Business Planning: 4 Steps to Creating Your Online Business Model Blueprint

I’m in the process of completely rethinking my business model, and that will be my primary focus as I plan this year’s business retreat for myself. Your business model doesn’t have to be at all complex, but should provide the guiding force for all that you do, like guiding you to the opportunities to accept (and those to decline), the joint ventures and strategic alliances to pursue, and the new ideas you should retain and develop, as well as those to let go of.

Here’s are the 4 steps I’m following as I create the blueprint for my business model:

1. Make clients pay well for your most valuable commodity — your time. I see many service business owners tying themselves up with (and tying themselves down to) far too many 1:1 clients. You have only so many hours in the day, and at some point you’ll hit the wall and not be able to expand the number of 1:1 clients you see. Sure, you can hire and train additional staff to handle the overflow, but in many cases, you make less money in this model while tripling your headaches. Make your 1:1 time with clients your highest-fee service, charging a premium fee to dispense your expertise.

2. Ongoing recurring revenue is key. Feast or famine seems to shape the life of the service business owner, regardless of industry. Wouldn’t your life be much more sane if you knew that you could count on recurring revenue each and every month, rather than having to constantly go out and find new clients? This was one of the models I adopted early on in my virtual assistant practice, i.e. working exclusively with clients on retainer rather than a “pay as you go” model. What is it that your clients need from you that you could provide on an ongoing basis with them that isn’t time-intensive for you?

3. Always have an upgrade. Never offer a stand-alone product or program that doesn’t have a natural tie-in to the next level of program or service that you offer. If there’s no way to leverage what you’re offering into some type of upgrade, don’t offer it! For example, a free teleclass can lead participants to enroll in a paid short-term group program. From that program, plan to enroll a certain percentage of those participants into a recurring revenue continuity program. You can then upgrade a percentage of these participants into a live event or small ongoing mentoring program, and from there make an upgrade offer to your premium 1:1 time.

4. Design the blueprint. Brainstorm all of the types of programs, products, and services you might offer in your business. Your list might look like the one below:

• Consulting


• 1:1 Service Provision


• Group Coaching/Mentoring/Continuity Programs


• Sale of Info Products –Private Retreats


• Strategy Sessions


• Live Events


• Speaking


• Information Products or Books –Licensing/Certification Training


• Teleseminars/Webinars


• Subscription Membership Web site

Pick 3-5 of these items that will make up your business model, and then determine what percentage of income you want to derive from each. Your total needs to equal 100%. Then, determine the order in which you offer the components of your program over the next 1-2 years. This becomes your blueprint for action.

How do you determine your success? If your business still suffers from feast and famine, take a long, hard look at your business model for the solution. Every offer you make in your business should flow seamlessly into the next, which will result in a steady, predictable income that you can increase over time as you become more expert at designing and following your blueprint.

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Calculate your SEO requirements

Search engine optimization delivers predictable results. Many people might argue with that, but it’s absolutely true. I can’t think of another advertising medium that provides the data you need to precisely determine your requirements the way the web can.

From a business viewpoint, every SEO campaign should be run with the idea that there is a significant return on investment. Very often in advertising, it is somewhat of a guess relative to what you can expect. Marketing on the internet is a much more predictable process.

Establishing SEO requirements starts with an easy question. “What increase in revenue should your site generate in the upcoming year?” Bear in mind that the more unreasonable the answer to this question is, the more difficult it will be to reach your target. Set achievable goals!

Once you’ve established your revenue target, you’re done. That’s it. That’s your goal! OK, so not exactly. The point is, your revenue targets are your goals. Goals should not be expressed in terms of traffic, hits, or even how much the site shows up in the search engines (but it sure helps : ). But let’s say that our sights are set on meeting our revenue targets via search engine results. That’s the purpose of an SEO campaign.

HOW MANY CLIENTS DO YOU NEED? You should be able to state clearly your revenue targets and the average annual value a client brings to your business. If you know that, then simple division will tell you how many new clients you need. You should also have a “gut feel” for how many of a hundred people on your website turn into clients. So with that, you should be able to determine how many visitors you need to generate to your site to develop those clients.

The number of visitors required is equal to the number of clicks that are required. The purpose of a good SEO campaign is to increase the number of visitors who are searching for your products and services. Successful SEO creates enough impressions on the search engine results pages (SERPS) to deliver enough visitors to meet the revenue targets.

Getting on the first page of the SERPS generates an impression, or a chance that the visitor will click on your site. Since very few people advance beyond the first page of results, a conservative SEO specialist considers the first page of the SERPS the ONLY place to be and of course number one is best if you can get it.

AOL published information showing that first place in the search results gets almost half of the organic clicks. Second gets 10-15%. Third gets 5-10%. The remaining scrounge around 3-6% but at least they made it to the party. Conservatively, you can estimate that with a well executed SEO campaign, that you will get 5-10% (we’ll use 7%) of the search volume. Predictably, you’ll be somewhere on the first page of the SERPS. So, if you need 100 visitors, then you need impression in 100/.07 (1,428) total searches.

Once you’ve established your total search volume to optimize for, you then move into keyword selection. The best strategy is to choose a broad range of keywords instead of going after the more popular ones. Remember this: Most of the time its easier to rank for many low volume keywords than a single high volume one that equals the same number of searches. Further, lower volume keywords are usually more relevant and more specific to the needs of the visitor. Ultimately, they convert better. You’ll also discover that once you know your total search volume requirements, your keywords collectively will meet the search volume requirements without extending into a range that’s impossible to optimize for. You can develop a much more practical approach to your SEO campaign.

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Simple Twitter Tips that Attract Clients and Partners

According to Mashable.com, a leading authority on social media, there are currently over 12 million users on Twitter. Another resource called istrategylabs.com reports that 46% of Twitter users are college grads, and another 17% have post graduate degrees. Furthermore, 47% are between age 18 and 34, and another 31% are between 35 and 49. Males and females are evenly ranked, with women accounting for 53% of users and men 47%. If your target market falls within these demographics, actively participating on Twitter is probably worth your while.

Twitter is simply a micro blogging service. What does that mean? It means that you write short updates (140 characters maximum) called “tweets” and send them out to your followers. And it is a marketer’s dream come true – it’s an easy way to stay in front of your target market and showcase your authority at no charge!

The myth around Twitter is that Twitter users (called tweeple or tweeps) tweet about useless information such as what kind of coffee they had with breakfast. Yes, some of that exists and it is actually important as you’ll see below, but once you understand the power of connecting on Twitter, you may become a Twitter convert, just like me.

So, if you’re on Twitter or considering starting, the question becomes, “what do I tweet about that will make this a useful tool for me?” Here are some categories you can consider for your tweets. There are others but these will get you started:

Industry Tips

This is a big one. You are on Twitter to showcase your expertise, so industry tips act as your credibility builders. Here’s how to do it: Create a list of high value tips (remember – no more than 140 characters long) and send one or two out every day. If you don’t want to have to manually do this yourself every day, consider a free tool called TweetLater.com to set up your tweets in advance. If your tweets are really good, others will send them out to their lists as well. This is called a “re-tweet,” and it’s a super way to quickly build your list of targeted followers.

Here is one of my recent tweets that had a great response:

Connect Others: Be willing to connect others even if it has nothing to do with your business. What goes around, comes around.

About Your Business

Use this category sparingly. In other words, if you use Twitter as a place to advertise your products and services too much, people will stop following you. This is not what Twitter is about. It is really about raising awareness of you and your business and impacting others. Use the 80/20 rule here. For every eight tweets about things other than your business, you can post two things about your business.

Here is an example:

Hey Columbus: I’ll be on Fox tomorrow at 7:45 where you can see me interviewed about my new book, Flourish!

Re-Tweets

When someone re-tweets you, they are giving you the highest compliment you can get on Twitter! It means that the person who re-tweeted you thinks that what you said is worth sharing with their own list of followers. This is like having someone ask you to a meeting so they can introduce you their entire list of contacts. When you get a re-tweet, send them a short tweet thanking them! Re-tweet others who are tweeting things that you agree with or want your followers to read.

If you are not familiar with Twitter, the example below probably won’t make a lot of sense because of all of the abbreviations, but they are necessary given that you only have 140 characters. Abbreviations are outside the scope of this article, but just know that it’s really not as scary as it looks!

RT @getgreatcopy: New blog post: The Sixth Habit of Highly Effective Communicators http://bit.ly/ 175XGS Gr8 stuff Jan, as usual.

Quotes

Tweeps seem to love quotes. If you are also a fan of quotes, compile a list and send one or two out every day. Again, you can use tweetlater.com to set these up in advance so you don’t have to manually enter them every day. Simply set up these tweets for a month and then watch your re-tweets happen!

Here’s an example of one that I recently posted:

“The pursuit of pleasure must be the goal of every rational person.” Voltaire

Invitations

Invite tweeps to your free events. No-cost events like teleseminars are great to tweet about because people love to share high-value, low-cost information with their lists. When you offer something without a cost – a workshop, teleseminar or report, your tweets about it are likely to get re-tweeted, which provides you with greater exposure to your target market.

Here’s an example of one of my recent posts:

How 2 write your book in a weekend – free telesemimar w/ @donnakozik. http://bit.ly/ 127GtU

Personal

Include some personal things that are going on with your life. What you choose to include is entirely up to you; however, be sure to be relatable. You don’t have to share your deepest inner thoughts or too much detail about your family, but sharing something about what you did over the weekend makes you more relatatable. Remember, Twitter is about connecting with people. Other people on Twitter want to connect with people – not stale businesses. People often connect on a personal level over food, pets or hobbies. This is why these seemingly unimportant tweets are actually very fruitful. These are pretty safe personal topics. General things about kids are another hot topic under this category. Just be aware that anything you say is out there for the world to read.

Here’s an example I tweeted recently:

Interesting pop culture moment: Told a story to my sister, who lives in Vietnam & realized she doesn’t know who Sara Jessica Parker is!

As you can see, Twitter is simply an online forum for connecting with others in 140 characters or less. Big and small brands are using Twitter to connect and impact their target markets and locate joint ventures. Can you, too?

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Get Your Company Link Building With These 5 Simple Tips

As the online market place continues to warm up to the idea of SEO, link building has become center stage as it tends to be the most time consuming and crucial part of any internet marketing strategy. Link building services are the most commonly outsourced aspect of SEO. This process involves finding qualified and thematically relevant one-way linking partners who will link back to your website. At first glance this sounds easy and there are hundreds of automated products out there that claim to add thousands of back links overnight. The truth is there are no short cuts in cultivating authoritative back links for a site. Link building companies spend many hours link building by hand in order to get the best results. Spammy automated products often never cultivate valuable links and tend to do more harm than good. Here are a couple quick suggestions to help you get started.

1. Know What Keywords You’re Targeting

Link building strategies are an extension of your current SEO practice. You’ll want to reference the list of keywords you have selected to optimize your site. Make sure that the anchor text of the link lists the keyword you are targeting. For example, if you’re targeting the keyword “baby names” you’ll want to place that keyword in the anchor text of the link. I’ve seen many companies go after links by using their company name. Although this does increase link popularity it fails to pass popularity for a specific keyword and can be seen as a failed attempt.

2. Develop a link building strategy

There are many strategies link building companies use to source qualified back links to their clients. The most tedious but often most rewarding method is manual linking requests also known as “cherry picking”. This method allows you to obtain exceptionally qualified links which can really help boost your position in the search engine results page (SERPS). A good place to start with manual link building is to look at your suppliers, vendors, clients, related organizations associations and more. Besides manual link requests other well known tactics include:

1. directory submission (Dmoz, Yahoo Directory, Joe Ant)


2. article submission (ezine aritlces.com, goarticles.com)


3. optimized press releases (PRWeb.com)


4. social media outlets (FaceBook, Linked In)


5. bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit,Furl)


6. Blogs (niche blogs)


7. Forums (niche forums)


8. Classifieds (niche classifieds)

3. Identify thematically relevant and authoritative linking sources

Search engines see links as votes of confidence for your site. The more relevant and authoritative the site, the more consideration is given to the link and the subsequent keyword in the anchor text. It really pays off to focus on the quality of your links rather than the quantity. It is also important for your link building to look natural and not an attempt to deceive search engine spiders in search of links. Try looking for sites within your industry rather than general, unrelated sites to get links from. A good example of this would be content creation and distribution. Try creating content on a relevant subject of which you can speak authoritatively. A good example of this would be a SEO company writing a short article on 5 simple ways companies can start link building and placing it on an authoritative, industry relevant site like this one. Remember, before placing a link on a site (or making a request), ask yourself three questions:

1. Does a link to my website belong here (does it look natural)?


2. Is this site relevant and authoritative?


3. Is there are benefit to my potential customers?

4. Look for the onsite attributes of the linking site

Once you’ve nailed down a potential linking partner that represents the overall quality and thematic authority that your site deserves you’ll need to see where your link will be present. Here are a couple guidelines that I look for when placing links on a site. I try to get my links no more than a few clicks away from the homepage. The page must be thematically relevant and recently cached by Google’s search engine (this let me know that the page has been indexed by Google). I also take a look at the number of external (outbound) links leaving that page. I try to keep the number of external links below 50 as it will dilute the effect of the page. Lastly, I look at the page the link will be placed on. For some sites this is harder to control, but if you have the option you should know where the most valuable locations are. I always try to get my links in line with thematically relevant content, like an article or blog post. I’ve found this produces some of the best results. Try to avoid placing your links on a “sponsored” or advertisers section that runs throughout the entire site. Also avoid footer links as rumor has it Google has devalued links buried in the footer of the site. Links placed at the top of the page or inserted into the site’s navigation also tend to do quite well. Bottom line is that your links need to look like they belong and provide value to the user and the site it is published on.

5. Be aware of “No-Follow” Links

Within the last 5 years Google developed the concept of the “no-follow” link. The “no-follow” code is inserted into your link and instructs the Google spider to ignore it. The “no-follow” link can be seen used most commonly in blog comments and forum posts. This initiative was set forth to combat spam and automated linking mechanisms that would throw links automatically on blog comments and forum posts. There are a lot of SEO professionals that will only place a link if it is a “do-follow” link, meaning it doesn’t have the “no-follow” attribute. I tend to disagree with this notion especially when the link in question is on a highly trafficked authority site. If it makes sense for the link to be there, then add your link. Even though Google won’t give you any credit for it, it will be seen by thousands of people who may visit your site and link to you themselves because your site is highly relevant. I call this concept indirect link building. You are influencing and promoting your site to potential linking partners.

Link Building is a very time consuming process and link building companies spend a lot of time researching, testing and improving their techniques. Link building services are available for companies that don’t have the time to invest in manual link building. The bottom line is that with a little help anyone can link build and move their site up the SERPS.

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Article Marketing Tips: Writing Articles for Free Advertising Online

Of all the article marketing tips I could give you, writing articles for free advertising online is likely the most beneficial to you if you currently spend money on advertising your website. There are several reasons for this, but the major reasons why article writing can bring you better results than expensive pay per click (PPC) adverts or taking a chance with reciprocal links are detailed below.

Keep in mind that Google is not keen on reciprocal links unless the page you are reciprocating with relates to the page on your website that the link points to, and the link is no good to you in any case if it is one of many others on a ‘links’ or ‘partners’ page created predominantly for such links. You only get a share of the PR of the page your link is on, not that of the ’site’, and even that is shared between all the other links on the page.

Being one of 5 links on a page with a PR of 1 is better than one of 50 on a page with a PR of 8. If you take these article marketing tips, writing articles can offer you a form of free advertising online that Google itself provides willingly, and that can work for you for many years to come. Here is how to go about writing articles to get you the benefits that free online advertising has to offer:

1. 1. Write an article about your niche, using a conversational style as if you were explaining what you are writing if talking to somebody face to face – just as I am doing now in fact. Offer interesting information that anybody involved or interested in your niche would find useful. It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering news, but what you write must be factual and show that you have a firm grasp of your subject. You want people to continue reading once they have started.


2. 2. At the end of your article, provide a link to your website. You can say something about yourself if relevant, such as a brief word about your qualifications and experience if the topic warrants it, or do as I do and simply offer a link to your site for more information. You can use more than one link if relevant. When writing articles for free advertising online you should keep in mind:
   
   
   
   1. You should never include a live link within the body of the article. Directories do not like these (more on article directories shortly).
   
   
   2. Only use multiple links in your resource if relevant. Thus, I include a link to my product and also one to my Article Services website that is focused on writing articles and my own ghostwriting services. c) Most article directories offer a special box for your link and other details (known as the ‘author’s resource’), but if not then you should add it to the end of your article. Never write an article without a link back to your website. That’s what gets you the free advertising.
   
   


3. Having finished writing your article, the power of writing articles and article marketing now comes into play to get you a ton of free advertising. You get that by submitting your articles to article directories. This can be done in a number of ways, the most common being:
   
   
   
   1. Manual Submissions You should choose a number of the top article directories, register with them and then submit your articles manually. This will take you about 5 minutes per directory. Your articles should be submitted in plain text format, so if you have written them in Microsoft Word, copy the Word text and paste it into a text editor such as Notepad. A Google search for ‘article directories’ will give you lists of the top directories.
   
   
   2. Software Submissions You can use software to make the submissions for you. Most of these work whereby you enter each part of your into a box provided for it: Title, Summary, Article body, Keyword list, Resource – parts of these will be in plain text and HTML, particularly the resource. You then scroll down a list of directories loaded into the software, click on those to which you want to submit, and the article submission is made automatically. You have to provide the software with your login details for each directory, where relevant (no all directories need a login), or log in to each individually.
   
   
   3. Article Submission Services You can use a paid article submission service that will submit your articles to a number of directories for a fee – either paid individually or monthly. I use all three of these methods for my submissions for maximum exposure and best results.
   
   
   4. Don’t worry about duplicate content when you submit the same article to loads of directories and ezines. That will take a few months to come into play and you can make up for it by writing an article each week.
   
   

Using these article marketing tips on writing articles will get you free advertising online in the following ways:

• Your article will be published on a number of article directories. If you use the right directories, these will further syndicate your articles to other directories and ezines and so on. It is viral, your articles being distributed around the internet. You get a back link to the pages stated in your author’s resource from every directory and ezine that publishes your article. That link is valuable in attaining you a high search engine listing position.


• People read your articles on the directories. This is fact, irrespective what others say. If you have done the job properly, these readers will possibly click on your link to visit your website for more information. Make sure that your link leads them to a web page related to the title of your article.


• An article published on a directory page is a single web page, just like any other. It can therefore be listed on Google or any other search engine. I have literally tens of dozens of articles scattered around search engines on various topics, optimized for specific keywords. That’s what free advertising is, and writing articles can achieve that for you if you take these article marketing tips.


• Many people will copy your article as content for their own website: to do that they must retain your resource containing your link. Writing articles just got you even more free advertising!

These are just some of the ways in which writing articles can get you free advertising online, and if you take these article marketing tips seriously then you could save yourself a lot of money on advertising costs, and get better results by doing so!

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Google Reinvents the Phone with Google Voice

When it comes to “cool tools”, Google is the master inventor. Say what you want about Google, but they know what they’re doing when it comes to giving the public what they want and need. Take the telephone for instance. An old invention that now has been given a new twist with “Google Voice” (G.V.) [http://www.google.com/voice]. Hold onto your chair as I’m about to tell you how to have a lot more fun with Ma Bell.

Google is giving you the ability to manage all your phones with one centralized number. At the time of this writing, it’s only available to those in the U.S., and by invitation only. Upon registration, you’ll be given your own phone number that you connect to any existing phone number. When someone calls the Google Voice number, it rings the phone number that you specified. The option of selecting a word for your personalized number is also given.

Now, if all Google Voice did was send phone calls to your cell phone, that would be great all by itself, but the amount of extra tools and features are truly amazing.

When a call is received you can answer it, send it directly to voice mail, listen in on the incoming call to decide what to do with it, or start recording the call upon answering. How’s that for a few options?

After receiving a call you’d like to record, hit 4 on your phone to start recording. Different states have different laws when it comes to recording calls, so check your current federal and state laws before using this feature. Currently outbound calls cannot be recorded. Google does provide an automated verbal announcement when the recording starts and stops so the person you’re speaking with knows they are being recorded. So much for incriminating yourself (LOL)

Say goodbye to voicemail as you know it. When a voicemail is recorded, you can check it by going to the Google Voice website and logging in, or calling your Google number. You can even be notified by email, or text message of new messages needing your attention. The ability to listen in on voice mails as they are being left is a very handy feature.

Voicemail messages can be shared with others via Email, even downloaded as MP3 files and embedded on a website or blog. Messages are also transcribed as text and housed on Google’s site for later reading, or sent to you by email. When it comes to voice mail greetings, custom messages can be set for groups or certain individuals.

Google Voice is free for use within the U.S., but does give the ability to make low cost international calls to over 200 countries from your phone or Google’s site. You’ll first need to purchase credits through Google Checkout before making these calls. Rates vary per country.

Here are some other handy features:

• Phone spam filters which block calls and mark them as spam


• Conference Calling


• Temporary forwarding of calls to another number


• Access Google Voice from mobile browsers at http://google.com/voice/m


• Call Widgets – Easily add a “call me” widget to your blog or site with copy and paste code located under setup.


• Do not disturb option which sends all incoming calls directly to voicemail when you don’t want to be bothered.

So what about when you call someone and want it to appear you are calling from your Google Voice phone number? No problem. The ability to make calls that will display your G.V. number on caller ID can be done in three different ways.

• Hit call from within Google Voice website


• From G.V. mobile site on your cell


• By calling your G.V. number and logging into the system.

Google will call you at the number you specify and connect your outbound call. It doesn’t get much better than that.

The technical requirements to use this service are a computer with Win XP, Vista, Mac or Linux, Internet Explorer 6.0 or above, Firefox 3.0 or higher, Safari, Google Chrome and Flash 8.9. To request your invitation go to – https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/

So, if you thought using the phone was outdated, sign up with Google Voice and put some “FUN” back into an old relationship. This just might be the best thing old Ma Bell has seen in years.

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

12 Ways to Use Twitter for Social Media Marketing

Twitter is a wildly popular microblogging service. It involves writing Tweets, which are short updates of a maximum of 140 characters that tell your followers what you are up to. Although your Tweets are technically supposed to answer the question, “What are you doing?” Twitter has moved far beyond that. Tweets are used to share stories, link to photos, promote content, break news, and a whole lot more. Twitter has also become an incredibly important tool for social media marketing professionals. Here are 12 ways in which Twitter can be used in your social media marketing campaign.

1. Sharing Links to Items of Interest

As soon as you read something online that you think is interesting, it is easy to share it on Twitter with all of your followers. Twitter is highly effective in this manner because it is such a quick way to be able to reach a large group of people. You can also get a lot of great ideas for blog posts from Twitter since many new ideas and stories are floating around that haven’t even made it to the blogosphere and definitely not to mainstream media.

2. Building Your Network

Using Twitter is a great way to build your network because it allows you to find and follow people with similar interests. You can use Steeple to find people who live in your geographical area. You can also use other tools that help you find new people to follow based upon who your Twitter friends follow.

3. Build Relationships within Your Current Network

People in different networks often use Twitter to connect with their contacts instantly rather than using instant messaging for that purpose. Furthermore, many people use Twitter to connect with their network during events like conferences.

4. Re-Distributing Content from Your Blog or Website

Twitter can be used to redistribute content from your blog or website. However, you should take care to do this thoughtfully since many of your Twitter followers may already read your blog. For that reason, you may want to avoid using a blog plug-in that automatically Tweets your posts. Your best bet is to Tweet your content manually and customize each Tweet so it doesn’t get old.

5. Get Involved in Live Tweeting Events

Twitter launched at SXSW last year, catapulting microblogging conferences to fame. Live Tweeting events are great because they are a form of citizen journalism that allow you to connect with several new people in your niche while making active and valuable contributions to current discussions in your community.

6. Pitching Stories to Journalists on Twitter

You can send a direct message to a journalist who is following you on Twitter to pitch a story idea.

7. Communicating with Your Team

You can use Twitter as a company intranet that connects all of your employees. Twitter can be particularly useful in this regard if you have a virtual business with employees in different geographical locations. You can set your updates to private for security reasons. Anytime you are working on group projects, you can stay in touch with your team members using Twitter.

8. Brand Monitoring

Stay up to date with any mentions of your business on Twitter. If there is anything negative, you will be able to counter it quickly. You can also use Twitter as a way to receive feedback from your customers and improve your business. Just ask your followers to give their opinion on something. For example, if you designed a new website, ask your followers what they think about it and get their constructive criticisms so you can make your site design even better.

9. Acquire More Votes on Social Media Websites

If you have submitted a story to Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, or any other social voting website tweet a link to that submission to try to score more votes from your followers. If your followers like what they see, they are sure to vote for your content.

10. Hiring People

Looking for a programmer, designer, or writer? Whatever type of professional you seek, try finding them on Twitter. Simply send your followers a tweet telling them you are looking for someone for a job. They can either recommend someone to you or offer themselves for the job. Using Twitter in this way is ideal for finding qualified freelancers. It is much more convenient than putting out a classified ad.

11. Build Your Personal Brand

When you use Twitter to talk about things as mundane as what you ate for breakfast or how you are going to sleep early tonight, you make your followers feel like you are casual and approachable. Even those running a company that has a cold, corporate brand image could create more appeal and build a unique personal brand using Twitter.

12. Streamline Electronic Communications

When you use Twitter, you’re likely to find yourself using IM, email, and other electronic communication methods less. Twitter not only provides public chatting through Tweets, it also allows you to send direct messages. Twitter will help you streamline your electronic communications, allowing you to scale back online.

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Black Hat, White Hat and Big G

I read a lot of articles and postings regarding Internet marketing, SEO and the like. One frequently recurring theme is the distinction between black hat, grey hat and white hat methods. Interlaced with the use and abuse of these terms is the notion of what is “ethical” and what is not. It seems to be generally assumed that anything black hat is somehow unethical. More disconcerting yet, anything that Google frowns upon is often deemed unethical as well. I would like to clear the air about these terms which seem to mean all things to all men.

First of all, let’s put to one side for a moment the recently coined terms which euphemistically refer to SEO techniques under hats of various colors. These are not dictionary terms, and anyone can make them mean whatever they want. However, the words “ethical” and “unethical” have very strict meanings, have had for generations and their misuse can call into question the personal integrity of individuals. So what does ethical mean anyway? According to dictionary.com (http://dictionary.com/):

1. pertaining to or dealing with morals or the principles of morality; pertaining to right and wrong in conduct.


2. being in accordance with the rules or standards for right conduct or practice, esp. the standards of a profession: It was not considered ethical for physicians to advertise.

So doing something unethical is first and foremost immoral and wrong. Additionally, it may be implicitly wrong because it violates an accepted code of conduct adopted by a recognized professional body, whose moral judgement is above reproach. Given these definitions, when would Internet marketing cross the line into the realm of the unethical? Well, let’s try to ring fence the concept and limit it to what we think may be just plain wrong by any reasonable standard of measure:

• lying to people to get them to buy your product


• offering a product that does not meet the expectations created by your marketing material (variation on lying)


• deliberately abusing a resource to the detriment of its owners or of the other users


• deliberately devising strategies to deprive affiliates of their fair share of profits after they have expended money and effort to sell your product


• fraudulently generating affiliate or other revenues

I am not suggesting that this list is exhaustive. The point I am trying to make is that something is truly unethical if it promotes falsehood, if it is to the detriment of someone or if it involves fraud. So the sixty-four dollar question is: when is SEO unethical, when is it black hat, and are the two the same thing?

The term black hat usually refers to SEO tactics that are designed to trick the search engines into ranking a page that they wouldn’t otherwise rank. Let’s apply this to the present question.

Suppose by some top secret powerful method you could trick Google into ranking your porn site for the term “clip art”. I think we would all agree that this would be unethical. Your content is potentially damaging to people, especially minors. It has absolutely nothing to do with what people are looking for when it comes up in the SERPs. It further harms Google’s reputation for providing relevant results, so it would be detrimental to the owners of an online resource.

Now, suppose that by some top secret powerful method you could trick Google into ranking your clip art site for the term “clip art”. The method is definitely black hat, because it attempts to circumvent the search engine’s algorithm. If Google really knew what was up, it would not rank the site. But you did not abuse Google’s resources, or overload their servers. You are not acting to the detriment of people searching your term because you have what they want. Quite to the contrary, the SERPs for the term “clip art” are polluted with absolutely valueless sites. You would in fact be doing everyone a big favor, Google included. But, you have done something that Google said not to do. You did “black hat” SEO.

Now it is increasingly clear that Google is beginning to believe its destiny on earth is to police the Internet and tell us all what we should and should not do. It is not the first nor will it be the last corporation to have delusions of moral superiority. But when I read articles that imply, if they do not state outright, that an SEO technique is unethical because Google said not to do it, I become concerned. This is what totalitarianism is made of: the masses cowing to bullies who invoke some self-serving principle to justify their moral high ground. It may be in order to ask whether Google itself would stoop to unethical or black hat practices. Consider just two examples of Google’s questionable behavior:

• Anyone who has had their AdSense terminated with no explanation whatever knows that Google keeps the unpaid balance of funds in the AdSense account. They claim they keep it to refund the money to the advertisers, but do they? Just try to find an advertiser who has been victim of click fraud, and has received a refund from Google. You may be looking a long time…


• Google uses a black hat technique known as cross-domain cookies. First let me say that cross-domain cookies are legit when needed to run a tightly integrated set of domains. For example, if your secure online store is on a domain owned by your hosting provider, you would be justified in using cross-domain cookies to carry user preferences from one domain to the other during checkout. But this is not the case when you visit any Google owned site (Blogger, YouTube…) and Google tracks you. If you log into your blogger.com (http://blogger.com/) account, then your AdSense account, Google’s all-watching eye knows you are one and the same person. Yet the two sites are entirely unrelated. This is violation of privacy.

The point I am making is that of all the companies out there, Google is not particularly qualified to lecture on right and wrong. Just how badly we have run amok on this point can be seen in this extract from an article posted on about.com (http://about.com/):

“Black Hat search engine optimization is customarily defined as techniques that are used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner. These black hat SEO techniques usually include one or more of the following characteristics:

• breaks search engine rules and regulations


• creates a poor user experience directly because of the black hat SEO techniques utilized on the Web site


• unethically presents content in a different visual or non-visual way to search engine spiders and search engine users.”

If you do not find this appalling, then we need to have a talk. According to this piece, it is unethical (morally wrong) to break search engine rules and regulations! Since when does any search engine have any right whatsoever over what I do with my web site, my shoes, my car, whatever? Creating a poor user experience is unethical? Hello??? As for their third point, we have already dealt with it. Cloaking is not unethical in itself. It is what you do with it that may be unethical. You may have to cloak because some crawler is so clueless that cloaking is the only way you can get people to find your site when they are looking for what you’ve got.

Here is another of my favorites, taken from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines:

“If you believe that another site is abusing Google’s quality guidelines, please report that site…”

Abusing? It would be fine to refer to sites as not adhering to their guidelines, because adhering is something we do voluntarily. Anyone is free to adhere or to not adhere to Google’s quality guidelines. But to refer to non-adhesion as abusing? If I tell everyone to wear a red shirt, and someone wears a blue one, are they abusing my guidelines? We are on a very slippery slope here. The underlying assumption is that if you disobey Google, you are doing something wrong. For Google to take this stance is bad enough. That it is widely accepted by webmasters everywhere is serious cause for alarm.

OK, we have attempted to defined ethical and unethical. Now let’s try to answer the key question as to whether black hat is unethical. I suggest that SEO is black hat when it uses specific techniques in order to get a search engine to behave in a way that is not what its owners/designers intended. In other words, it tricks the search engines. So when is it unethical? It is unethical when it is detrimental to the owners of a resource it uses/abuses (in general, spam), or when it promotes falsehood. I would include fraud in the list if I could think of a way to use SEO fraudulently, but I can’t. (Cookie stuffing and CPA cloaking are both black hat and fraud, but unrelated to SEO).

You may argue that if I intentionally trick a search engine I am acting to its detriment by definition, and therefore to the detriment of its owners. I would respectfully disagree, and refer to the previous discussion on cloaking.

Black Hat SEO is clearly unethical when it abuses resources. It is common to automate the creation of social media accounts, create hundreds or thousands of sites and spam them with links. To camouflage the operation additional thousands upon thousands of bogus entries are scraped from RSS feeds. First, this usually violates the terms of service which would prohibit opening large numbers of accounts. Further, it pollutes the sites with rubbish. Finally it is detrimental to the owners of the site by wasting storage space and bandwidth. Does this mean that automating posting to social sites is unethical? Only if it abuses resources, violates terms of service or is harmful to people. A user agent is a user agent, whether it is called Firefox, googlebot or libwww. It’s what you do with the automation that may be unethical.

All of our SEO efforts should be done in good conscience to the benefit of our clients and to the larger community, not to appease a bully. Google’s hegemony is cause for serious concern among many informed people. Black hatting, or resisting tyranny? You decide.

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

SEO is no place for amateurs

How Come everybody is nowadays an SEO Expert?

Let’s face it; not a day goes by where we don’t see someone offering their services as a Search Engine Optimization specialist. The strange thing is however, many of the people offering such services on the various forums tend to have no runs on the board themselves. Of course, I’m not saying there aren’t a great deal of reputable internet marketing services out there, but they are becoming increasingly outnumbered by those with little or no experience at all, and it is these people and their companies which are highly unlikely to ever produce satisfactory results for their clients.

Perhaps one should bear in mind that there is no difference between investing your money in internet marketing, and investing your money in a regular market. In both cases you need to measure your results just as you need to target the correct audience. For example, you wouldn’t even consider wasting your money by advertising your product or your service in a newspaper that is completely irrelevant to your target market. Advertising is done for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to bring in a return on your investment, irrespective of whether the advertising is done online or offline.

Why you Should Avoid the Amateurs

Essentially, you need to bear in mind that while any Tom, Dick, and Harry can learn about search engine optimization, it takes several years of dedication, practice, and careful analysis, in order to fully understand the different techniques, and how to apply different techniques to different types of business.

The bottom line is; a SEO campaign is in fact a highly intensive process that starts out with intense keyword research in order to establish which keywords are the most likely to produce maximum results for a website. Once the ideal keywords have been established, it can be incredibly tempting to simply spread them around on your website and hope for the best. However, in most cases you’ll find that the most popular keywords also have the most competition. As such, why bother targeting particular key words, irrespective of how popular they are, if there’s virtually no chance they are going to help in terms of ranking? In fact, you could end up waiting for several months before the major search engines start recognizing your website.

On the other hand, a specialist who is highly skilled in internet marketing will be aware of which relevant keywords and keyword phrases will help to improve a website’s ranking. Likewise, a true professional will also know where the keywords and keyword phrases should be placed on a website in order for them to have the maximum amount of impact, without being penalized for keyword stuffing.

Onsite optimization of keywords is notoriously time consuming if it’s being done properly. But if your goal is to give a website a boost in search engine ranking, then this optimization process needs to be continued off-site as well. Here again, a competent SEO professional will know exactly how to go about implementing a successful link building campaign, including article marketing, submitting articles to directories, taking advantage of several social networking sites, and also social book marking.

Furthermore, because a professional SEO specialist appreciates the importance of being able to get a good return on investment, they will also make use of Analytics tools in order to track conversions and monitor the success of an internet marketing campaign. Bear in mind, that these tools are essential in order to fine tune any good SEO campaign.

Steer Clear of Internet Marketing Fraudsters

Unfortunately, but also as is to be expected, the internet is full of undesirable people who focus entirely on targeting honorable businesses by means of providing them with false promises regarding guaranteed results. These people will more often than not guarantee that they will get your website to the top of the search rankings by using specific keywords. However, in most cases, they simply use keywords which are so rarely used, they show at the top of search rankings simply because they have no competition – nobody uses them. Obviously, if nobody is ever typing that keyword into the search box, then why waste money on it? One of the easiest ways to determine whether or not an internet marketing expert is in fact legitimate, is that the legitimate ones never offer any guarantees with regards to getting you in the top spot on search results. This is because they know that nobody can guarantee such results due to a number of reasons, such as algorithms which change continuously.

How to Avoid the Wrong Internet Marketing Service

First and foremost, you need to ask the right questions:

1. You need to determine how long the company has been involved with Internet marketing.
2. You should ask to see testimonials from past clients.
3. You should search online for their services. In fact, you should attempt to find their website by using keywords and keyword phrases which are relevant to the services they offer. Obviously, if you fail to find them on the first page of Google search results, then your alarm bells should start ringing. For example, if you were considering using the services of Sunshine Coast Internet Marketing Company, you could do a search for Sunshine Coast Internet marketing, internet marketing Sunshine Coast, and etc.

The most important thing of all is that you acknowledge the fact that going with the wrong internet marketing company can end up costing you a considerable amount of money for nothing. On the other hand, if you choose to use the services of a reputable company, you can almost be certain that your website will end up ranking much higher than it did before.

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The Importance Of Creating Resistance In Your Copy

“Creating Resistance in Your Copy” is an idea that is alien to most online marketers. After all, online marketers want to believe that everyone should buy their products and services, because the more people buying what is being sold, the more money the marketer will inevitably earn.

Alien Marketing Concept

This concept is so alien that most Internet marketers who see this article will react as if they are “deer in the headlights”. If you are looking at this article with a blank stare – completely bewildered about my suggestion – then you are likely one of many, who are reacting the same way.

Just the other day, I had this conversation with a small businessperson. The person with whom I was speaking was clearly bewildered at the suggestion, and she asked me, “What exactly do you mean by ‘create resistance’?”

I told her that “creating resistance” is the concept of eliminating some of your prospects, before they reach the sales page.

Taking a step back, she said, “What? Why would you want to do that?”

I explained to her what I am ready to explain to you now.

In her case, by the time I finished explaining the idea to her, she realized that she was already doing that – albeit, unconsciously.

Why Would Anyone Want To Create Resistance In Sales Copy?

When you are writing sales copy for a product, there is seldom a need to create resistance in your sales copy. In fact, when selling a product, the need is more often to wipe out, eliminate, diminish or neutralize consumer resistance in your sales copy.

Unless you are creating a product that sells for high dollar and you intend to offer it exclusively to a select number of people, the necessity of creating resistance in product sales copy is almost non-existent.

However, if you are selling a service, the reasons for creating resistance in your sales copy are endless.

For example:

One company we work with is an Internet marketing consulting company. The company provides its services to other businesses based on the billable hour or specific service.

In the case of this company, it does not make sense to talk to customers who cannot spend a minimum of $300 per month with them. As a result, they have created resistance in their sales copy to eliminate the broke, do-it-yourself, home business owner from their list of prospects. As a small consulting firm, it is essential for them to separate the wheat from the chaff quickly.

By requiring an appointment for a free consultation, they direct prospects to a form to be filled out. In that form, they require phone numbers and email addresses, and they request the prospect to be as detailed as possible so that the free consultation will be meaningful.

Another company we work with is a Virtual Assistant Agency. Once again, it is a matter of finding the customers who can actually afford the service. By telling prospects in advance that the minimum billing per month is $1000, the company is able to ensure that the only companies contacting them are those who seriously need virtual assistant(s) to help complete work.

By signing the contract, the customer acknowledges in advance that they should send enough work to the virtual assistant to ensure that the $1000 per month minimum will not go to waste.

Consumers Have A Natural Resistance To Sales Copy

All of the great sales copywriting teachers speak to the notion of “sales resistance” – the natural roadblocks in the mind of the consumer that holds the consumer back from making a purchase.

I actually found it quite interesting in that while researching this article, I could NOT find anyone talking about “creating resistance” in sales copy. The guru’s are only talking about how to “eliminate” or “melt away sales resistance”.

Now, one might argue that the reason no one is discussing the creation of resistance in sales copy is because one should not do it. But I have had this discussion with a lot of people. Although no one is talking about doing it, service providers who have been in business for a number of years tend to deliberately build “sales resistance” into their sales presentations!

Identifying And Eliminating Time Wasters

Once a service business has been in operation a number of years, the owners / managers of those businesses tend to start seeing patterns that frequently cause financial losses to the company.

When as a business owner / manager, you discover that certain customers cost more money than they generate for your business, you will seek ways to remedy that problem. Often times, it makes far more sense not to sell to certain people – the people who have exhibited certain traits that will lead to nothing but lost productivity for the service provider.

If you operate a service business, you will likely have seen similar patterns yourself. In my case, there are certain behaviors that some prospects exhibit that set off red flags for me. I used to ignore those “red flag” moments, but I always regretted doing so later.

The number one red flag for me in my business is the “carrot on the stick” approach offered by some prospects. It goes something like this: “I am going to try this once, and if it works out, I will send you tons of business.”

When I was in college, I used to wait tables in a restaurant. I saw the same behavior even then. People would come in and make grandiose promises at the beginning of the meal, “If you give us great service, we tip really well.”

Don’t believe it for a moment! It is a lie, usually designed to get something for nothing or to encourage you to discount your services, “just for them”.

When I was waiting tables, it did not matter how good of service you gave those guys. You could ignore every other table in the restaurant to give them better service and the tip never exceeded two pennies!

In my business, if you bite the bait, they will take their discount this “one time”, and then they are gone… forever… I know their disappearance is not because my service is less than worthy… I have too many customers who have been with me for years; to believe that my service was the reason those people never came back.

I have learned that the “carrot on the stick” approach is designed to take advantage of people – to take advantage of me.

Once a prospect raises this red flag for me, I kill the free advice and the extra attention that I give to their job. I do the job and let the chips fall where they may – my basic service will stand on its own, without any effort to help the customer get more out of it. I will not let this person waste any more of my time, period. Unless this person comes back for additional service, I no longer spend extra time with them.

Eliminating Time Wasters Is Easy If You Create Resistance In Your Copy

As a service provider, you DO want to eliminate “sales resistance” in your basic sales copy. Once you have tweaked your copy to help the majority of your prospects to overcome their natural resistance to your sales message, then it is time to add some resistance back into your copy.

You want as many people to buy your service as possible, but you also want to discourage those that you know will be a waste of your time and resources.

My friend who has the consulting business allows people an initial consultation to help him and the customer to determine if they will be able to work together and if his consulting company will be able to add value to the prospects business. In his sales copy, he points out that after the initial consultation, all hours will be billable hours. Because he makes his prospects jump through hoops to get the free consultation, he is assured that he is only going to have real prospects at the other end of the phone line during a free consultation. And because his prospects understand that all work beyond the initial free consultation is billable work, they don’t waste his limited time.

The Virtual Assistant does not need to layer on the resistance at the same level. By clearly explaining what one should expect in terms of the service within the first thirty days of the agreement, it becomes self-evident to the prospect that the service is not for the faint at heart. Investing in a virtual assistant can be a bit expensive, but the payoff can also be quite large. By laying out a map of what one can expect from the service, it clearly defines to the prospect what the cost of such a service could be. And as such, it quickly filters out those people who are not a good fit for the Virtual Assistant’s company.

In my case, I don’t provide much sales resistance in my sales copy to my prospective customers. In fact, the only sales resistance in my copy is my prices.

The companies that call me a competitor have lower prices than I do – much lower prices. Although they refer to me as one of THEIR competitors, I really don’t consider them to be mine. My service is so much different from theirs that I find it very difficult to think of them as “MY competition”.

For people who take the time to get educated about my service or to take it for a real spin around the block with a full ten article distributions, my higher prices are often considered a great investment of resources. With the built-in sales resistance in the form of a higher price, my customers ensure that I always serve higher-quality authors – authors who understand that the power of article marketing is in the strength of the content.

I Might Be Going Out On A Limb With This Article…

The fact that I could not find anyone else discussing the value of “adding sales resistance to sales copy” may suggest that I am just a total goof. But I do know for a fact that small business owners in the service industry do deliberately create sales resistance in their copy.

In the conversation that I mentioned in the beginning of this article – the one where I was discussing this idea with a small businessperson, who had her “deer in the headlights” moment – the lady I was speaking with said to me after I explained the concept to her, “Oh, you mean like when I tell my customers that we provide ‘quality’ over ‘quantity’?”

Indeed! Telling your prospects that you provide ‘quality’ over ‘quantity’ automatically tells your prospects that your services may be a bit more expensive, but the quality of the work will more than make up for the difference in pricing.

I know that many small business owners do deliberately build sales resistance into their sales copy, and I cannot blame them for doing so.

I also know that my pricing is a disincentive to some people to use my services. But that is okay too. The publishers who receive articles from me know that I distribute a higher quality article. They may not realize that it is because of the pricing resistance on my site, but they do know that we typically distribute some of the best-written articles available online, from some of the biggest names in their industries.

At the end of a ten-article cycle, most of my customers find that their articles have found publication on websites that have a much higher perceived value in the Internet marketplace. In fact, it is not at all uncommon for me to hear from clients who are happy to share that they have generated several thousand dollars in new sales as a result of an article I distributed for them. Now that is music to my ears…

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

How To Monitor Search Engine Positions

Since search engines are the first stop for people on the Internet looking for goods or services, the position your website appears in search results is an important factor. If your URL shows up far down the results list, the chances of the consumer never finding you increase incrementally. Once you achieve a high search engine position, it is essential that you make sure you maintain the high ranking you have worked so hard to achieve.

This means you must come up with a strategy to monitor your search engines positions. This strategy is crucial to the success of any marketing campaign. Think of your search engine positions as your online portfolio. Would you let your stock portfolio be ruled by chance and market fluctuations, or would you keep close tabs on your stocks so you could buy and sell when the time is right? This is the way you must consider your search engines positions.

Be aware that at first, after you have launched your search engine campaign and done all the right things to increase your rankings, you will most likely see a continual upward climb. What you need to be on the lookout for is the moment that upward climb reaches a plateau. When this happens, your search engine position campaign moves into stage two, the monitoring and protecting stage.

In stage two, do not be concerned about the short-term fluctuations in your positions. These are similar to the subtle rising and falling of stocks in a portfolio. Short-term movement is an integral part of the whole process. It’s the long-term changes that you must watch for and prepare to act on immediately.

Analyzing the long-term trends of search engines positions is imperative. The way in which search engines rank websites may change at the drop of hat. If you are unaware of these changes—many of which are subtle yet can be deadly to your ranking—your position may drop to the bottom of the list before you can get your bearings. To prevent this kind of precipitous drop, you must create a system to monitor your positions on a monthly basis. Devise a chart to keep tabs on your top ranking positions or your top pages, and make sure to watch “the market” closely.

Each search engine uses a formula to compute website rankings. When a search engine changes this formula in any way, it may raise or lower your ranking. Some search engines use a number of different formulas, rotating them so that a formula doesn’t become overused or outdated. Depending on which formula is being applied, your search engine position may suddenly drop or rise in rank significantly. Therefore, you must check your positions frequently in order to catch when a search engine changes formulas and what effect it has on your positions.

You must also deal with your competition—a crucial factor you must always be vigilant about. Your competitor’s position may suddenly rise, automatically lowering your position. Or their position may drop, pushing your position higher. Each month, expect position changes due to the continual changes that are occurring in your competitor’s position, and be prepared to adjust your marketing strategy to compensate for decreased rankings. Monitoring these fluctuations will also give you vital information about how to improve your website to increase your position in search results.

Of course, you must discern what the most popular search engines are in order for your monitoring efforts to be effective. Right now, there are ten popular search engines that direct most of Internet traffic to your sites. The challenge you face is that these top ten may change from month to month.

This means that your must not only monitor your search engine positions, but you must also keep track of the ranking popularity of the search engines you are monitoring. Find out which search engines people use most frequently every month and be sure to live in the present! People are fickle about their favorite search engines, and it takes constant vigilance to follow their dalliances. The search engines they loved when you first launched your campaign may be old news in the next few months. You must adjust your list of engines according to the whims of the Internet users. Check out http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html for a current list of website favorites.

Another factor to monitor carefully is a sudden drop of your positions in all search engines. This is not the same as monthly fluctuations—this is a neon red warning sign! It could mean a number of different things.

It all your search engine positions have plummeted, it may indicate that search engines spiders—those sneaky programs that seek out your site and rank their positions—have found some type of problem with your website. If you have recently changed the code, for instance, the spider may become utterly confused and consequently drop your positions disastrously. If a spider creeps up on your website when it is down for adjustments or changes, you may actually disappear from a search engine index entirely. Or a search engine may drastically change its formula, and suddenly all of your websites come up as irrelevant. If that search engine is a current favorite, it may create a domino effect, causing all of your position to drop in all search engines.

Some search engines rely on the results from other search engines, and it is vital that you know which engines these are and keep track of all the engines they influence. The biggest problem here is that search engines will sometimes change affiliations, and this can create a major shift in the geography of the Internet. For example, recently Yahoo decided to display only results gleaned from Google. So you must not only monitor your own positions, but you must keep abreast of seismic shifts in the landscape of the Internet as a whole.

Finally, pay attention to your keywords. Keywords are the foundation bricks of the entire search engine system, and they demand individual scrutiny in your monitoring efforts. If you have found that a number of your positions have plummeted, it may mean that a page of your website has become invisible or inaccessible to search engine spiders. Or the competition for that particular keyword or phrase has recently rocketed into outer space. In either case, you must act quickly and efficiently to regain lost ground.

Your search engine marketing campaign is an investment. If costs you time and money on a continual basis. Protect this investment as diligently as you would your financial portfolio. In the same way, track your positions from an objective perspective, and monitor your positions on a regular basis. Make sure your time and effort reap rewards by keeping your eye on the big picture—your long-term marketing campaign.

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Which Website Visitors Are Potential Clients?

With today’s website tracking software and services you can find out a lot about the people who visit your website. You can learn where they’re from, what kind of browser they’re using, how long they stayed on your site, and a whole lot more. But what all this high tech intelligence won’t tell you is what kind of people they are, and how likely they are to be transformed by your Web presentation from viewers to customers.

Your ability to convert website visitors into clients depends on your ability to find the soft underbelly of their subconscious desire. After all, if someone is happy with what they’ve already got, they don’t need you, but if they were truly one hundred percent happy, they wouldn’t bother coming to your website. Therefore every visitor that comes to your site is a potential client whether they know it or not.

The Setup’s The Thing

Your website presentation has to find that annoying little subconscious scab just under the surface and pick at it until it becomes a full blown irritation that fosters discontent and a desire for change. That discontent is your opening to make your value statement.

We refer to this process as The Setup. Like any good presentation you cannot, or rather should not, just blurt out how great you are, but rather you have to set the scene. Like any good story, the punch line, moral, or payoff only works if it is properly setup. Far too many website presentations suffer from premature pitch climax.

The ability to transform viewers into customers requires patience. Entrepreneurial companies tend to view the setup as a waste of time, and they fear losing viewers before they ever get to the so-called “good-stuff.” But without a proper setup, an audience is just not primed to accept what you have to say.

You can’t sell anybody anything unless they understand they’ve not been getting everything they need and deserve. That understanding creates dissatisfaction with your competition and opens the audience’s minds to what you have to offer. In short, the setup needs to touch a psychological nerve.


The Customer Is Always Right – Not Quite

We’ve all heard the expression, “the customer is always right.” The fact is the customer is not always right, and in many cases they don’t really know what they want or what they should have; and sometimes even when they do, they resist it because of a variety of misinformation, misunderstanding, self-doubt, and preconceived notions of conventional wisdom. It’s your website presentation’s job to set visitors on the right path.


Being The Expert Inspires Confidence

You’re supposed to be the expert in what you do, and if you are, you need to have the ability to dig deeper into what people really want, need, and desire. I am always reminded of friends of mine who hired an interior decorator to furnish their new home. The decorator asked them what kind of furniture they liked. They answered that they were looking for Colonial, to which the decorator answered, “No you aren’t. What you want is Country French.” And after he showed my friends what he was talking about they quickly agreed. The decorator knew his business and understood the clients. Yes the clients liked the idea of the homey Colonial look they’d seen, but not being furniture experts they didn’t understand what the options were, and what kind of furniture best suited their lifestyle and budget, while still providing the homey rustic but comfortable aesthetic they wanted. Customer satisfaction is about providing what the client really wants and not necessarily what they say they want.

Learn How To Communicate So Audiences Get It

Let’s face it; we all like to read about how the digital revolution has opened up the business world to more audience influence, but the fact is people are influenced and manipulated and desires created through marketing and advertising as much as ever. How many website owners actually benefit in any meaningful way from social networking and search optimization, or do they do it because it’s expected and promoted by proponents as the tactic du jour.

If you think a particular song you like is played on a thousand radio stations because it’s good, or even because it has a following then you are living in a fantasy world. If you thing the vast majority of viral videos produced by corporations go viral all by themselves then think again.

Audiences are being manipulated and transformed into customers all the time, not because companies responded to what the public says, but rather to how the public reacts to various communication and marketing stimuli. What’s truly amazing is how bad companies are at doing it. With all of the television industries’ research into viewers, they still fail to deliver consistent quality programming that people want to watch. Every Fall new shows are yanked faster than a Nolan Ryan fastball, but the same crappy commercials live-on for what seems an eternity. Television viewers are a captive audience and if they want to watch their favorite show they have to tolerate the commercials (PVRs aside), but the Web is different. If your website presentation stinks, nobody is going to stick around to absorb the smell.

Web Television Convergence Has Arrived

If you think of your website presentation as nothing more than a digital brochure, you’re already behind the curve. Welcome to the Web on TV.

All you need is a laptop computer or one of the new gaming consoles attached to your big screen TV to access the Web on television. And as network programmers scramble to get their acts together more and more people are opting to spend their television time on the Web. Kind of makes you rethink what kind of website presentation you should be offering. It’s time to start thinking of your website as your own business channel and the content on it as programming. It’s the future and it’s here, now.

Who Visits Your Website?

Before website visitors can be transformed into clients, we have to understand who they are in terms of their mental outlook or frame of mind when they first arrive at your home page.

1. Accidental Tourists

Accidental Tourists are website visitors who find their way to your website by serendipity. Your company’s link may have come up in a search for something mentioned on your website, but not something that’s a core element of your business. But just because these people didn’t really intend to visit a site like yours doesn’t mean they’re a waste of time. Perhaps they never thought of using your product or service, or perhaps they never realized how much they really wanted what you have to offer. If your website presentation is exciting, meaningful, and entertaining you at least have the opportunity to plant the seed of desire for your product or service.

2. Brain Pickers

Brain Pickers show up at your site with little intention to buy anything, in fact they’re there to pick your brain and find out how to do what you do for themselves. But if you’re truly an expert at what you do, you at least have the opportunity to show these people that what you offer is special, and doing it right requires a company with your skills and resources.

3. Penny Pinchers

These guys are looking for a bargain. You are on a list and they are checking out who is offering the cheapest solution to their problem. But not all Penny Pinchers are penny-wise and pound-foolish, some, just need to understand why you’re the best at what you do, and why what you are charging is the real bargain.

4. Tire Kickers

The Tire Kickers love to look but rarely buy. They want what you’ve got but they just can’t make the commitment to buy it. They visit your website a hundred times, each time pressing their noses against the virtual storefront window trying to make a decision that rarely comes.

It’s up to your website presentation to push them over the edge. If they want what you’ve got, you can sell it to them. All you need to do is find that soft under belly of desire that gets them eager to spend their money.

5. Missourians

These guys want what you offer but need the reassurance of some practical input to get them to buy. The desire is there, but it’s frustrated by their mental need to justify the purchase with practical excuses. “But Honey, I know little Johnny is only three, but think of the eye-hand co-ordination he’ll learn playing these video games.” People ultimately buy what they want, and rationalize the purchase with logic and reasoning, but without desire, no amount of statistical evidence will work.

6. The Enemy

If you’re any good, you’ll have plenty of competitors hanging around your website looking for ideas they can use. It’s all part of the game. Better to be out there showing people what you’ve got than hiding, afraid someone might take advantage. Besides if you’re really good, you’ll always be at least one step ahead of the competition anyway. That makes you the leader and them the follower. And everybody wants to do business with the leader.

7. The Needy

The Needy crave what you’ve got but need a lot of reassurance, handholding, and customer support. These guys have the potential to be good customers but your presentation has to make it clear that you’ll be there to answer questions and concerns and not just leave them in the lurch like so many other Web-based businesses do after they’ve got the sale.

In The End

If you’re fed-up with social networking self-gratification, frustrated by ever changing site optimization requirements, and ineffective advertising then it’s time to re-evaluate what your website presentation says and how it says it.

In the final analysis it’s all about communicating your emotional value proposition using your most important venue, your website; delivered in the most engaging, informative, and memorable manner that compels your audience to pay attention to your marketing message, and act upon it.

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

User Experience – How Your Visitors Perceive Your Website

The concept of user experience, and the consideration of ideas that lend toward the optimization of that concept, have created a field of interest and study that is growing as a concrete and primary business model regarding the online world. The focus on user experience is defined through standards that involve multiple dynamics. A paramount is placed upon not only the user’s perception of a web site, but also the sites ability to efficiently serve the user’s needs while simultaneously reflecting the business operatives sought after by the owner of the site.

There are many standard sets, such as The Stanford Guidelines, which relate to the functional aspects of a web site, referring to credibility, updates, and other performance based ideals. However, evaluating and applying user experience principles involves a more complex and multifaceted mindset. When dealing with UX, (user experience) a web designer or programmer must incorporate concepts that exist independently, but also blend smoothly and work efficiently.

User Experience is about more than just building a website

Many believe it is the responsibility of the web design company to implement UX effectively in ones websites, yet in reality this is a common misconception by many business and associates. In reality, all areas of development of a website are critical, especially the content as it contains the philosophy of your business and is the key in sharing this philosophy with your users. Along with effective content organization, marketing techniques and add to the overall effectiveness of a web-site, by understanding what your visitors are looking for when they visit your site.

There are many aspects of User Experience that are very complicated and in many ways this discipline is still being developed and mastered. Many debate whether the topic is even a distinct area of study. Louis Rosenfeld, an author and publisher who focuses on web information architecture claims of UX that, “At best, it’s a common awareness, a thread that ties together people from different disciplines who care about good design.” While this may be true in many aspects, the discipline albeit still forming, is commanding extensive attention via statistical research methods throughout the online arena.

The Specific Set Of Concepts To Follow

The UX Honeycomb Model, designed by information architect Peter Morville, lays out a specific set of Concepts to be systematically applied when designing a site. Usability with a strong focus on emotional design principles use functional aspects to provide comfort and attraction to a given website.

This supports the fact that all facets of custom web design and consultation come into play when analysing how a user will feel and react when they visit your site.

One of the important areas to think about when implementing UX principles is to consider other proven sites without copying the exact UX. User Experience is really very complicated and can’t simply be applied through blanket methodology. The unique user experience if defined via the identity and purpose of each individual site. Therefore, attempting to apply standard methods in order to copy a set formula of another site with a different set of values can be not only detrimental, but also wasteful.

Every site must have its own unique angle when it comes to User Experience

Every project engaging UX principles call for a custom outline predicated on the business or non-profit’s available resources, abilities, timeline, finances, and a plethora of realistic factors.

Additionally, because the concept of UX is based on users or people, a detailed paradigm of interpersonal qualities in many ways define the effectiveness of user experience initiatives.

Therefore, attempting to broadly and forcefully incorporate a devotion to UX, rather delicately fuse it with existing business principles, would be an ineffective strategy. Steve Baty, principal and user experience strategist at Meld Consulting, concludes that, “People cling to things like personas, user research, drawing comics, etc…In reality the best designers have a toolbox of options, picking and choosing methods for each project what makes sense for that particular project.”

In the world of online efficiency, user experience models and principles are in many ways the logistic DNA of a site as it relates to its audience. In effect, the result of that blueprint proves to be the signature or fingerprint that separates a simply conducive web site from an engaging, capturing, and truly optimal site that rewards the user, developer, and company in a similarly gratifying manner.

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Size Really Does Matter – At Least When it Comes to Twitter

Back in the days when newsletters first hit the Internet, they were usually published in text format because many email clients did not support HTML email just yet. One of the problems many publishers faced was long URL’s being split in half and not being clickable to the reader. To solve this problem, shortening services started to spring up that would take a long URL and cut it down to a reasonable size.

With the popularity of Twitter and the confines of 140 characters, URL (link) shortening services are in high demand once again. When you have such a small amount of space to work with, no one wants a long URL cutting into that precious real estate.

There are a variety of shortening services to choose from, each having their own specific features and benefits. Most of them do work hand in hand with Twitter, allowing you to Tweet the link once it’s been shortened. If you’re an avid Twitter user this is a useful feature to have.

Some only offer a basic shortening service, but many allow you to view stats and metrics on your newly shortened links if you register. If you’re doing any form of social media marketing, it’s nice to be able to see if anyone’s actually clicking on all the links you’re sending out to the “Twitosphere”, or posting on Facebook and other sites. Tracking will give you an indication that you’re being heard and that people are actually paying attention to what you have to say.

Another important thing to look for is whether or not the shortening service uses 301 redirects. This is the most search engine friendly, and forces the search engine to look at the destination URL, not the domain of the shortening service itself. A 301 stands for a permanent move, not temporary. What this means is, you want the links you’re sending out to be given credit by the search engines, not the shortening service itself. Make sense?

Many allow custom URL’s, which allows you to use your name or company name in the links you create. This is great for branding purposes. Think of it as a vanity license plate. Instead of being just a regular URL it’s your own special creation.

Let’s review a few options:

1. http://TweetBurner.com- A bare bones tracking service which allows you to shorten any link and then share it instantly with your Twitter followers or Friendfeed. Basic stat tracking is available so you can see how many people clicked on your link.


2. http://Cli.gs – A shortening service which includes full analytics. You can create links that include your brand in them. Free to use. It’s easy to send your links to Twitter with one click.


3. http://Bit.ly – This is Twitter’s default shortening service and used by Tweedeck.com. It allows you to track performance of your links in real time. Easy to share generated links on Twitter, Facebook, even Gmail. It also offers many extra tools and plug-ins such as a browser bookmarklet and browser sidebar.


4. http://MyTwitterToolbar.com – Free to download and comes complete with a massive list of URL shorteners as well as over 50 Twitter tools. Also includes 100 Twitter tips.


5. http://www.TwitClicks.com – A fairly simple service that allows you to shorten a URL immediately and tweet it. Can also see complete stats. Detailed stats show percentage of browsers used and locations of those who clicked. Check out a short video on how to use it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1ScPeCd6X4


6. http://www.ExpandMyUrl.com – This service takes a shortened link and gives you the true URL that it points to. Perfect for the paranoid individual who wants to know where the shortened link will send them.


7. http://www.TwitPwr.com – A short URL service which also includes analytics and stats. Their home page shows the top 25 users with the most TwitPwr and also a “hot URL” list of those URL’s that get the most clicks. Free to use.


8. http://1link.in – A multiple link shortening service. Simply type in a list of links and get one link back for all. If you click on the newly shortened link it goes to a page showing details of what sites that link points to, and asks if you want to open them all. If you answer yes, multiple windows will open for each site.


9. http://Go2.me – A different type of link shortening and discussion service which creates shorter links which also contain a chat window to exchange comments with your readers. It’s also easy to share on Twitter, Facebook or email with one click.


10. http://Tw.itter.me – You can customize the shortened link with your name or company name. From what I saw no stats are available.


11. http://budurl.com/ – Another popular service which shows you a real time view of your inbound clicks. This free service allows you to track up to 250 Budurl’s. They offer 3 pay levels of service from $4.00 a month to $49.00 a month. There is a 21 day free trial on any paid service. You can start out free and upgrade your account at any time.


12. http://Tr.Im – Trim those long URL’s and instantly share them on Twitter. If you want stats, you’ll need to register. Offers many different tools and extensions to make for easier sharing, such as a Firefox extension that allows you to view your tr.im stats and tweet your new links quickly.


13. http://short.ie – Keeps all your shortened links in one place. Tracks clicks and allows you to instantly share your list with friends. It can also be connected to your Twitter account for more features. Customization of URL’s also available.


14. http://hootsuite.com: Not really a URL shortening service, but has the ability built in. Hootsuite is a “Twitter Toolbox” loaded with features which are all free. They use ow.ly as their built in link shortener.

If you’ve never tried a url shortening service, you’ll want to find one that fits your needs and start to really utilize it in your online marketing activities. Finding out who’s clicking on your links, time of day, where they’re from and other information will be very valuable in your ongoing efforts as an Internet Marketer.

Remember, when it comes to social media marketing T.M.I (too much information) is a good thing, unlike when your Aunt Ethel wants you to sit with her and go over every detail of her latest vacation . One is helpful, the other just downright painful.

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

How to Develop a Natural Link Building Strategy

In SEO, link building is the practice of accumulating relevant links in order to build up site authority, and rank for certain keyword phrases on search engines. However, link building is often associated with questionable practices like link buying and link spamming. Too many businesses focus on buying sitewide static links, and building a specific number of links. Once they achieve that goal, they tend to forget about their link building efforts. What they have failed to discover is that a successful link building strategy is one that is natural, builds your web presence, and strengthens your brand.

In this day and age in the online world, there are a variety of effective ways to build your brand and links such as using video sharing websites, blogging, and participating in social media. The types of online brands with the most successful online strategies utilize all of these methods of brand building and link building. Sitewide links, or links that are placed on all pages of a website, have lost a lot of their value for the simple fact that they are unnatural. Sitewide links are the links in a template or sidebar under a section such as “friends,” “links,” or “resources.” Many websites get the majority of their inbound links from sitewide linking, but they must build a strong web presence first in order for those sitewide links to be credible and effective.

Tips for Building Your Web Presence

Foundational link building consists of building your web presence in order to really “earn” those sitewide links. You can build your web presence by writing and distributing online press releases, writing guest posts for well-known blogs in your niche, and participating actively in social media and networking sites to build your brand.

Many link building strategists get inpatient and try to build thousands of links in a period of just a month or so. Your ranking may temporarily improve but search engines will spot the unnaturalness in your site’s accumulation of inbound links and come to devalue it. Focus on building your online brand first prior to accumulating so many links. This can take anywhere from six months to a year. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, but to ensure that your long term link building strategy is effective, it is a good idea to keep this timeline in mind.

Build a Diverse Link Portfolio

You can get real power from your links by diversifying your link portfolio. Sitewide links should make up only about 10% of your link building portfolio. Other methods of link building include the following:

Video – Videos can be uploaded to websites like YouTube. Not only will they include a link back to your site, they will show up in search engine results for searches of your company name, product, etc.

Press Building Tactics – In order to generate press and tons of links and traffic to your site, hold big contests and giveaways, and donate money to charity. Anytime you do these things, contact the press and let them know what you are up to in order to get some media attention.

Documents – Upload documents like ebooks, brochures, white papers, and marketing materials to document sharing sites like Scribd. If you upload a document to your own website, you can build links to it by writing blog posts and press releases about it.

In sum, focus on building your web presence and online brand so your links come naturally. No matter what kind of changes happen at Google and other search engines, as long as you focus on maintaining a natural link building strategy, you will not notice any effect on your ranking. A natural web presence will always persevere.

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This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com