in response to your lessons. And when they ACT, either by buying your product or buying an affiliate product, you make money. A higher conversion rate means more profits for you!

So, if you want to build a targeted list people who are anxiously awaiting your emails, open them when they arrive, read them from top to bottom and ACT on your offer… eCourses are the way to go. And the great thing is, once you have one of these list building, profit generating courses in place, it runs on autopilot. So, you have plenty of time to create another profitable eCourse!

What’s your first ecourse going to be about?

Edward Lomax is the author of Autopilot Ecourse Cash which teaches you how to create remote control profit streams that work to make you money around the clock. To take one of his free ecourses, visit Big Wealth University.

Tags: Advertising, ecourse, targeted lists

Before discussing the use of social bookmarking as a business tool, we should first have a quick look at the phenomenon and discuss why it has become so popular. By understanding that, then it will become easier to understand potential business uses. The uses outlined here are just that: outlines, since the particular applications to which these sites can be put will be specific to your type of online business.

The original intention of social bookmarking is to enable you to store websites and pages that you have found and want to refer to later, and also to refer them to others that you think might benefit from them or just enjoy visiting them. You can bookmark any type of web content from articles to blogs to videos, and to start doing so you have first to register with one or more social bookmarking sites.

Among the more popular of such services are Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Blink, Furl and StumbleUpon. They are easy to join, and having done so all you have to do to make a bookmark is simply to add a button or chicklet linking to the specific social bookmarking site, and click on it. The URL of the page you are viewing will be added to your bookmarks and you can categorize it by means of tags. Tags are no more than the keywords that you feel best describe the page you are viewing. You can use just the one tag or a number of them.

All of your bookmarks within each site are accessible by clicking on one of the tags in your “tag cloud”, which is basically a list of tags, although it is possible to categorize them in order to make it easier to find bookmarks on specific topics.

So how can you use social bookmarking as a business tool? For a start it is a way to increase the visibility of your blogs, websites and even your affiliate programs, and increased visibility leads to more visitors. Social bookmarking sites can provide you with back-links that will improve your Google PageRank: this in turn can improve your search engine results position. Because they are free you have nothing to lose by using these sites in this way, unless you overdo it and are regarded as a spammer.

Here are the steps needed to use bookmarking sites effectively for your business while avoiding the spamming trap.

Let’s assume that you have registered with a social bookmarking site such as del.icio.us, and are ready to go. The same steps here will apply to the others, and like most other aspects of an online business, best results will be obtained by using as many social bookmarking sites as you can find. Repetition brings best results.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: social bookmarking, Web 2.0

This article is about a client — Fiona Raven. When we started about working on her site about three and a half years ago, we got her to #1 in Google out of about 9 million — for the search ‘book designer’. Since then, we have all gone through several Google updates. Page returns have gone well above 100,000,000 and dropped again; currently they are at 65 million. And through it all, she has sat at #1 with the occasional drop to 2 or 3.

Not surprisingly, I’ve been asked how this works. The essential answer is: do the basics and do them REALLY well.
FIRST, THE INITIAL SITUATION
Usually for a website, one would want to optimize around keyphrases that:
- Have as many searches happening as possible

- With as little competition is possible

- Are as closely focussed on what the company offers as possible.

- Are as close to a possible buying decision as we can get (e. g. black video iPod rather than iPod).
We research all this and try to balance the four factors to go for the best phrases possible. But for Fiona Raven, nothing else really mattered except book designer. So that’s what we focussed on.
You can bet that many (possibly hundreds of thousands, if not millions) of Fiona’s competitors are also optimized (to a greater or lesser extent). And probably a large number of them have much larger budgets than Fiona. So we circle back to the critical question — what is the difference that gives HER the number 1, and has given her #1, 2 or 3 continually for over three and a half years now?
HOW WE GOT THE HIGH RANK
There are no “insider secrets” or “sneaky tricks”. Sneaky tricks, of course, exist, but we don’t use them. They don’t work for long-term success. You’ll know many of these ideas. But have you implemented them yet, and are you implementing them EVERY WEEK?
For high search engine rank AND a powerful, effective website do the following.
1. ADD LOTS of relevant, thematically related content. All else being equal, a 100-page site will greatly outrank a 5-page site. One easy way to do this is to have a library of articles.
2. Don’t just present a bunch of information, craft it as an effective sales process. ARRANGE and EDIT that content to educate, inspire and ethically persuade your readers to do what you want - phone you, sign up for a workshop, whatever that is. To maximize effectiveness, divide the content into CORE and COMPLEMENTARY. For example, on our own site the Core content is just seven pages. This covers the most critical information about what we do and is the primary sales process. Then there are about 150 more pages of Complementary content.
3. Next, HIRE a specialist to optimize your site. This is important. With this Web phenomenon, there’s a prevalent myth of ease — that because the information is accessible means the work is easy. But let’s compare this to some other areas of human endeavor. On the Web, you can easily access all the tax regulations, or every yoga asana, or every mountain-climbing technique. You can have a piano and all the scores of the great composers. But you know that just having any of that information doesn’t mean you can use it at an expert level. It’s actually the same on the Web — please don’t give into that dangerous misconception that knowing a couple of small points about meta-tags will take you to the top of 100,000,000 page returns.
4. KEEP ADDING more content on a regular basis - at least each week. (Most site owners fall down badly on this.)
5. SOLICIT inbound links from thematically related sites - the bigger and more important, the better.
6. KEEP ADDING more links regularly, even if it’s just a few each month.
Fiona Raven did an excellent job of her side of the partnership. She was exceptional in that regard. I provided guidance for what she needed to do, but she did her work - sincerely and thoroughly. Her thorough application to the required work is what did the extra that pushed “very good” into “ridiculously, outrageously good”.
The combination of high ranking plus improved sales effect of the site brought her from having had no contracts for four months to a level of business success where she says, “If he can do for you half of what he did for me, you won’t be able to handle the sales”.
In summary
The “Big Three” factors in gaining search engine ranking are ongoing content addition, ongoing link addition and optimization.
Then edit your site to maximize its effectiveness to educate, inspire and ethically persuade your readers to make that phone call to you or click that “Buy” button.

Author: Michael Linehan has been using the Web since the month it became commercially available, starting with Mosaic 1.0. He combines a love of this technology with an extensive background in marketing and strategic planning to help you focus what you are doing and why, make your site an effective marketing tool and promote it to bring you prospective clients. Michael is the owner of Marketing Alchemy and is based in Victoria, BC, Canada.

Are you sick and tired of hearing about keywords, keyword optimization, keyword stuffing, keyword ratio and more? Why all the hype about keywords? What do they really do for a business?

Keywords are important plain and simple. They are the words customers, potential customers and website visitors might use in a search engine to find your information.

For example, a person researching cell phones might use the following keywords typed into Google, Yahoo, Metacrawler or any number of the available search engines.

- Cell phones - Wireless phones - Cell phone planes - Prepaid cell phone - Best cell phone - Cellphone - Cell phone deals - Cell phone reviews

When choosing keywords for a business the first step is to consider what terms people will use to find you. To accomplish this, a three step approach is often recommended.

1. Brainstorm ideas. Sitting down with a pen and paper to brainstorm keywords may seem silly at first however brainstorming is a successful strategy. The more a person is able to think outside of the box and put themselves in their prospects’ shoes, the more productive the brainstorming exercise will be. Challenge yourself to come up with 50 potential keywords. Remember that people often misspell keywords, like the ‘cellphone’ example used in the list above.

2. Consult with associates, friends and family, current customers. Step two is to start asking around. Ask people what keywords they would use to find information on your business topic. Friends, family and associates are generally the best place to go however if a business has a close relationship with their customers, then asking a few key customers may be beneficial.

3. Research using keyword popularity tools. This third step is where business owners often skip right to. However if you don’t attack a keyword popularity tool with a plan, you can end up with thousands of potential options ‘ a real mess. Instead, take a look at keywords that you are confident in and comfortable with and then use the keyword tools to tell you how often those keywords are used. This will help business owners determine what their primary keywords are and what keywords to use in their content or on secondary website pages.

Here are a few free keyword tools:

a. https://adwords.google.com/select/ Keyword Tool

b. https://www.wordtracker.com/trial/ Free trial

c. inventory.overture.com/

d. http://keywordspy.com Free Trial

That leads us right into a very frequently asked question…where are keywords used? Several places actually…The primary place keywords need to be used is the home page or index page of a business website. This is the page people land on when they come to a website. Maybe it has sales copy, maybe it tells a bit about the company’s products or services, or maybe it offers informational copy. The general rule of thumb is to focus on one or two primary keywords. Place them in the headline, first and last paragraph and then naturally scattered throughout the copy. Keyword stuffing or jamming your copy full of you keywords makes the copy read like a phone book and the search engines don’t like it.

Secondary keywords can be used on subsequent website pages, articles, press releases, press releases, advertisements, blog posts and so on. Using the example from earlier a primary key word might be “cell phone” or “cell phones” and a secondary keyword might be “cell phone reviews”

Keyword hype is justified. They are a direct contributor to a company’s bottom line. Keywords help potential customers find the information, products, and services they’re looking for. They help people find your business. Taking the time to choose the right keywords, the most commonly used keywords, and then setting up your business to highlight those keywords will help drive traffic to your business website. The end result is more traffic and more profits.

Joan Finholt is a retired teacher and loves using the internet. She is co-owner of Bound and Determined books and yes, the domain name spelling is correct.http://www.boundanddetrmined.com

Tags: keyword marketing, SE Optimization