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By Terri Seymour in Featured

articlewriting 2If you are an online business owner and are not yet active in article marketing, you need to get started as soon as possible.

Why write articles?

Article writing and marketing is one of the most powerful ways to boost your traffic and sales. Articles will build your reputation and credibility. Articles will allow you to make more contacts and establish more connections. Articles will improve your ranking and bring you more traffic. Articles will improve your online presence. Article marketing is free!

Writing an article is not as hard as most people think. You are not writing a dissertation but a simple and informative article.

Below are ten steps to help you write a more successful article.

Step 1: The Title

Be sure you choose a title that will grab people’s attention and catch their interest. Most people will decide to read an article or not just by the title. Be specific in what your article is about.

For example: How to Grow Vegetables vs. 5 Ways to Healthier More Delicious Vegetables

Which article would you read? I know I would read the second one.

Step 2: Topic of Interest

Be sure to choose topics that people will want to know about. Do some research to see what questions people are asking. Visit forums, groups, social sites and see what needs to be addressed. See what the buzz is about and write your article accordingly.

Step 3: Easy to Understand

There is no need to write a college dissertation. Use short, easy to understand sentences. Use 5th grade level words to be sure everyone who reads your article will understand what you are talking about.

Step 4: Easy to Read

Going along with the short easy to understand sentences, keep your paragraphs short but informative. Leave plenty of white space so reading your article is not hard on the eyes.

Step 5: Relevant Keywords

Research keywords when writing your article. Try to use some of the most popular search phrases that deal with your article subject. A good program to use is Google’s keyword search tool. But once you find the relevant keywords be sure not to overstuff your article with them. If you use them too many times your article will be too repetitive and will not do well in the search engines.

Step 6: Writing

When writing your article, write it as if you were explaining it to a friend. Don’t make it sound like a seminar or lecture. Add personal experiences when possible so your readers can identify with you and feel a bond and/or connection. Let your personality shine through and write from your heart!

Step 7: Lists

If you are including any kind of list in your article, be sure to write it in a bulleted or numbered list style. This will attract the reader’s eye and increase the chances of it being read through.

Step 8: Article Body

The first paragraph should be an introduction to what type of information your article will contain. Use it as a lead-in to the main body of the article. When writing the main body, be sure your writing flows from point to point and doesn’t jump around aimlessly. The last paragraph should sum up what the article meant and what points were made.

Step 9: Proofread

This step cannot be stressed enough. Read over your article several times to be sure all spelling, punctuation and grammar is correct. Things can be missed in just one or two goings over so do it several times to be sure.

Step 10: Resource Box

Your resource box is very important so you want it to be effective in getting people to click on your link and take you up on whatever you offer. Don’t try to sell anything in your resource box. Offer something free if possible.

For example:

John Doe is an expert in the SEO field. He can help you get your site to the top of the search engines. Click here to get his free step by step report.

Article writing is not as intimidating as it sounds. You do not need to know big fancy words. You do not have to be a scholar and you do not have to be a professional author to write a quality article with helpful information.

Don’t be one of the 95% of people who fail at their online business. Terri Seymour can help you make money online. Find out how to increase your traffic and sales with her popular “How to Build Your Online Business” ebook for FREE at: ==> http://www.SeymourProducts.com

By Robert Middleton in Featured

Website PromotionEver go to a web site and find that after poking around a few pages you just click off and go to another site? Of course. It happens millions of times a day on the web. Why? Good question!

If you can’t get people to stick around your site and eventually contact you, your website is just taking up cyberspace.

What does a results-producing website need? Let’s start with quality design, clear formatting and substantial content on every page. And you need to answer the “What’s in it for me?” question every step of the way. But that’s just the beginning.

Even sites that have all the bases covered often miss the key to turning visitors into clients. It’s the difference between a website that “just sits there” and one that gets a prospect to give you a call or send an email saying, “Can you help me?”

And that big key is called the “Call-to-Action.” And you don’t just use it once, but over and over throughout your site. Here are some important calls-to-action that you can easily add to your site:

1. At the bottom of every page tell people where to go next.

Then include a link that points there. If you don’t, your visitors will scratch their heads thinking, “Where do I go next?” and then scroll up to the navigation bar to figure it out. Don’t make them think. Make it obvious where they should go next.

Your directions might say something like: “Now that you have a better idea of the kind of clients we work with, click here to learn about the results you can expect to receive from our services.”

2. A “Contact us” link, also at the bottom of every page.

Who knows when the inspiration will strike to contact you? Have you ever been on a website and wanted to contact the company but couldn’t find an email address or a phone number? Bye, bye business. And make that Contact Us page more than a phone number, email and address. Tell them what will happen when they contact you. Make it easy to do business with you.

3. A response form at the bottom of every services page.

Take an extra step here. Insert a small form that they can fill out to request even more information about that service. Get their name, email, company name and the answers to a few questions about their needs. Yes, people do fill out these forms. But keep them simple!

4. Have them do something that will get them involved.

This is the psychology behind the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. It would be easier to just have people mail back the form. But they found that the more involvement, the better the response. You might try a survey of some kind.

5. Have prospects apply to be your client.

When I promote my high-end groups I decided instead of a “payment link” at the end of the description of the groups, to put in an application form. This way I can screen applicants, since I don’t accept everyone. Then I send an acceptance email to those I feel will get the most from the group with a payment link. The conversion rate is still very high. When I accepted individual clients, I used a similar application form.

6. Capture their name and email address.

This is really the number one purpose of a website. Offer a pithy article or report, plus an email newsletter (in that order) in exchange for their contact information. Once you have them on your eZine list, the marketing really starts. I call it “keep-in-touch marketing.”

7. Offer ongoing calls-to-action in your eZine.

I generate much more business from the eZine than from new visitors to the website. Think of the web as the place where you introduce yourself to your prospects. And think of the eZine as the place they get to know you. Then invite them to explore your services in more depth (by sending them back to the website). Now go back to your site and start inserting all these calls-to-action. I promise you’ll start getting better results!

The More Clients Bottom Line: Every single marketing activity needs to include a call-to-action. But the website is a “call-to-action machine” that moves people step-by-step through the marketing process. And this is true marketing leverage, because you don’t even have to be there to do it.

Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing has been helping Independent Professionals attract more clients since 1984. Robert is the author of the online bestsellers, the InfoGuru Marketing Manual and the WebSite ToolKit. Robert’s site is a great resource for any self-employed professional. Get Robert’s free report, “The 5 Key Strategies to Attracting More High-End Clients.” http://actionplan.com

By Titus Hoskins in Featured

spn_exclusiveIt’s been an extremely busy year for the good folks at Google, not only did they roll out the game-changing Panda Updates, but now they have increased the stakes by implementing Google Fresh. This recent algorithm update is based on the Caffeine architecture introduced by Google a year ago and supposedly makes Google’s listings much fresher.

On the Official Google Blog where this new Update was announced, Amit Singhal states:

“We completed our Caffeine web indexing system last year, which allows us to crawl and index the web for fresh content quickly on an enormous scale. Building upon the momentum from Caffeine, today we’re making a significant improvement to our ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness.”

However, in an update, Singhal explains this measurement of 35% only applies to where at least one result was affected by the changes. In reality, this update only “noticeably” impacts 6 to 10% of searches.

“Update 11/7/11: To clarify, when we say this algorithm impacted 35% of searches, we mean at least one result on the page was affected, as opposed to when we’ve said noticeably impacted in the past, which means changes that are significant enough that an average user would notice. Using that same scale, this change noticeably impacts 6 – 10% of searches, depending on the language and domain you’re searching on.”

By Jan Kearney in Featured

businessWhen you think about online visibility for your local business it’s so easy to get wrapped up and overloaded with what you should be doing on the internet to promote your website. Yet, small changes to your every day business routine can make a big difference.

Often, business owners think about being visible online as a way of reaching people whom you have had no contact with at all. That’s true in many cases. Sometimes, online visibility is as simple as making sure that people you interact with (even briefly) as part of your usual business routines are aware of your online presence.

Not everyone wants to pick up the phone or call in to your premises to find out basic information like your opening hours or who to contact. Sometimes people just want to find out a bit more about you and your company.

In this day and age of always being plugged in to the Internet, your website is the first point of call. That is especially true outside of usual business hours. Make it easy for those brief contacts to find you, don’t make them search when they don’t need to!

5 Simple Offline to Online Visibility Tips

1. Your Business Card

Obvious isn’t it? Well maybe not. I have a mountain of business cards that have little more than an address, phone and email on them. Why force people’s hands and make them search for more information about you? Give them your online details upfront and include:

* Your website address.
* Your active social media profiles such as LinkedIn, FaceBook page and Twitter.
* Why not try a QR Code?

QR Codes can be as simple as a vCard with all your contact details, including your address, phone, email and website to store directly on the phone. You can also redirect to your website, Facebook Page or even Google Places review page. The possibilities are almost endless.

2. Your Business Stationery

Invoices, receipts, compliment slips, info leaflets, headed notepaper… How many of these have your online details displayed? Again, do not just include your email address, but also your website and active social profiles too.

3. Your Vehicle

You may not have the budget for a full designed vehicle wrap, but you can put your details on a decal or sunscreen strip.

4. Print Ads

Whether it’s the local paper or Yellow Pages, always include your online details when you advertise. Make it effective by giving people a reason to visit your website – and capture their email address in return for your offer!

5. Promotional Gifts

We’ve all done it at some point – trade shows, seminars, demonstration or open days give out what seems to be a ton of pens, badges, balloons, key rings, mugs – the whole she-bang all nicely printed with a business name. Make them work harder for you and at least include your website address too.

The great thing about directing people back to your website is it can be easily tracked when you implement it correctly. You’ll get a good picture of where people have come from, what works and what doesn’t.

Before you place the order to re-print your stationery or ads, think “online visibility” – your website is open 24/7 waiting for that 2am inspirational or emergency visit.

Want to know more about getting the word out about your local business online? Help yourself to my “Getting Started Online” guides – they’re free => http://www.mylocalbusinessonline.co.uk/started-online

Jan Kearney specializes in helping local businesses take advantage of the worldwide web to grow their business. You are invited to read Jan’s blog at http://www.mylocalbusinessonline.co.uk

By Hannah Du Plessis in Featured

emailmktgOne of the main reasons small businesses fail is that they don’t follow up with their leads. Usually it takes up to seven contacts with a prospect before they are ready to buy. Most people give up after one or two contacts. If you are not doing your follow up you, are leaving money on the table. Staying in touch with your prospects builds trust and keeps you fresh in their minds so that when they are ready to buy, they’ll come to you.

Email marketing is a great, inexpensive way to keep in contact with the people on your list and to form and nurture a relationship with them. If you do this correctly, you will get more business than the Average Joe and you will not have to do anything else to get clients to buy. It is therefore important to set this up correctly. Once you have done this, you can pretty much just leave it. Then you can concentrate on building traffic to your website because the system to capture leads and nurture the relationship with them is done for you automatically.

Here are a couple of ways you can improve your email marketing:

First, you have to worry about your prospects opening your emails. If you are not yet tracking your email open rates, you need to start doing so straight away. You need a good email marketing provider like Aweber (or mailchimp if you are in New Zealand). Not using a provider will give you too much work, as well as the possibility of you getting banned by your Internet Service Provider for sending bulk mail. Bulk mail just ends up in the spam folder just because it is bulk mail.

Once you have a provider, you can then set up your emails, set the frequency that they are sent as well as track the click through rates, open rates and bounce rates. You then have something to work from.

Once you have this information you’ll want to improve your messages so that it doesn’t happen again. Here are some reasons why your emails may not get through to your prospects’ inbox:

Spam Words

Some words are triggers for the spam filter. These include: “special offer, free, discount, cheap, home business, %, work-from-home, limited time, click here, coupon”. The chance that your prospects are getting your emails if these words are present are slim. Spam filters are becoming more sophisticated, and your email can be removed before it even hits the inbox. A good email marketing provider like AWeber will be able to pick up if you have any spam words in your messages, and will alert you before you send them.

Subject Lines

The next thing you need to worry about is getting your readers to open your email. This should not be a problem if they signed up because they want to read what you have to say. However, if you have a boring headline they may want to skip reading it because they have many other emails or they are busy. Make sure they know it is from you, and have a proactive title so that they want to open it. If your emails are interesting, and give them more information related to the reason they signed up in the first place, they should look forward to it, and open it. Avoid subject lines that are full of hype or make outrageous claims. If it sounds unbelievable, you will lose credibility with your prospect. Make sure your subject lines are real, convincing and a bit mysterious.

You need to put your name or your company name in the “from” field so that the prospect recognizes you. “Noreply” or “Systems” addresses are less likely to be opened.

Make Sure You Send Relevant, Interesting And Valuable Content

Make sure that the content of your email is valuable. When I sign up for something because I am interested in it and then get an email that says nothing or wastes my time, I unsubscribe on the spot. Most people will do the same. Make sure you deliver on the promise you gave when they signed up.

You should only send your emails to those who asked for it. Don’t use lists from somewhere else that you bought or lists that are out dated. This will just invite complaints.

Make sure your emails are interesting. Don’t copy from somewhere, be yourself. You should know how you are different from your competition. This will ensure that you stand out from the crowd.

Your content should guide your customers toward a sale. Every email you write should help your prospect get answers to their problems, clarify their misconceptions on the subject, climb over stumbling blocks they may encounter, and help them arrive at your product or service, ready to buy. I use again the example of the nutritionist who uses a different illness in every email, usually related to the digestive system. She describes it in graphic detail so that you feel with the sufferer. Then she offers her special diet as a solution. In every email she also has a testimonial from someone who used to suffer this illness, but is now cured thanks to the diet. This is powerful stuff. Think of how you can offer your prospect a solution to their problem. Find all the problems, misconceptions, stumbling blocks and objections they may have and solve them one by one.

Frequency

If you send out emails daily, you will be seen as a severe nuisance before long. This will get your messages deleted or result in unsubscribes. On the other hand, waiting too long between emails will make your prospects forget you. I send one email per week with good content. This ensures a list that looks forward to my emails. The only way to know for sure would be to ask your prospects. Take a survey and find out.

Adhering to these guidelines will ensure successful email marketing. Once this system is in place, you can concentrate on building traffic to your website.

Article by Hannah Du Plessis. For more information on setting up a Lead Generation System for your Business visit Attraction Marketing today. http://masterattractionmarketing.net

By Donna Gunter in Featured

business1The old adage, “Don’t put all of your eggs into one basket,” is especially true in today’s economic climate for any business. Just as you would never let all of your income be derived from one or two clients, creating a diversified business where you have multiple streams of income is the key to success with an online service business. If one income stream tapers off for a time, you are adequately covered by the others. I have been doing this very successfully in my business for the last 8 years.

Where things become confusing for your prospective clients is if you have income streams that are all over the map and serve different target markets, like a career coach who buys, renovates, and flips homes on the side. It’s quite challenging to run a business like this because you’re actually running two different businesses in this example and the streams don’t relate well to each other at all. I recently experienced a situation where a career coach I’ve been following emailed his list about real estate development, which really annoyed me. I’m not interested in real estate development, nor do I expect to hear from that person on that topic.

The easiest way to create multiple streams of revenue in a service business is to create off-shoots of what you’re already doing serving the same target market in your core business. This has been referred to as “going deep” with your customers and providing them with additional products and services rather than “going wide” into other markets. In this way, you can create a great client transition process that would provide multiple ways to serve the same clients. Believe me, it’s easier to continue to sell to people who’ve already purchased from you than to try and cultivate new clients.

Here are 6 quick ways to stabilize your business with multiple streams of income:

1. Consulting/Coaching. Can you work with clients in a more in-depth fashion than you do currently? If so, you may want to add consulting or coaching to your income stream mix. Or, if you can help colleagues in the same industry grow their businesses, coaching or consulting in your own industry may provide the additional revenue stream you have been seeking.

2. Done for You Services. If you’re a coach or a consultant, adding done-for-you-services are a great option for members of your target market who don’t want any part of doing something themselves. So, if you’re a career coach who routinely helps clients polish their resumes, perhaps you could add a done-for-you resume service where you create a polished resume for your clients.

3. Affiliate Marketing. I love making money from recommending products and services that I already use in my business. This is an easy sale for me, as I’m an affiliate only for products and services that I have used or that have come highly recommended from a colleague that I respect. There’s nothing sweeter than getting my monthly PayPal notifications of payments from various affiliate
programs to which I belong.

4. Membership/Continuity programs. If you have a great deal of content lying around in your hard drive, a membership site or continuity program may be in your future. This is an effective way to create a recurring stream of income in your business.

5. Teaching/Training/Speaking. Are others interested in learning the “how-to” of what you do? Then adding teaching, training, or speaking to your revenue stream in the form of teleclasses, live events, or webinars will add a healthy income stream to your business.

6. Information Products. Whether you have developed your own or sell PLR (Private Label Rights) products, the sale of information products can be a lucrative revenue addition to your business. Developing products that are sold at different price points serve as a reasonable price alternative to help your target market solve a problem if they aren’t able to hire you for 1:1 assistance.

Take some time to determine how you can “go deep” with your target market and add additional revenue streams that complement what you’re already doing. You’ll soon discover a sense of relief to have the extra income should circumstances cause your income to drop in another part of your business.

Article by Donna Gunter. Discover other unique ways to stop the client chase and create an online service business drives traffic to your
web site with free instant access to this ebook, Turbocharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, at ==> http://www.TurbochargeYourOnlineMarketing.com

You’ll get 7 proven internet marketing strategies that
separate the top 1% of online businesses from the rest.

From Donna Gunter, the Internet Marketing Coach for
Introverts

By Trey McMartin in Featured

SEO-TipsMore than once in the six years that I have been providing SEO services for websites, I have had the opportunity to discuss with individual business owners their search engine optimization needs.

Now and again, I run across an individual business owner who is quick to say that SEO is absolutely worthless. When confronted with such an absolute statement, I like to press for details.

It has been my experience that people who speak in negative absolutes will have a horror story to share.

In this article, I am going to detail some of the stories I’ve heard, which frequently tells more about some of the people in our industry, than it does about the effectiveness of search engine marketing.

Problem Number 1 – “I rank number one in Google, and yet, I have never earned a dime from my website…”

When I first heard this story, I was very surprised. After all, if your SEO company did good keyword research, there is no reason why you should not be getting traffic and a few sales from a top ranking in Google.

I pressed for more details. I learned that the company who built the website also did the search engine optimization.

It only took a couple of minutes to learn that the website design company optimized this fellow’s website for the name of his company. There was no other optimization performed on that website.

Lesson 1 – It is rather pointless to optimize a website for the name of the company. The only consumers who will be searching for the name of your company are existing customers.

But, if your company is unknown to the general public, then the people who would like to buy your products or services will not be able to find you among your competitors.

If you sell widgets in Tulsa Oklahoma, your future customers will be typing “Tulsa Oklahoma widgets” into their favorite search engines, trying to find your business. And if your prospective customers cannot find your business, your business does not exist in their minds.

Problem #2 – “I had a company build a website for my business, but I have never received a single customer for my business, through my website…”

Are you sure?

Asking this question is not meant to offend you, but rather to get more details as to how you track incoming business.

If you are the average off-line business owner, who has built a website to promote an off-line business, chances are real good that you probably have never received a single customer from your website.

However, if your website does not request your prospective customers to let you know how they found out about your business, then chances are that people who did find you through your website would never tell you that.

If more than one person answers the phone at your business, chances are just as good that someone may have mentioned finding you on a website, but no one conveyed that information to you.

In your business, you should have systems in place to track and record where new customers have found your business. To do otherwise is like driving your car in the fast lane during rush-hour traffic with a blindfold over your eyes.

Lesson 2 – If you are not asking your customers how they found your business, you will never know what kind of advertising is producing profits for your business, and which advertising is sucking the wind out of your business.

Problem #3 – “I spend a great deal of money on PPC listings (pay-per-click) to get my business in front of search engine
users, because after spending tens of thousands of dollars on SEO, I could not rank in the search engines at all…”

What keywords were you trying to rank for in the search engines?

“Travel. I have a travel business based in Oklahoma City OK that caters to business professionals…”

Have you ever noticed the caliber of companies who rank on page 1 in Google for the keyword: travel?

Those are companies who spend millions of dollars per year to market their businesses online and off-line. Do you have a marketing budget that will allow you to effectively compete with Travelocity, Expedia or Priceline?

Besides that, where do the majority of your customers work and reside?

“Oklahoma City of course.”

If that is the case, why would you spend your limited marketing budget to target consumers who would never buy from you, because they are outside your local marketing area?

“I never really thought about it in that way…”

Most of your competitors are making the same mistakes that you are. That is to your advantage, because when you start to market your business in a more realistic and cost-effective manner, then you will be able to compete with your competitors, while spending far less money than your competitors are spending.

Lesson 3 - If you operate a local or regional business, do yourself a favor, and stop trying to compete in the national marketplace.

Final Thoughts…

Listed inside this article are three lessons that could potentially help your off-line business to find new customers and to generate new sales, as a result of your online advertising.

Depending on the average ticket price of purchases in your store or service business, how much could an extra 20, 50 or 100 new customers bring into your business each month? You do the math.

You could spend the next ten years learning what we have learned to maximize the effectiveness of your online advertising… Or you could employ us to work on your behalf to support your local business in your local marketplace.

More consumers are ignoring their phone books and searching for products and services online. If you don’t want to compete for those consumers, your competitors will thank you. We primarily provide Local SEO Services to businesses in Oklahoma and Texas. But we are happy to serve any brick-and-mortar business in the United States. Author: Trey McMartin. http://MysticMountainMedia.com/

By Nick Stamoulis in Featured

spn_exclusive“SEO is never done” is a phrase that is thrown around a lot, mostly because it’s true! However, when most people talk about the continuation of a SEO campaign, they are usually referring to offsite link building. SEO is about more than developing inbound links! Without a well optimized link to send traffic to, all your hard work offsite is just going to waste. Don’t let your onsite SEO go years before you revisit it. Here are 3 quick onsite SEO touchups you can do today to make sure your site is in top SEO shape:

Replace Old Whitepapers With Updated Versions

All industries change with time, some just evolve faster than others. If you want your website to become a trusted source of information for your target audience, you have got to make sure you are giving them the most up-to-date and relevant information at all times. That’s simple enough to do on a business blog; as long as you are publishing new content on a regular basis, the blog will stay fresh and useful. However, many site owners forget to treat their website’s resource section with the same care.

As part of a well-rounded content marketing strategy, you should be creating whitepapers, articles, videos and other forms of informational content for your target audience. However, these whitepapers/ articles are not forever current. As your industry evolves the information in them becomes obsolete. Unlike your business blog, which may get updated every day with the latest and greatest industry news, these whitepapers can sit for years on your site, waiting to be downloaded. When was the last time you read through those whitepapers? How much of that information is still applicable today?

By Phillip Longmire in Featured

SEO2When it comes to getting your website to rank higher in Google, there are some things you need to be mindful of. What I want to do is give you some tips that you can use to not only rank higher in with your site, but generate more income from the work you put into your website.

Write For People Not Machines: While content is key to any successful search engine optimization, it’s important to remember that ultimately you are writing for other people, not the machines. I am not sure this can be overstated or said to many times. You have to be creating High-quality, readable, and informative content. If you do then you get readers and clicks. If you don’t then you spend your wheels. If you are looking for a long term solution, just remember that Quality wins over quantity in the end. The other thing that this allows you to do is build an online business or following without relying on Google for all your traffic. Outside of blog posting and forum posting.

Build Relationships With People: Ask an educational website or a non-profit to link to your content. Search engines look favorably on sites that have been linked to by reputable sources. Provide high quality information that will entice reliable websites to want to feature your site. The keyword here is reliable and perhaps I add readable websites. I am not talking about spinning an article and submitting it to article directories. Create content that these organizations will find useful and worthy.

Add To It Everyday: Websites need to be regularly refreshed with new content and pages to help with search engine optimization. Keywords are great, yet they can only help your site to an extent. If you are writing about popular subjects, it is easy to get lost in the crowd. You do not want your website ranked low. Keep your recommendations fresh by linking to appropriate and influential high ranking websites on a regular basis. Just like you want great sites linking back to you, you want to be linking to great websites.

Know What The Joneses Are Doing: Don’t forget to investigate your competitors’ SEO campaigns. Seeing what techniques your competitors are using to get to the top of search engine results pages can help you rank your own website. Learn from their success, then adapt and expand on the SEO methods they are using and use them on your own website.

Learn A Little HTML: Do not forget that search engines are not people. Use HTML, which they can read, to give your site an advantage over the competitors. Including other forms of programming is useful and perhaps even necessary, but including HTML as a back-up will give the search engine the information in needs on your website.

Mix Up Your Tactics: When it comes to marketing, backlinking, advertising, or whatever methods you use, you need to always be mixing up your tactics. Not only in the advertising you do off your website, but the marketing you do on your website. What you want to see happening is that people stay on your site longer, and that they click on your links. Both of these are measurable. In the bounce rate alone you can tell if someone just comes and leaves.

I know some have a bounce rate below 20%, but if stay around the mid to high 30% range and, or lower, you will be doing well. What we are talking about is increasing your overall profit and success during the course of the year. Learn A Little On-Page SEO: To better optimize your site for search engines, you should place keywords in the title tag for every post. Most search engines place more importance on titles than other types of contents. This means that using effective keywords is your title is one of the best ways to draw in traffic from search engines.

Learn Proper Linking Techniques: When linking back to your homepage through other parts of your website, be sure that you are linking to the domain name and not /index.html or another iteration that has something appended to the end. Your homepage will be placed higher on search results pages if you help search engines recognize that the domain name is the anchor of your site, rather than confusing the search engines by having two (or more) separate homepages (such as /index.html).

Also Work The Free Stuff: This really does work. You need to have some free stuff to give away. What you will learn real quick is that after doing this for a while, you will have more than enough free stuff to give away. A great way to get free stuff is to join a membership site that gives it away. Some are OK, but there are some membership sites that really give away quality stuff.

Phillip Longmire has been doing internet marketing full time since 2008. He his a speaker, writer, and business owner. He works with business owners teaching them how to get more traffic to their sites. All his articles, advice, and know how comes from the front lines.

By Sarah Jo Wood in Featured

giveawayIn today’s business community, there have been revolutionary steps made in strategies for marketing thanks to the internet, smart phones, and all the new gadgets and widgets that roll out each year. All these have made it much easier to implement a marketing strategy that allows small businesses to obtain the e-mail addresses and contact information for potential customers, also called leads, by offering what is often referred to as a “free giveaway.” Once you have leads in your database, you can follow up with them until they, either become customers or remove themselves from your mailing list.

Offering a free giveaway to the group of people who you hope will buy your products or utilize your services is a quality list building technique to put you in touch with prospective clients. And a free giveaway provides them with an easy way to become familiar with your company and through which to preferably begin building a long-term relationship.

Free Giveaway Strategy #1: Give them a taste of what you offer

Ideally, you will use your free giveaway to not only attract clients who are new to you but to also set yourself apart from the competition. One of the best (and easiest) ways to do this is to choose a gift that is a representative example of what you supply, such as a limited-use software download (with the ability to pay if customers want more features or functions), or a free smart phone app (if you have an online app store). Coaches or consultants may offer a complimentary consultation to give potential clients a taste, if you will, of what working with you will be like.

Free Giveaway Strategy #2: Become a welcome presence in their everyday lives

Another great marketing strategy for list-building purposes is to give away something that your prospective customers can use often – therefore keeping your company in their mind of a regular basis. If you give away something useful, like a yearly calendar branded with your company’s name and logo, for example, there’s a good chance that your prospects will hang that calendar in their home or office, and they’ll think of you (even if it’s on a subconscious level) every time they see it. You’ll inadvertently become a trusted (and welcome) presence in their lives. Other examples of daily-use gifts are mousepads, bookmarks, pens, etc., all branded with your company’s logo so that you stay top of mind whenever they need what you offer. If you don’t have the budget right now to mail out such giveaways to everyone who becomes a lead, consider running a monthly contest, where one lucky winner each month will receive a mousepad/ bookmark/etc. To enter, people need to provide their name and email addresses which enters them into your mailing database for future follow-up.

Even if your giveaway is merely a small sample of the services you provide, your prospective customers will feel like they are considered important enough to get a glimpse of what you have to offer, and it shows them you are confident enough in your products and services to know that a small sample will give them reason to return. The challenge, however, comes in creating a marketing strategy that will cause your customers to take notice, so get creative with your free giveaway idea. And then trust that what begins as a simple free gift can end with a customer who will return for a lifetime.

Sarah Jo Wood is founder of Evolving Advisors Inc. and author of “How to turn a No or a Maybe into a Yes!” Her coaching program teaches entrepreneurs like you to overcome objections so you can sign up all the clients you want, fill your practice, and increase your bottom line. To begin supercharging your sales, download your complimentary sales package today at www.evolvingadvisers.com .

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