Search:
Site   Web

SiteProNews

SiteProNews

Article Categories





By Enzo F. Cesario in Featured

socialmedia2You’ve heard it before, here and probably elsewhere: Social media is about much more than exposure or coverage. Simply putting a friend request out and amassing a ton of retweets is not enough to achieve genuine social impact.

Now there’s some additional evidence that bears this argument out:

Does Google Use Data from Social Sites in Ranking?

In short, Google officials have said that while the search engine giant does use Facebook and Twitter as part of the input in determining a site’s SEO ranking, it is a very small, low-key part. It’s more of a modifier of other data than it is an actual contributor in and of itself.

But before you go slashing the budget to your social media marketing department, hear out these few issues that explain why this means more attention, not less, should be paid to social media efforts.

It’s Social, not Digital

Despite being in the online realm (insert all the stereotypes about the cold, impersonal Internet here), social media is all about the first word. Social interactions are about relationships, conversations and, above all, respect and trust. Violate a trust or fail to provide respect, and you gain nothing at all. You could even find yourself blackballed as your reputation flies out of control online.

By Paul M Ventura in Featured

search engine rankingsSearch engine traffic is one of the most valuable and targeted sources of traffic because people generally trust web pages which garner one of the top spots in their search engine of choice. It takes a lot of time in link building and building your social search reputation on social networks.

If your search engine traffic disappears overnight, then without being properly diversified in the kinds of traffic you tap, you can find yourself up the creek with no paddle. This is why I preach the importance of traffic diversity.

But why did your ranking suddenly drop? This post will look at 10 of the most common reasons for why your ranking can disappear seemingly out of nowhere.

The Google Honeymoon Ended

If you have a relatively new site which is only a few months old and you found that you were enjoying cushy rankings for much of that time until now, it’s most likely the result of the Google Honeymoon. This is the term for the phenomenon where a new site enjoys high rankings for a short period of time before falling to its more realistic ranking.

Google Sandbox Effect Started

By Nick Stamoulis in Featured

keywordsKeyword research may be the single most important factor contributing to your online marketing and SEO success. The keywords you select will determine who can and can’t see your site for any given search. Incorporating the right keywords into your content helps increase your online brand presence, drives targeted traffic to your site, affects what search phrases your site ranks for and more. Missing out on important keywords, or putting the wrong keywords on the wrong pages, means missing out on potential clients and customers. If your site isn’t ranking for the right keyword, you might as well be invisible online.

Sites need to choose keywords on a page-by-page basis based on two things. First and foremost, you have to choose keywords that accurately reflect the content on the page. Search engines rank individual pages, not sites as a whole. Secondly, you have to choose keywords based on the intent of your target audience. That is where the buying cycle comes into play.

When a searcher is at the beginning of their buying cycle, they are usually in research mode. They’re just “shopping around,” bouncing from site to site to gather information from numerous sources, which they will use to influence their future purchase. For instance, first time parents might spend a couple weeks researching baby cribs for their new nursery. Who are the big crib manufacturers? How much do their cribs cost? What kind of reviews have their products received? What kind of crib is best for newborns? First time parents have a lot of questions, so they turn to friends, family and the search engines for answers. They might use search phrases like “baby crib styles,” “top rated baby cribs, “nursery furniture” or “nursery design ideas” to get them started. These are informational searches.

Depending on the kind of information someone is looking for, they may or may not be looking to make a quick transition from research to buying. For instance, someone scrolling through Yelp reviews, trying to decide where to eat lunch that day is going to make a quick decision. Someone looking to make a big purchase (like cars, electronics, furniture, etc) might spend more time researching their options.

As consumers move through their buying cycle, then tend to search using more long-tail keywords. Instead of searching for “baby crib,” the first time parents search for “portable folding crib bedding set.” These searchers have a better idea of what they are looking for and are searching for a specific thing. They might search for a company or product by name or include buzz words like “buy” or “order” in their search phrase. As consumers near the end of their buying cycle, your chance for converting them goes up. They are looking to make a final decision.

So what does this all have to do with your keyword research?

You have to decide what kind of visitors you want finding your site, and then put yourself in their mindset when conducting your keyword research. How would you search to find your site? No matter where they are in their buying cycle, a visitor to your site has the potential to convert. You want to make sure they land on the right page for where they are.

For instance, let’s say you own a jewelry store and are looking to build up your engagement ring business. Someone at the beginning of their buying cycle might search for “engagement ring styles.” This person isn’t ready to buy yet; they don’t even know what kind of ring they want. However, just because they aren’t ready to buy, that doesn’t mean you don’t want them finding your site. If you can position your site as a one-stop-source where they can get all the information they want AND make a purchase, you have a better chance of getting them to convert.

However, having them land on your homepage doesn’t answer their search. Your homepage shouldn’t be targeting “engagement ring styles,” but “engagement ring store” instead. That better reflects the content of your homepage. Visitors to your site want to find the information they need quickly, otherwise they’ll leave. If your keywords don’t match up with the content, they may feel like they’ve been tricked into visiting your site.

Instead, create a page of content that focuses on “engagement ring styles” and other related keywords; build an engagement ring guide for soon-to-be fiancés. You can talk about stone cuts, setting, band types and so forth. You want to position your company as the expert in engagement ring styles, there to make the process of selecting the perfect ring much easier. To keep that visitor more involved with your site, you can link from the ring guide to various internal pages of engagement rings you sell, so they can see the finished product and possibly convert.

You want your site to include a variety of keywords that will match up with searches no matter where someone is in their buying cycle. Obviously you want to target those at the end of their buying cycle, since they are more likely to convert. But you shouldn’t forget about those just looking for information. You don’t know how quickly they are hoping to make a decision and you have the opportunity to leave a good impression on them. They may bounce around to a few sites, but ultimately settle back on yours because you were the most helpful throughout the whole process.

Nick Stamoulis is a Boston SEO expert and owner of Brick Marketing, a Boston SEO services firm. With over 12 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his SEO knowledge by posting daily updates to his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal, and Publishing the Brick Marketing Newsletter, read by over 140,000 opt-in subscribers.

By Jeff Schuman in Featured

affiliatemktgYou will no doubt make many mistakes in your affiliate marketing career. One thing you do not need is help from your affiliate merchant in adding to that.

I have found over the years that not all affiliate programs are created equal. Surprisingly to me there are many affiliate programs that do not do a very good job of representing their product in a way that will benefit the affiliate marketer the most.

Here are a handful of mistakes I see affiliate programs make. You may want to think twice before joining a program like this.

1. Building the affiliate merchant’s list first. This is become somewhat of a pet peeve of mine as I see affiliate merchants building large lists at the expense of their affiliates.

Most of them will tell you that they will continue to follow up with the subscribers and to promote your affiliate ID number. However, when a new product is launched the merchant is going to contact those affiliates and you are not going to get credit for the sale.

If you are promoting a program that sells a product the emphasis by the merchant should be put on making the sale, not building their list first. Before you join any affiliate program you can take a look at the sales pace to see where that merchant is putting their priorities.

2. Build your own website first. This is a way to avoid the mistake we just read about.

If you are going to promote a product where the merchant wants to build their list, build your list first. The way to do that is to promote your own landing page and have subscribers go into your autoresponder before passing them through to the affiliate sales page.

In reality this is a better approach to doing affiliate marketing anyway. Building an email list is an excellent asset that allows you to make money online in many ways in the future.

3. Greed by the merchant. You can get a pretty good idea how the merchant values their affiliates by how much they are willing to pay.

Some affiliate merchants are greedy. They would prefer to keep more money for themselves. The smart ones do not do this.

They understand that the best affiliate marketers are greedy. If you develop into a super affiliate you can always contact any merchant and negotiate a better rate.

The smart merchants are willing to pay more to both their regular affiliates and super affiliates.

4. Lack of marketing materials. There is no need as an affiliate for you to have an overabundance of affiliate marketing materials.

However, today there are many ways to promote on the Internet. The best affiliate programs will provide banners of various sizes, pre-written email marketing messages, landing pages for you to promote, and videos that can be customized for video marketing.

There really are a lot of excellent affiliate merchants you can join today. Be cautious of the merchant who is making mistakes that can hurt you as an affiliate before joining any program. To make money online with affiliate programs you want to join the right merchants from the start.

If you enjoyed this article by Jeff Schuman please visit his article marketing website today. If you are not an article writer he offers a hands off program for getting backlinks and traffic using the power of writing and submitting articles. http://www.HandsOffArticleMarketing.com

By Resource Nation in Featured

SEO2Your company’s SEO efforts have dropped and you’re site is not getting the traffic you desired. Is it time to panic or search for ways to right the ship?

Countless marketers, I.T. heads, webmasters and more have had to deal with this very issue over time, leading some small business owners to wonder how they can get their site’s traffic flowing smoothly once again.

As many small business owners do or do not understand, page rankings are critical to a company’s site, especially given all the online competition there is to navigate through. Even if your site is managing to attract attention, are you actually turning those visitors into customers?

For those small business owners who need to shake up their company’s SEO efforts, there are several ways to go about it.

They include:

1. Review the site’s copy – There is a fine line between keywords and quality copy. Too many SEO heads focus in on hitting viewers with a ton of keywords, yet the copy itself is average at best. Others may have stellar copy, but it is lacking in the right number and value of keywords. Sit down with the person/s in charge of SEO and review both copy and keywords. Is the copy fresh? Is the copy relevant to your site? Are the keywords properly placed in the copy or haphazardly thrown in? Determine where the problem is and fix it sooner rather than later;

2. Review the SEO budget – How much has your business invested in SEO? It may be time to invest some more funds into the SEO efforts, especially in order to see a better return on your investment. Too many companies panic at first when things are not working, oftentimes described as a knee-jerk reaction;

3. Review your analysis – What’s the sense of having an SEO campaign if you’re not going to analyze the results? Small business owners need to be sure their SEO person and/or department is looking at the numbers on a monthly basis at minimum to see where improvements need to be made. Whether it is Google Analytics or another program, analyze those visitors;

4. Do you blog? – While some experts poo-poo the relevance of blogs on a company site, I have always been a fan of them. If done correctly, the blog can serve as a great mouthpiece for your company. The key to a successful blog is having quality content that is updated on a regular basis. Blogs garner search engine traffic, giving your company an SEO leg up on the competition;

5. Don’t be a repeat offender – One of the sins of an SEO campaign is having too much repeat content out there on the web. The simple fact is search engines do not like repetitive copy, so make it fresh and exclusive.

When you integrate some of these ideas with each specific project, your SEO campaigns stand a much better possibility of gaining traffic and increasing your return on investment.

So, ready to search how to best optimize that engine?

By Rick Berry in Featured

mobile_payLet’s say you’re exceptionally busy, perhaps it’s a Friday with a holiday weekend quickly approaching and you’re the business owner of a boutique-clothing store. Your store is extremely popular and you’re selling the latest and hottest brand of ‘hard to get’ denim jeans and suddenly an employee (usually your best one!) calls in sick with a terrible flu. You’re already down one or two people because of the same influenza outbreak.

This comes on the day you’ve just begun you’re biggest promotion of the year and you’ve got multiple customers milling about and a long impatient line forming at the cash register or point-of-sale. What should be a smashing success could potentially end up as a disaster without the proper handling of paying customers! By making sure that their payments are processed quickly they will leave with a smile on their face!

I recently read about an Old Navy store in Manhattan where a customer made a routine purchase and the transaction was processed on a mobile device. The focus of the article was the emailed receipt and how it was relegating the paper receipt to the rubbish pile along with road maps, newspapers and music CDs.

Although this is new and unique, major retailers such as Whole Foods, Nordstrom, Gap Inc. (which owns Old Navy and Banana Republic), Anthropologie, Patagonia, Sears and Kmart have all begun offering electronic versions of receipts, either emailed or uploaded to websites.

There has been a mad scramble on mobile technology by major retailers going on since 2005, when Apple introduced a mobile POS payment system in each of their 200+ retail stores across the country. The system enables each of the blue-shirted Apple employees to act as a walking point-of-sale; there are no lines at a cash register in Apple stores.

Each clerk carries an iPod, encased with an infrared barcode scanning and payment card-swiping device that scans and identifies the product, accepts the payment card-swipe, then captures a signature on the device and enables the receipt to be emailed, texted or printed in real time.

It is widely known by IT professionals that a mobile POS payment system will increase sales by speeding up check outs and performing ‘line-busting’ at impatient customer check out lines. What might not be such commonplace knowledge is that the time and resources of mainstream retailers may not be needed to replicate Apple’s success.

Time consuming investigations and studies might no longer be necessary to ascertain how to implement the strategy. ABC Mobile Pay has developed an ‘out of the box’ robust mobile POS payment solution that can be customized for added value.

Nordstrom introduced mobile payment acceptance devices in many of their stores this year so roving sales clerks could check out customers on the spot. Nordstrom has seen the opportunity to create a better experience for the customer wherever they are in the store. Say a customer is in a dressing room and they try on a bunch of clothing and they say, ‘I want to buy this and that.’

Instead of having to gather everything up from the dressing room, wrap all of it up at the wrap desk and trudge over to a cash register and stand in line behind other waiting customers, they quickly check out on mobile devices wherever they are on site.

Armed with information obtained from the CRM database such as email addresses and birthdates, special promotional offers can increase revenue significantly by enabling focused marketing efforts, from birthday percentage discount offers to coupons on favorite or best selling items.

The web based administrative system means that all sales traffic from any location can be monitored in real time. The system has features such as inventory control and product look up and availability which saves sales clerks precious time ensuring the customer experience is exemplary.

Rick Berry is Owner/President of ABC Mobile Pay, a registered ISO/MSP. ABC Mobile Pay provides merchant accounts to businesses of all kinds and sizes.

By John Sylvester in Featured

Shortly after President Hosni Mubarak stepped down from power, an activist told CNN that “Facebook was responsible for the success of the Egyptian people’s uprising”. The revolution in Iran was attributed to Facebook, Tunisia to Wikileaks, Egypt to Twitter, and now in Britain, BlackBerry.

At the time of the toppling of the Egyptian government, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron called it a “precious moment of opportunity” to move towards “civilian and democratic rule”. But today it’s the Blackberry smartphones that have won out, with their semi-encrypted messaging system, sending England into revolt, with Cameron scuttling into position, calling it “sickening”.

In the political context, this breakdown of civil order is inescapably based on poor young people of England wanting to take their plight to the streets, to defy the deeply unpopular police force and to damage the property of the rich. In short, to “take back” what they feel has been stolen from them.

A mother whose store was attacked in London described the looters as “feral rats”; not quite the voice of reason that accompanied the Egyptian people’s release from repression. In a BBC interview, two girls, who had been drinking all night on stolen bottles of wine, said in “Showing the rich we do what we want”: “Everyone just wanted to riot so bad…It’s the government’s fault.” When asked why they were then targeting local people and businesses, the girls responded: “It’s the rich people…we want to show the rich people we can do what we want.”

In an Al Jazeera article, one pundit put it: “So there is no single meaning in what is happening in London and elsewhere…We have a major problem with youth unemployment. There have already been cuts in services for young people. State education in poor areas is sometimes shockingly bad. Young people cannot afford adequate private housing and there is a shortage of council-built stock. Economic inequality has reached quite startling levels…”

Mr Cameron, meanwhile denouncing the “mindless violence” of the looters, continues to support a “system of political economy that was as unstable as it was pernicious,” as Al Jazeera put it. And when Cameron talked about preparing to stand up to the City to drive through reforms to break up Britain’s so-called casino banks, he failed, miserably.

However couched, even the best of us should have great difficulty in creating a credible link between global economics and inner-city rioting. As one looter in Clapham Junction, London, suggested, it’s not about the economy as such, he said, “I’m just getting my taxes back.” But as appealing as it is to dig out the root cause of it all, comments from the rioters have been incomprehensibly feeble, trite and vengeful.

And while writers of all political hues point the finger of blame towards “social media channels for inciting and spreading violence”, others believe it’s overarching police violence, racial conflict, ethnic tensions, social disadvantage and the failure of government to deliver appropriate services for the hopelessness of youth with nothing to look forward to, while still others blame the bankers and the politicians for an alleged theft they were left to service. No one, it seems, can make any real sense of what’s happened.

Just looking through some of the comments on Twitter for the hashtag #londonriots, some were enlightening. Lulu Rose thought: “The Youth of the Middle East rise up for basic freedoms. The Youth of London rise up for a HD ready 42″ Plasma TV.” While Aaron Peters thought: “Britons chose to be consumers over being citizens. This isn’t anarchy, this is the consumer society without the means.” More comically, Allison & Busby, writing for Waterstone’s bookstore, noted: “We’ll stay open. If they steal some books they might learn something,” while Declan Fay rallied with: “They’re blaming mobile phones for the #londonriots. Clearly they weren’t with Vodafone or the riots would’ve suddenly stopped after 1 minute.”

But these youths who are said to lack opportunity, some from their own making and inadequacy one must conclude, are angry at “the system” and have organised themselves using social media. But while the pro-democracy demonstrators of the “Arab Spring” marched in the hope of positive change and a better life, Britain’s violence has been positively narcissistic and nihilistic, focusing narrowly on arson and looting and are only too ready to cock a snook at the rich, by whatever means they feel able.

But whether this disenchantment is about today’s youth that don’t really care, the dynamics of social change is now powered by the rise of social media, a platform that allows immediate social organisation that governments are powerless to mitigate or regulate.

In the Maghreb, the riots were about escalating food prices, which turned into anger at the authorities. But in Britain, with its latent social problems, compounded by a perceived cover-up of a police shooting, is an altogether a different kind of revolution.

As John Bassett, a former senior official at the British signals intelligence agency GCHQ and now a senior fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute, put it: “It does look as though social media is changing the balance of power between the state and the individual, whether that is manifested as regime change in Cairo or looting in Tottenham.”

In Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy, countries that are suffering from a sovereign debt crisis, governments are struggling to placate market demands and delivering austerity. And in Britain and elsewhere, it’s been young people who have been at the vanguard of protest.

But if social media really is going to be the panacea to society’s feeling of loss and lack of future, the people using it should also offer a platform of hope and engagement rather than co-opting to fight bland consumerism and materialism for their own sakes.

Until that time, the politicians, the police and the rich should brace themselves for the onslaught of social unrest as the angry poor have discovered they can steal Blackberrys and organise anti-social events in great numbers.

In a bygone age, the English revolutionary would have been considered it most uncivilised to stage a riot, except of course at Lord’s cricket ground when an umpire declared “rain stop play”, followed by crustless cucumber and cress sandwiches being hurled at him in an undignified pique of rage.

To be taken seriously, Britain’s counter-culture of hedonistic impulses seem to have evolved into little more than a new set of dumb leisure pursuits that engage in social media as a means to satisfy a silent, dirigible “revolution” of dispossession. Yet as the second wave of recession arrived, Britain is being stifled once again by coordinated, counter-intuitive rebelliousness against those that meet the shaky criteria of solvency.

From the recent reports on Britain’s riots, it seems that the dispossessed aim to get what they want by burning and looting as some kind of parlour game. But just maybe the riots are really a token gesture against a growing police state and perceived institutionalised theft that is viewed as so objectionable.

The “rich” in this context, both political and economic, have once too often been found colluding with each other to get their paws in honey jar, then acquitting themselves and absolved of all wrongdoing, while at the same time having the cheek to demand that the poor finance and forgive the corruption of excess.

—-

V9 Design and Build (http://www.v9designbuild.com) produce web design services in Bangkok, Thailand, including eCommerce and social media.

By David Jackson in Featured

seomozFor a while now, I’ve been thinking about interviewing top online marketers as an entertaining way of changing things up with my articles – but also to share with you different viewpoints, opinions and levels of expertise. Anyway, this is my first attempt in what I hope to be a regular series of interviews with top marketers (we’ll see how it goes). So without further ado, it is my pleasure to bring to you my interview with highly-respected SEO expert, Rand Fishkin. For those of you who don’t know who Rand Fishkin is. Here’s a brief bio:

Rand Fishkin is the CEO & Co-Founder of the web’s most popular SEO Software provider; SEOmoz. He co-authored The Art of SEO from O’Reilly Media and was named to the 40 Under 40 List and 30 Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs Under 30.

Rand has been written about in The Seattle Times, Newsweek and PC World among others and keynoted conferences on search around the world. He’s particularly passionate about the SEOmoz blog, read by tens of thousands of search professionals each day.

David Jackson: How are you today, Rand?

Rand Fishkin: Not bad. Busy as always, but at least I’m home in Seattle (a rare event indeed!)

David Jackson: Thank you for taking the time to do this interview.

Rand Fishkin: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

David Jackson: Rand, how has SEO changed since you started your SEO business way back in 2002?

By David Jackson in Featured

BrandingHave you ever tried to hammer a nail with the heel of your shoe? I did once, when I was a kid and didn’t have a hammer handy. It can be done, but I can assure you, it’s difficult – very, very difficult. So too is trying to build a business without branding yourself.

So, what exactly is personal branding?

In essence, personal branding is the process by which business people differentiate themselves by identifying and effectively articulating what makes them different or unique from their competitors – what makes them stand out from the crowd – a sort of personal USP (Unique Selling Proposition), if you will. This is especially important if you’re a service provider in a competitive field.

Why is personal branding so important?

Because if you don’t stand out from the crowd, that means you’re just like everyone else – a white jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. And if you’re just like everyone else, why should customers or clients choose you over your competitors? Answer: They shouldn’t, and they probably won’t!

Using myself as a real-life example, let me illustrate the importance of personal branding, and how it can make you stand out in a crowded field.

My name, “David Jackson” is a relatively common name. To make matters worse, there are many other David Jackson’s with business websites who have been online a lot longer than I have and are far more established.

But if you type “david jackson marketing” into Google without the quotation marks, I rank at the #1 position out of nearly 3 million pages. And if you just type in the name “david jackson” without the quotation marks. I rank #4 out of over 42 million pages. That didn’t happen by accident. That happened because I was relentless in establishing my personal brand.

When I created my website 3 years ago, my #1 objective was to have people associate my name with marketing – consistently solid marketing advice and quality marketing articles. And I was relentless in pursing that objective. Mission accomplished, but I’m not resting on my laurels.

Today, I’m just as relentless in trying to hold on to my top Google ranking. The numerous published articles on my site, as well as top authority sites keeps me highly visible, as well as provide the search engine spiders with plenty of fresh, quality, relevant nourishment.

And what are the overall results of all my hard work? Well, because of my personal branding efforts, I’m so busy with my consulting business, I’m actually turning clients away. Such is the power of personal branding and relentless execution.

Following are 5 profitable reasons why you should establish your personal brand:

1. Gain Expert Status

Without branding yourself, people will not perceive you as an expert. You will simply be another carnival barker in a sea full of carnival barkers. Branding yourself will give you expert status (provided, of course, you really are an expert) – and a much bigger megaphone.

2. Credibility and Trust

With the advent of the Internet and the world-wide dominance of Google, nowadays, as a business person, you are pretty much your Google search results. Let’s face it, any responsible person considering doing business with you is going to do their due diligence and search for information about you online to see if you’re legitimate and trustworthy. And if they can’t find you, or have a hard time finding you in Google’s universe, guess who’s going to get their business?

That’s right, if your competitors are more visible than you are in the search results, the perception will be, they’re more professional and trustworthy than you are. That means they’re going to get the business you could be getting. The best way to prevent that from happening is to effectively establish your personal brand – stand out in the crowd.

3. Gain An Edge On Your Competition

Earlier, I described personal branding as “the process by which business people differentiate themselves by identifying and effectively articulating what makes them different or unique from their competitors – what makes them stand out from the crowd – sort of a personal USP (Unique Selling Proposition).”

I also said, “If you don’t stand out from the crowd, that means you’re just like everyone else – a white jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. And if you’re just like everyone else, why should customers or clients choose you over your competitors?”

Well, by effectively establishing your personal brand, you automatically become a black jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. You stand out!

4. Increase Your Value

Establishing your personal brand will increase your perceived value and give you the ability to charge higher fees – provided, of course, you’re good at what you do. This will automatically increase your income. And if you are really good at what you do and your clients are satisfied, they will refer you to other clients. Higher fees, satisfied clients and referrals…This personal branding thing is sounding better all the time, isn’t it?

5. Gain Confidence

As you become more and more successful because of your personal branding efforts, you will also become more confident. This confidence will be obvious to everyone who comes into contact with you, including potential clients who will be magnetically attracted to you because of your confidence.

In closing, I didn’t write this article to teach you “how” to brand yourself. I wrote it to educate you on “why” you should brand yourself. If you want to learn how to brand yourself, there are personal branding experts far more qualified than I who can teach you about personal branding. One of the absolute best is Dan Schwabel (PersonalBrandingBlog.com).

There are also some excellent books on the subject. Two of my favorites are You Are a Brand!: How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success by Catherine Kaputa and The 10Ks of Personal Branding: Create a Better You by Kaplan Mobray.

David Jackson is a marketing consultant and the owner of Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com – Powerful, free marketing tips to help grow your business! http://free-marketing-tips-blog.com

By Stephen Monday in Featured

copywritingWhen you get a visitor to land on your sales page, what should be the first thing they find? They should find beneficial, helpful content, which is most relevant to the keywords they entered into the search engine.

If they find otherwise; they feel like they have landed on the wrong page, and will not hesitate to click away. The sales copy should first address their needs and wants, as well as appeal to their core emotional values.

These “core emotional values,” are simply their natural appeal towards the product or service they are interested in. Say they are interested in planting a garden (or having one planted) they have entered keywords that will take them to a service page such as; “having a garden planted.” They expect to find sales copy, which targets that service. They expect direct benefit -oriented copy that advises them on the how much and the specific of the services.

Most people “scan copy,” without actually reading the whole page – unless it truly “strikes a chord,” with them.

To get the most from your sales copy; it should be easily scanned for benefits. Strong headlines, that convey obvious benefits are a must. Bullets, and sub-heads that are specific help them to know they are in the right place to “get” what they are looking for.

When they can quickly find the “what is in it for me,” about the subject of their interest, they feel compelled to “keep reading.” When their interest is really peaked – they will take in every word with enthusiasm.

“This is what most writers call the “hook.” It can be a whole short paragraph, or several sentences. Whichever works, it is essential to keep a high level of interest from your visitors.

If their level of interest drops off, it is because the copy starts to “ramble, get off subject, or stop making “good sense.”

What is it in the copy that is the real “selling point?” It is the “whole page” that does the collective work of “selling.”

It always starts with a great headline, a great lead, very quick and specific benefits that “speak to the reader’s interests.”

There is no such thing as a sales page that is “too good.” Every great sales page contains the same basic elements. There are a thousand different ways to make a great point.

Once the copy grabs the visitors interest, they will begin to seek every single benefit that appealed them to the subject in the first place.

When they find them in the order that “hits a nerve,” the copy evokes a positive response.

A great sales page should actually let the reader “sell themselves.: People do not like to get the feeling that they are “being sold.” Hyped-up sales copy that sounds like the average “used car sales man,” is a quick turn-off to buyers.

They want to make a solid connection, get specific information or results. People do not like to feel as though the writer has “wasted their time.”

They actually resent having “lost 30 seconds of their life” by reading poorly thought-out copy. Get their attention, get to the point they are looking for, appeal to their emotions, show them you have what they want or need (instead of “telling them”) and they will sell themselves.

This is a system that needs no “tweaking.” It works. Stick with this kind of sales copy, and watch your bottom-line dollar profits soar.

Do you need a better sales page for your Website?

You be the judge.

Professional Web Copywriter, Creative Writer, Saleswriter See Copywriting site: www.AAAWebcopyservices.com

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Subscribe to SiteProNews Articles

Receive New Articles As They are Posted


Webmaster Headlines

Apple's stingy employee discount

iOS and OS X: Time for Some Real Convergence

Anonymous Strikes: Symantec Says Stop Using pcAnywhere

Google+ Is Now Open To Teens, Offers New Safety Features

SOPA's Big Brother Signed By EU Nations Amid Widespread Protests

Why Your Business Needs to Be on Google+ Now

5 Simple Ways to Explore Your Social Media Following

5 Basic SEO Troubleshooting Tips for Content Marketers

The Glee Guide to Attracting a Raving Horde of Social Media Fans

10 Clever Ways Your Email Signature Can Support Your Marketing

Recent SiteProNews Articles

RecentSiteProNews Articles

Write Current Content and Explode Your SEO – A SPN Exclusive Article

Best Free Business Cloud Apps You Probably Haven’t Heard Of

Has Google Replaced Content as King of the Web?

SEO Short Cheat Sheets

Beef Up Your Internet Marketing and Your Body At The Same Time!

Optimizing Your Business Facebook Page for Maximum Hits and Return Visits – A SPN Exclusive Article

SiteProNews Blog News

Google Celebrates Art Clokey’s Birthday
Not many people will recognize the name Art Clokey. But a lot more people will recognize the green c...
more >

Reader Rescue : Should My Meta Description Tags Just Duplicate My Title Tags?
Hi Everyone From early days learning SEO, I went ahead and did all my meta descriptions with a bi...
more >

Death of Steve Jobs Fails to Break Twitter Record
We all heard the sad news yesterday that Steve Jobs, founder and visionary at Apple, had died at...
more >

Recommended Links


   Get Facebook Fans

   Submit Express - SEO Services

Wordpress 3.3.1