1. Generate Targeted Traffic from Online Discussion Forums.
Online discussion forums provide an excellent way to promote your website without paying any money. Nowadays, you don't even have to lurk around before you begin to post. Just browse the messages and you can start posting. There are basically three different ways to participate. You can ask questions, respond to requests for help or just post any useful information that fits with the general topic of that discussion forum. To promote your site in online discussion forums, all you have to do is enter your website address or ad in your signature line at the bottom of each message. Every time you post or respond to questions your ad will be displayed. If you post good content, people who read your threads will also check out your website. This is an excellent way to drive targeted traffic to your website at no cost to you. You can take this type of site promotion a step further by identifying the active members in each forum and contacting them for joint venture arrangements.
2. Write Articles or Free reports for other webmasters to publish.
Another effective way to promote your website is to write articles or free reports for ezine publishers and webmasters to use. If you write good content, your articles will be published and many readers who like your article will go on to visit your website. You can also write simple research based articles and allow others to publish these freely on their websites. The traffic from these free articles will come from your byline. The `byline' is the short paragraph that goes at the bottom of each article and describes who the author is and what they do. The good thing about writing this type of content is that it establishes you as the expert and therefore increases the chances of people visiting your website and signing up for whatever you're offering.
3. Do Joint Ventures with List owners and Webmasters.
If done correctly, joint venture marketing is one of the most effective ways to promote a product or service. A Joint venture can take many forms but it's generally an agreement for some kind of partnership between one or more parties working together to their mutual benefit. It allows you to leverage highly targeted lists or traffic with no risk. Joint ventures are excellent for new product or service announcements because they allow you to reach a wide customer base very quickly.
4. Leverage the power of your email Signature.
One of the quickest and effective ways to start driving traffic to your website at no extra cost is to add your ad or website address to your email signature. This way, every time you send an email, you'll be advertising your website. You can take this a step further by asking your friends and associates to put your website address in their email signature. Most people don't use their email signature facility in their email program so you can easily get 10 or more people to agree to do this. If you and your 10 friends each send out 10 emails per day, that's 110 exposures of your ad every day without any extra effort on your part.
5. Exchange Links with Other Webmasters.
This is another effective strategy for generating targeted traffic to your website for free. It involves contacting other webmasters for a possible link exchange partnership. All you have to do is locate websites that are related to yours but that are not in direct competition and contact the webmaster to swap links. There are various free ebooks and articles available online on this topic.
About the Author
© Copyright. Ben Chapi owns Venister Home business and Affiliate Program Classifieds at http://www.venister.org/. He is also webmaster for http://www.best-debt-consolidation-loan.co.uk/ and http://www.home-equity-loan.org.uk/
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
There are a number of ways to improve your clickthrough rates (CTR) for ads on Google Adwords. Here are some tips to help you get started.
1. Target your ads to the right Audience. You do this by selecting keywords and phrases which are relevant to your product or service. Avoid keywords that are too general because although they generate a large number of impressions, they often generate very few clicks. To improve your CTR, use more descriptive phrases so that your ads will only appear to prospective customers searching for what you have to offer.
2. Use the correct keyword matching option(s). Google offers four different methods of targeting your ads by keywords: Broad Match, Phrase Match, Exact Match and Negative keyword. By applying the most focused matching options to your keywords, you can reach more targeted prospects, improve your CTR, reduce your cost-per-click and increase your return on investment.
3. Target your ads by location and language. When creating your adwords campaign target your ads by location so that you maximise your sales and improve your CTR. Target the right audience by selecting the language and countries that you want to reach.
4. Use your main keywords in the Title or Body Text of your ad. By using your keywords in the title or ad body text of your ad, it will stand out from your competitors and grab the eye of your prospective customers.
5. Create different Ad Groups for different search phrases/keywords. This will allow you to refine your ads and test them for relevance and therefore maximise your clickthrough rates. For example, if your service offers loans, you can create different ad groups for home equity loans (and all other phrases that incorporate this phrase), consolidation loans, student loans and so on.
6. Calculate what you can afford to pay for each clickthrough. You will find that more focused keywords and search phrases have a higher conversion ratio than other more general keywords. It's a good strategy to pay more for clicks from keywords or phrases with a high conversion ratio than from the more general keyword groups.
7. Use highly targeted Keywords and search phrases. Be specific when selecting keywords and search phrases for your campaign. General keywords will be more expensive and will result in lower clickthrough rates. If you're bidding on general keywords that are relevant to your site consider using the Exact match and the Phrase match keyword matching options in order to increase your CTR.
8. Test and monitor your ads to get the best clickthrough rates. Refine and fine-tune your ad to maximise click throughs. With Google you can do this in real time. You can do this by creating different ads for each ad group and then checking which ads have the best clickthrough rates.
9. Give Google users a compelling reason to click on your ad link. The easiest way to do this is to provide something of value for free. You can also achieve this if you tailor each keyword to your offer and use relevant terms/ words in both the title and the ad body. Use a different ad for each keyword group or search term. This increases relevance and the likelihood that Google users will click on it.
About the Author
© Copyright. Ben Chapi owns Venister Home Business and Affiliate Program Classifieds at http://www.venister.org/. He is also webmaster for http://www.best-debt-consolidation-loan.co.uk/ and http://www.home-equity-loan.org.uk/
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
Recently while reviewing some text changes on one of my web pages I noticed something that nearly knocked me off of my chair.
I found several new links on all the pages of my website. I had not created them. No one had paid me anything for the links on my pages. Moreover, many were leading my visitors to my competitor's websites. Someone was web-jacking my hard earned visitors.
These new links have a heavy yellow underline. When the mouse hovers over them, they show a bright yellow background, much more noticeable than any of the other hyperlinks on my pages. You can see an example of these links on the following page.
>> http://www.smithfam.com/smartag.html
I thought it might be a virus so I visited Symantec. I wanted to see if there was a newer virus data file or a virus warning that would explain these links.
On the Symantec site, where I found the words "virus protection." I found a link to Symantec's rival, McAfee.com Corp. Same results.
Something is badly wrong here
I went to work to find the source of these mystery links.
I discovered that after deleting all my cache files in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the links went away, but every time I restarted IE, the links came back. They also appeared in ebooks compiled to use IE for display.
These links didn't show up when viewed in Netscape.
Microsoft Smart Links Technology
Smart Tags, according to Microsoft, are "... a feature of Internet Explorer that add smart links to pages you view. Smart Tags enable real-time, dynamic recognition of content on web pages and offer you relevant options as you work. By hovering and clicking on these smart links, you can get access to additional information or perform convenient web tasks."
Many
Internet marketers, fearing Smart Links could be used to hijack visitors by using their content to divert traffic to another website without permission or compensation, complained loudly to Microsoft.
Microsoft's received a so much negative feedback from webmasters about the damage Smart Tags technology poses to developers and businesses on the Internet that a month ago, it announced they had backed off of plans to ad "Smart Tags" to its Windows XP operating system.
"Smart-Tag" Technology is like a scalpel. In the hands of a doctor, it can restore health, but in the hands of a killer it can cause only pain and suffering.
Disabling Smart Tags on a Web Page
If you are a Web author, you can disable Smart Tag recognition in Internet Explorer within a Web page by adding a Meta tag to that Web page.
After adding this tag, any Smart Tags that the author has added to the page will continue to work, but Internet Explorer will not dynamically add new tags when users view the page.
More Info: >> http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/preview/smarttags/>
On The downside, while this may disable Smart Tags by Microsoft it does nothing to disable browser pluggins.
What makes this work?
To make a long story short I discovered the source of these links was a browser pluggin my son had installed as part of a file-sharing program similar to Napster.
KaZaa is the fourth most downloaded PC program on Cnet Network's Download.Com site. It has been downloaded 4.9 million times since July 11.
KaZaA makes it possible for people to download licensed software and music without paying the owners anything. When KaZaA is downloaded a copy of a special Internet Explorer pluggin is installed.
The pluggin adds hyper-links to keywords purchased by advertisers on every page the user views with Internet Explorer ANYWHERE on the Internet.
The Source of The Pluggin
The pluggin is named TOPtext. It's provided by eZula.com. It's listed in the KaZaA installer as:
" TOPtext, a browser plugin to give Internet Explorer relevant quick links"
I contacted several of the advertisers the links sent me to and in every case they claimed they had had complaints, but had no actual knowledge of where the links were coming from. Even after I supplied them with information about the source of the links, they all have remained active.
"Contextual Advertising Theory"
EZula supporters say "contextual advertising has promise because it is far less obtrusive than other forms of online and offline advertising while delivering only what a consumer wants."
The purpose of my website is to deliver value-added content on the subject of Internet Marketing and Home Based Business. I have spent over five years developing this site, and I maintain well over 5,000 pages of valuable free content.
This content works much like a TV program. It provides a vehicle for delivering highly targeted traffic and builds trust and sales over time. In the case of TV, programming content is possible because advertisers pay for commercials. No third party is allowed supply different commercials in place of the paid commercials. If third parties were allowed to hijack TV programming where would the money to develop the programming come from?
It's exactly the same on the web
Now I have learned that in less than 20 days, over four million potential customers visiting my website may see links appearing on my pages to products I don't sell and would not recommend.
I maintain that my website content belongs to me and your content belongs to you. I can only assume all content developers would feel the same way. No one has the right to hijack our hard earned traffic by adding links to the words we use.
Vote With Your Feet
We can't put the genie back in the bottle. If advertisers and the buying public are willing to fund this type of advertising, this technology may be the killer blow for small content rich web developers.
Small businesses such as myself can't afford to sue the corporations that dream this stuff up. The best we can do is to not support the advertisers. We can also let them know that we don't support this form of advertising and will not buy their products.
The Bottom Line
Microsoft's Smart Tags technology and browser pluggins like TOPtext pose a substantial threat to content driven marketing. Shawn Collins has launched an online petition to protest against Smart Tags. You can sign the "No More Smart Tags" petition here:
>> http://www.PetitionOnline.com/nmst2001/
If you feel this form of advertising is a violation of the copyright laws that protect your content, you may also want to register your thoughts with eZula.com, the company that owns the TOPtext pluggins in use today.
If this technology is allowed to develop, I am concerned that soon the whole concept of developing free content for the Internet will be threatened. If content developers can't earn income indirectly through content development, we soon may be required to pay for every scrap of information we now get free.
Have your sales dropped off lately? In just the last 20 days over 4 million web surfers are viewing links on your website you didn't put there. These links are taking your customers elsewhere, the really scary part is unless you have TOPtext installed on your browser you won't even know it's happening.
Robert Smith (C) all rights reserved
ROBERT SMITH helps thousands successfully market their Internet based home business. You'll find tons of free marketing tools & resources on his Internet Marketing web site at: .
The Master's WebKit CD Package
You can reach him by phone at: (541) 689-1847 PST, and by email at.
Reprinted from Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
The average webpage only attracts 1 or two unique visitors a day from the search engines, and most surfers click away in less than 60 seconds. The average page is takes about 30-40 seconds to load. It's difficult to sell something to the one or two visitors that see your website for only a few seconds.
Most webmasters invest most or all of their promotional efforts on the main entrance page assuming that the main page will drive the traffic to the other pages.
This approach may work somewhat on one or two page mini-sites selling a single product but this strategy leaves out the most important reason people use the Internet in the first place, to find free and useful information on a subject of interest.
A better Approach - Give Then Ask
When surfers type a keyword into a search engine, they are in essence asking a question. Each page's content should answer that previously identified potential question within your defined market segment.
Your page's title, description and keywords from your Meta tags are displayed in the search engine results pages. Unless your individual page stands out to attract the click you will not get any visitors, so the first task is to strategize to attract that first click. This is easiest done in choosing compelling and highly targeted content for the webpage.
If you sell more than one product your main index page by definition usually will not have the narrow focus required to attract the traffic you need. The philosophy I use is to give first - then ask for the sale. Only after you have satisfied a need or desire have you earned the right to ask for something in return.
Like it or not, the Internet is first and foremost an information medium. People use the Internet to find information and the most specific information will attract more clicks. Each individual webpage should have a specific purpose, a defined goal, and unique content focusing as narrowly on a targeted visitor's need or desire for information.
Marketing By Attraction
There is an old saying that entertainers have employed for years. "Leave them wanting more" Using free and compelling content you can gain your visitor's trust and earn credibility before you offer to sell something. The advantage of employing content-based marketing is you can address a much bigger percentage of a narrower market segment.
You don't want to confuse or mislead your prospects, so make sure you give them the information that attracted them in the first place. Rather than putting the sales pitch directly into your page's content, I prefer to link directly to the sales letter separating the content from the sales pitch.
In addition, because content driven websites are able to attract more targeted traffic they are natural places to sell advertising or place banner ads. I have found that as long as the advertising is distinctly separated from the content it is usually well received.
Link it Up With A Template
If you promote several individual pages that are linked to your main page you will attract more traffic than you would by just promoting your main page alone.
Each page should offer links to all your more important pages. This improves your visibility and credibility and demonstrates you are willing to serve as well as receive. People crave support and naturally want to support their sources.
Developing a common webpage template helps establish your brand. Your template also makes navigation easier. Adding a site search engine helps as the your website grows bigger.
Using The Efforts Of Others
You don't have to develop all the content on your own. You can co-operate with others in your niche by offering to publish the content of others in your niche on your website and including a resource box and links back to their websites. Better yet, you can trade your own compelling content with others.
Publishing the content of others and trading content is a win-win proposition. You earn more credibility, offer better solutions and become both a better resource and a destination in the process.
Trading resource links with others in your niche helps boost your "link popularity" over time earning higher placements in the search engines for all of your website and especially for the main pages linked on all your content pages.
Success Rarely happens Overnight
Using content-based marketing over time, you can drive highly targeted traffic to your main page and to each product or service you offer. Most likely they will bookmark your pages and will want to return for more information or in the future. If you offer a newsletter or opt-in mailing list you will also earn more subscribers.
It follows that if you can build many doorways into your site. Each page generates a few highly targeted visitors every day. You end up getting many times more traffic than you otherwise might have attracted to your main index page. This technique will also work to drive traffic to your one or two page mini-sites.
Each page will attract more traffic and will earn higher placements in the search engines because of the narrower focus.
Using this strategy, in five years I have grown from a couple of visitors a day to averaging well over 5,000 visitors a day, and the quality of the traffic generated gets better as time goes on.
You can see an example of template driven content on Internet marketing at the following URL. >> http://smithfam.com/search.html
Best Wishes
Bob
ROBERT SMITH helps thousands successfully market their Internet based home business. You'll find tons of free marketing tools & resources on his Internet Marketing web site at:
.
The Master's WebKit CD Package
You can reach him by phone at: (541) 689-1847 PST, and by email at.
Reprinted from Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
Perhaps my "do everything yourself" approach is not the best approach for every business, especially for existing off-line businesses that are already profitable.
I still prefer a more "hands on" approach for most small and home-based businesses.
When a conventional off-line business starts makes the transition into selling on-line I would consider the following integrated approach. This approach requires more money and less time to accomplish
It's a more aggressive approach that is more suitable if you have access to a proven product that sells.
Purchase Keywords By The Click
One of the first, purchases I would make would be a Real-Name >From Alta-Vista. A "real-name" is a keyword that is unique to your business. Words like your company name can be registered so when someone types it in the Alta-Vista your listing comes up first, above all the other listings. You can use this "real-name" in advertising, it's especially when your domain name is too long or difficult to remember.
For a demonstration try typing "IBM" in Alta-Vista >> http://www.altavista.com/
The real-name keyword "IBM" is first of 2,557,355 pages found it's hard to find a better advertising bargain
Alta-Vista maintains the biggest index of web pages worldwide so gaining a guaranteed number one position in Alta-Vista for a hundred dollars a year is one of the best values available on-line.
More On "Real-Names" >> http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?rnsp=0&realname=realname
I would also suggest setting up an account with Go-To.com. They allow you to bid on keywords. The highest bidder gets the highest position. This and other pay for position search engines are growing their user bases and are a good way to buy targeted traffic by the click. >> http://www.goto.com click on the "Manage Accounts" link.
A newer search engine that may be useful is SearchHound >> http://www.searchhound.com/
Buying clicks is especially powerful if your products fit in a specific niche where you can identify a few unique keywords. I suggest working with Go-To.com first because they have a great system in place for identifying great specific keywords. You might be able to bid as low1 cent per click if your best keywords are not too popular yet.
I understand that AOL also sells keywords, I don't know the details but I have heard that can be profitable but not always affordable. It's outside of my price range. >> http://www.goto.com
Obtain A Good Yahoo Listing
Yahoo usually takes from 3 weeks to forever to list your site. Yahoo can bring you a lot of traffic. I get about 1500 visitors a day from Yahoo as well as about a 1000 from Google.com which is supplies the database engine that delivers search results go along with Yahoo's directory results.
Sometimes the best way to get listed in Yahoo is to get listed in Google. Getting listed in Google is very easy. >> http://www.google.com/
Yahoo has very specific requirements for inclusion in their directory. You can get a quick review but no guarantee for about $200; otherwise it can be difficult to get reviewed at all. >> http://www.yahoo.com/
Software Solutions
There are two software programs that work well. WebPosition Gold guides you through the process of developing high positions in the search engines. Most placement companies use this software. >> http://www.smithfam.com/wpg/index.htm
I also offer a submission program that I couldn't do without. It makes the actual submissions for you and requires very little time or effort. >> http://www.smithfam.com/spider/
Advertising In Newsletters And Ezines
Ads in ezines and newsletters can be a real bargain. The key to placing effective ads is to make every word count. A compelling headline is a MUST. The reader is not interested in reading your ad so your ad must be compelling.
In order for paid ads to pay off you need to be selling a product with enough profit to pay for the ad as well as deliver a profit. If you can start out earning any profit at all you can usually fine-tune the ad in order to at least double or triple your initial results.
The most common mistake is trying to tell the whole story in a one classified ad. You can't do it anyway, so don't even try. Keep your ads as brief as possible.
Don't even bother to trying to sell something directly from your ad, instead target your ad to generate interest and produce leads instead of sales. A good ad leaves them wanting to know more. >> http://www.smithfam.com/aweber.html
Include Programmable Autoresponders
In order to establish credibility and build a relationship with your customers start out offering a series of informational auto-responders. Most sales are made on the 4th through 7th exposure.
You are buying access to your ideal target market. The best way to do that is to choose publications carefully and test every word in your ad.
Please see today's feature article by Harry Fassett, it contains a complete list of ezine publication directories.
Writing Articles
If you are already writing content for your website and for your ezine or newsletter, why not offer it to other publications in order to get more free exposure. Submit your articles to other publications that offer to consider publishing them. You will find some places to submit your original articles in the list of ezine directories included in our feature article below.
I review articles also for this newsletter and for my on-line ezine where I publish about 30 articles a month, send them to
. >> http://www.smithfam.com/news/current.html
Search Engine Strategies
You must be listed in the search engines in order to be successful. The following are the most common reasons that off-line businesses make when taking their conventional business on-line.
Don't Use Frames
The most common problem I see in corporate websites is the use of frames in design. You won't get as much traffic from the search engines when using frames for the following reasons.
1) When using frames your entire website's traffic would depend on the positioning of the main page.
2) Normally when I use frames I maintain all the other pages as stand alone pages leading to the main page on each stand alone page I would have links to all the other pages.
Dump The Flashy Splash Pages
People visit your website mostly for information. They are not impressed with flashy design especially if they have to wait longer for them to load.
All of the studies I have seen show that flashy main pages or splash pages turn off at least 80% of visitors before they fully load. They are slow, not interactive, and can be really annoying. The same is generally true for adding sound to your pages. I can't tell you how many times I have been blasted with someone's background music and couldn't click away soon enough
To see if this is true with your site analyze your server logs. If you find that most of your hits are to your main page and very few visits to your other pages you should suspect that your main page is not working as well as it could.
Look at the total unique visitor count. Then look at the total number of pages displayed. A "sticky" website should deliver several page visited per visitor on average. For example I average 5 pages loaded for each visitor on my site. I am always dreaming up ways to increase that number.
Set Up Doorway Pages
A doorway page is a stand-alone page which is usually not part of the website as a whole. These are most important if you use frames in your design because the pages in your site
A doorway page should focus on answering a single question or respond to a specific keyword phrase. Each doorway page should consist of one to 4 paragraphs of useful information specific to a search term or keyword phrase.
The doorway page should include links to all of the important pages in your website
Start by creating a template like your main page. The content for each page and the list of keywords you choose can be optimized to get better placement in the search engines. This approach is a long-term strategy but still worth doing as almost as 80% of your visitors still visit your pages from a query in a search engine.
Most search engine placement experts charge $30 to $60 dollars an hour for placement services. Even at $100 a page positioning services can be a real bargain should your business be able to afford the cost.
I hope you are able to use some of these strategies in your business.
Best Wishes
Bob
ROBERT SMITH helps thousands successfully market their Internet based home business. You'll find tons of free marketing tools & resources on his Internet Marketing web site at: .
The Master's WebKit CD Package
You can reach him by phone at: (541) 689-1847 PST, and by email at.
Reprinted from Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
I'm going to give you the benefit of what took me years to figure out on my own. This is one path to success in the information age. Every known media uses it to sell virtually anything. I can boil it down to one word.
"Content"
Gold is valuable because it's scarce. Content is information that has a high value to a targeted niche. Your content is information in which you have a special expertise. Its value comes from the fact that you know it and others don't.
The Internet is a pull medium; you "attract" people to your website by offering them your valuable information.
Give First, Then Ask.
Good content has the power to set you above the crowd as an expert. Communicating your passion through your content is your own personal key to attracting targeted traffic to your web site.
Compelling content is evidence of what you have to give - not what you want to get! You can't buy the kind of traffic that free content will attract to your site, not at any price.
If money is water, then content is the pump.
Ninety percent of a commercial website's content should be free, with about 10% directed to revenue generation. The good news is you don't have to come up with all of the content yourself.
Communicate Your Purpose
Nothing attracts traffic better than a clearly communicated mission statement. You should be able to define your mission in a sentence or less. Understanding your mission helps you stay focused.
Developing content supporting your mission is the magic that attracts everything else. Boil your mission down - then communicate it up-front.
Everything you do should support your passion. As you develop content for your website, choose products that serve your niche. If your current content doesn't promote your mission, dump it and develop content that does.
Developing Compelling Content
You do have an opt-in email list don't you? If you don't, that's the first place to start. Offer to update your visitors with information or resources within your special expertise. They will want to be on your mailing list because it was your expertise that attracted them in the first place.
You can write original articles or reports. Start by regularly emailing them to your house list. However, don't stop there, spend time reaching out to others within your niche. Allow them to reprint your work in order to add value their content. Include a little about yourself and your mission at the bottom of each article. If you maintain a website, newsletter or special reports, include appropriate links within a resource box at the bottom.
You can find sources of great content all over the Internet, in newsgroups, forums and on other websites. Negotiate WIN-WIN trades of content with your "so-called" competitors. Empower your content with your own passion, simply by putting it into your own words.
Additional Sources Of Valuable Content
* Give and get testimonials for products you value * Ask others to link to your website's content pages * Offer commissions or discounts to your competitors * Become a re-seller to profit from your off-site links. * Exchange advertising, articles, and reports with others. * nstall scripts to interact with your visitors. * Offer downloads of freeware, shareware and demos. * Video clips, photos, graphics and sound can all be used.
Develop A Portal
A Portal is a website that offers a variety of specific information within a narrow defined niche. Portals offer "added value" to your content by linking your visitors to similar resources.
You can attract traffic using the synergy of a Portal. You can leverage the efforts of others as well by sharing their content. In addition, you can create diversity and additional revenue streams by offering external resources or by selling advertising.
The disadvantage of a Portal strategy is risking sending your valuable traffic elsewhere. You can mitigate this risk by forming web-rings and link exchanges with similar websites. In theory, web-rings and exchanges return at least as many visitors as they cost, with a big advantage going to the better websites
Content Is King
Marketing without content is like offering commercials without the programming. No one is interested. Websites without compelling content simply do not attract or retain visitors. Without a steady stream of return visitors, you will get very few sales.
Content is king, not only on-line but everywhere. It has always has been the key. To attracting targeted customers in virtually all media forms. Use your valuable targeted content to establish your expertise, build relationships, and attract more customers.
Best Wishes
Bob
ROBERT SMITH helps thousands successfully market their Internet based home business. You'll find tons of free marketing tools & resources on his Internet Marketing web site at:
.
The Master's WebKit CD Package
You can reach him by phone at: (541) 689-1847 PST, and by email at.
Reprinted from Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
QUESTION: Bob, I've read your keyword info, but can't find the answer to the following.
How many of the same word can I include in my keywords.
ANSWER: Unfortunately there is no right number. With at least 100,000, ( up from 30,000 last year) new websites going on-line every day, it's no wonder that it's difficult to get a top ten placement.
The search engines don't follow any rules, THEY MAKE THE RULES. They are independent and in every case they will list sites according to their needs not yours. They don't publish their priorities so it's up to us to figure it out.
Most search engines allow you to use the same word in combination with other words as long as the words you use accurately reflect the actual content on the page itself. In most but not all search-engines you can usually get by with up to 7 instances of the same keyword. Just don't use the same keywords over and over anywhere on your pages.
Search engine placement professionals often understand ranking formulas. They are selling their time, often for hundreds an hour to corporations. They can't really guarantee they can get you the ranking you need.
The keywords should reflect the content of the specific page NOT the content of the website.
You want to actually USE the important keywords in the page itself as well as the Meta code. I would suggest choosing one word phrase to concentrate on for each page. If you use 10 keywords your keyword density will actually be reduced overall with each additional word.
In order of importance, use your keyword phrase in combination with your most important keyword several times. FOR EXAMPLE:
TITLE: Use your keyword phrase as the first word in the title; use it twice in the title in combination if possible. The longer the title is the less effective your keyword will be. Several search engines look to your title to establish your keyword density. Your title can range from a single word up to 12 words is OK depending on the specific search engine.
DESCRIPTION: Again use your most Important keyword early in the page description. Keep your description short, 25 words is good 20 words is better. Use nouns (person, Place or thing) as keywords if possible, nouns usually carry the most weight. The search engines don't want to waste the user's time reading listings, they want to send you as directly as possible to the information you seek.
KEYWORDS: Using your keywords in your keyword Meta tag is not as important as it once was. For example you will find that many top sites in Alta-Vista don't use Meta tags, they index the entire page and determine ranking. Be careful not to use keywords that are NOT to be found on your page. Use your main keyword in 3-6 phrases. The search engines will remove pages that overuse a keyword. You may use several spellings and in combination in other phrases.
Use keyword phrases someone might actually type in. Sometimes a common misspelling of a keyword will get you more traffic than the correct spelling because there are fewer people that spell a word incorrectly, Incorrect spelling has been very helpful to me. Use common incorrect spellings in the keyword section and use as many derivatives of the same word as possible. You may also use connecting words like "how-to" that may be typed in the search engines, however don't over-do it as many search engines ignore many common words, "a, the, and, etc.
HEADLINE: Your headlines, especially your first headline and your biggest headlines are usually an accurate description of your page's content. Use your important keywords in the headlines.
BODY TEXT: When you proofread your page look for opportunities to work in your keyword or phrase. The first paragraph is the most important place on the page to include your keywords. The first paragraph may be a more important in ranking than the Meta tags.
IMAGE ALT TAGS: You can use your keyword phrases in your image's alt="tags". This technique is often overlooked however the results can be very helpful.
COMMENTS: Putting your keywords in HTML comments on your page still works but only in a few search engines.
INVISIBLE TEXT: Placing keyword phrases in the same color as the page background is considered spamming (keyword stuffing) by most search engines, some people get around this by changing the color VERY slightly from the actual background color in your page. I list it last because it's the least effective. In fact it may result in the search engine's dropping your pages, even banishment. If you use this technique be very selective in your choice of search engines. The comment must fit the content.
YAHOO
Yahoo is the number one search engine used. This is partly because Yahoo's editors review each website in person. People have become accustomed to finding quality content using Yahoo searches. Submitting to Yahoo may seem difficult, and you MUST read and follow their submission guidelines to the letter in order to get listed. It usually requires several weeks to get your site reviewed.
Only submit your main index.html file to Yahoo and don't submit it over and over, Yahoo will remove pages that are submitted too often, they want you to edit your existing listing rather than resubmit it. It's a good idea to start your title with a number or a word that starts with "a" as their listing results are listed alphabetically.
A good Yahoo listing is worth all the effort. Almost 50% of my traffic comes from one single Yahoo listing. Needless to say I don't change anything with my Yahoo listing.
YAHOO TIP
Recently Yahoo changed the engine they use to list results not already indexed in their directory. They are using Google's engine because they have a huge index based on "Link Density". A good strategy is to submit your pages to Google because you stand a better chance of getting found in Yahoo's results.
Google, Alta-Vista and several others are moving to a rankig criteria based on link density. Link density is a placement strategy based on the theory that the more pages that link to you the more likely the site contains good content. Content still rules on the Internet. The more content and the more popular your content is the higher you ranking will be.
KEYWORD STRATEGY IN A NUTSHELL
1) Start at goto.com to determine which keywords to use. You don't want to use the very most popular keywords. Use keywords that rank in the top ten not the top two. >> http://inventory.go2.com/inventory/Search_Suggestion.jhtml
Type in a prospective keyword and you'll get back several keyword combinations and the number of times they have been used recently. For example if I type in "Internet Marketing" in goto.com I get the following results.
6008 internet marketing 357 internet marketing strategy 170
internet marketing consultant 155 internet marketing course 148 marketing on the internet
I would use all the combinations except "Internet Marketing." as Internet Marketing is too popular to achive a good listing.
Jim Tools also has a great tool for finding additional actual keyword phrases >> http://www.jimtools.com/
MORE RESOURCES WebPosition.com is an excellent web-page positioning software program. The free demo will work on several important search engines. I got a great listing in Alta-Vista using the demo. The software requires going through a learning curve, however anyone can master the software and achieve great placements.
WebPosition.com also publishes an excellent newsletter. They stay on top of current trends and update their software often. Positioning strategy by its nature changes all the time. Remember there are only ten top ten positions, if it was easy everyone would have top listings. >> http://www.smithfam.com/wpg/index.htm
Traffic Seeker Pro is automated submission software. It can automatically extract information from your web pages. Traffic Seeker Pro includes a program to create your Meta tags as well as a tool to spider your entire website and automatically fill out the submission forms saving me hundreds of hours.
Traffic Seeker also submits to about 8,900 Free 4 All and free classified sites. Whenever these free 4 all and free classified sites get indexed the search engines your link density ratings will go up resulting in higher search engine placements. >> http://www.smithfam.com/ts/
I have developed an archive of articles about search engine positioning strategies. >> http://www.smithfam.com/1search.html
A good positioning strategy requires a significant investment of time. Its going to take time to develop a strategy, more time to implement the strategy and it requires more time to keep up to date on the leading edge strategies.
I believe that a good search engine placement strategy is by far the LEAST COSTLY METHOD to develop highly targeted traffic. Using the automated tools I still invest at least 20% of my time developing traffic through the search engines.
The reason why you will hear different experts suggesting conflicting strategies is actually simple. Positioning strategy changes all the time. A strategy that works well for one business might not work at all for another. This is because the search engines change their ranking strategies in order to deliver most accurate results possible.
It makes sense to research the search engines BEFORE you attempt to market any product of service on-line. I choose products that lend themselves to developing traffic via the search engines. If you don't think that is important try typing "free", "MLM" or "Home Business Opportunity" in any search engine and look at the number of search results returned.
Staying on top of the search engines is a lot like surfing, if you move to far in one direction and you lose the wave, too far the other way and the wave swallows you. The trick is to develop YOUR OWN long-term search engine strategy. Find tools and techniques that work; use them until they don't work as well then re-develop your strategy.
Best Wishes
Bob
ROBERT SMITH helps thousands successfully market their Internet based home business. You'll find tons of free marketing tools & resources on his Internet Marketing web site at:
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Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
What is the most vital part of your online business ?
Where should you spend the most effort ?
It has to be your web site . . . your shop front to the outside world.
The design and content of your site is so critical that it's worth getting outside help and opinions.
Now you could pay a big fee to a consultant to advise you - but here's a better idea.
Ask the people who really matter.
Your visitors !
Just add this to your site:
Thanks for visiting.
We'd love to hear your opinion on our site - what did you like - what don't you like - how can we improve it
All your comments will be welcome
Then sit back and get lots of advice - for Free.
But here is how to get super added value from this idea:
1) Make it as simple as possible for your readers to submit their comments. Don't let them have to hunt around for an Email address, use 'Click here' with a 'mailto' format.
2) Thank each contributor individually rather than send a standard automated message. Then you will see how this invariably leads to further exchanges and new promising contacts.
3) Never lose the opportunity to promote your business. In your thank you letter remind the reader - who has already been to your site - about a particular feature such as a free newsletter.
And now ... here's how you can multiply your response dramatically.
4) Some people love to offer their advice, others need that little extra inducement such as a free gift.
There are many free E-books available on the Net.
So just replace that last line with, for example,
All your comments will be welcome and as a thank you we will send you for free a great book about
Internet Marketing filled with fascinating tips.
When you want to send the book you just simply say: "Get your Free gift at www.somewhere.com"
But we can still improve on that !
As we saw in tip (3) always take the opportunity to promote your site, so you can say "Get your Free gift at www.yoursite.com/freegift"
When your reader visits this page, at your own site, he will find the link to the book but you will have surrounded it with your best promotions.
And to make certain he reads them just add "target=new" in the link to the book: this ensures he is returned to your page.
Don't miss Harvey's FREE book
Guru Magic: the Internet marketing book with a UNIQUE twist
And there's more great articles, ideas and tips at the SuperTips website http://www.supertips.com
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
When you act as an affiliate or agent for another company, which means that you receive commission for getting customer orders to the company,you will often be provided with your own personalised web site.
So does this mean that in your ads you can simply refer to that site ?
It does - but here's a better idea.
You should link instead to a page on your OWN site so that
You can provide your own introduction to the product. This can include
additional detail not available in the advert
your own personal experience
a review of the benefits
You can provide links to your own particular business
Your own site traffic statistics will indicate the response to your ad in addition to any stats provided for you by the company
You can submit the page to search engines.
And there's one final advantage: should the affiliate operation be discontinued you can inform and divert visitors at your own web site, rather than have them visit a non-existent page.
Don't miss Harvey's FREE book
Guru Magic: the Internet marketing book with a UNIQUE twist
And there's more great articles, ideas and tips at the SuperTips website http://www.supertips.com
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
There are great benefits in having a web site with a domain name, such as
Portability - you are free to move to a different web host or ISP and leave the name unchanged.
A professional image for your company
Once you decide to make the move from a non-domain site to a domain site, typically with a new provider, you will be faced with the problem of retaining traffic currently visiting your old site.
Such traffic is coming from, for example
Other sites linking to yours
Existing articles or sales letters submitted to newsgroups or forums
Existing ads at other web sites
Here are the steps to take:
Change the individual pages on your old site to point to the new site.
For example,
"We have now moved to another site. Click here to visit new site".
You can find which sites are linking to you, if they are registered in a given search engine, by searching for "link:old address".
You will then need to make contact with these sites and inform them of the new name.
It is likely however that there will still be unidentified sources conveying visitors to your site. What you can do is to ask the visitor where he heard about your site prior to redirecting him. A free gift may provide the incentive which provides this information.
Ideally you should have counters to tell you how many times your old pages are being accessed. Once you feel that no more traffic is reaching your old site or that it does not justify the cost of maintaining it you can cancel the original site.
A final tip - depending on your relationship with your old provider there is no need to announce your intention to move until you are ready.
Don't miss Harvey's FREE book
Guru Magic: the Internet marketing book with a UNIQUE twist
And there's more great articles, ideas and tips at the SuperTips website http://www.supertips.com
Reprinted from
Zongoo.com Daily Press & Consumer Information
