Website Marketing Resource

Each week I receive dozens of article submissions to my websites from aspiring authors, website owners, and entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, I can only use a small fraction of the articles I receive because the writers are making one of the crucial mistakes listed below.

KEY POINT: When you submit articles to a newsletter/ezine publisher or a website owner, you have to remember that we aren’t going to publish YOUR article for OUR customers and visitors unless it is a high quality article that gives something of value.

If you’re writing articles like crazy, but getting very few of them actually published, then you might want to re-evaluate your approach. Are you making one of these crucial mistakes?

1. Poor Subject Matter:

If you’re going to bother to write an article, write about something that we’re interested in reading about. In other words, address a problem and provide a solution. Articles that approach an old problem in a new way or with a new twist work well too — you don’t have to necessarily discover a whole new problem that no one else has ever though of before (If you discover a whole new problem and have the solution you better be thinking of product creation not just an article!).

For the first few months after Yahoo decided to go their own way with natural search (and MSN decided to get serious about the search business), the search results provided by those two could only be described as bizarre. Enough time has now passed that the dust has somewhat settled and there are three main (from a traffic standpoint) sites for quality natural searches.

The term “natural search” is to distinguish true searches, as opposed to paid advertisements which appear in the search results for many search engines these days. I guess you can’t really fault the search engine companies from wanting to make some money (actually, BIG money) selling ad space, but the debate over the virtues of natural search versus paid advertising search is something that could take up a very large book and still have no clear resolution…much like arguments revolving around religion or politics.

Have you ever read an article, intended to explain RSS in simple terms that, begins well, but soon descends into confusing jargon or information overload?

If so, take heart, I was in the same place a few months ago.

Often the best way to understand something, is to use it. RSS is no exception.

So rather than try and create a definitive explanation of RSS, this article will tell you how to use it. I guarantee once you’ve done so, everything will that much clearer.

If a website you visit utilizes RSS, there are a number of ways it will communicate this.

The most common way is to show a little orange button with the letters XML.

Alternatively, you may see words such as “ATOM”, “RSS”, “Site Feed” or variations on these.

What they have in common is that they will link to a webpage that, in most browsers, looks like gibberish.

It doesn’t matter one way or another, what is important is the address of the web page they link to.

Although it may not be practical to put a dollar-sign value on an e-mail address there are many financially-savvy reasons to start collecting e-mail addresses if you haven’t already begun. If you have, keep reading for a few more tips on e-mail address collection at the end of this article.

Communicating by e-mail has a number of benefits:

1. Quick response ?- You’ll be able to measure the effectiveness of your message in about 48 hours, which also means if you are asking for donations to a non-profit organization or selling something online you’ll have money in-hand sooner than you would with direct mail.

2. Learn something ?- A content strategy that tracks the recipient’s activity within the message will teach you something about their interests.

3. More affordable ?- E-mail allows you to communicate for pennies per message instead of the dollars per message it costs to send direct mail.

4. Better results ?- Response rates to e-mail communications are often better than traditional direct mail.

5. Segment & strategize ?- The technology available to deliver thousands of e-mail messages at a time also enables you to segment groups and target specific groups of people with a message just for them.

6. It’s the culture ?- Most professionals who work at a desk every day (and many who don’t) are accustomed to using e-mail as a regular form of communication. According to the 2004 Pew Internet & American Life Project, 93% of online Americans use e-mail.

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When many of my clients first come to me for coaching, they share that one of their biggest challenges is getting enough visitors to their site. Attracting traffic isn’t a cut and dry process - there isn’t one perfect way to do it. But there are many ways that, when used collaboratively, will build you a nice stream of visitors.

To get your marketing wheels turning, check out these 15 simple ways to attract new visitors to your site. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it will give you several fresh ideas to try.

Now, remember - you don’t want to expel effort in getting just anyone to visit your site. You only want people who would likely be interested in what you have to offer. So before you read on, answer this question:

“WHO are your target clients or customers?”

Are they men, women, or both? Do they own a certain type of business or work in a certain profession? Are they young, old, or middle aged? Are they left handed? Do they own pets? Can they juggle?

– Internet Marketing Determines Web Success –

Internet marketing is essential to the success of web sites. You can have a professional looking website but what good can it do if internet users are not able to find it when they need your products and services? That is where an internet marketing campaign comes into play.

“Your website has to magically appear before buyers when they need products and services.”

Internet marketing is similar to designing websites- it does not require much experience to do a good job, just good knowledge and a keen eye for details. It is fundamentally important for a good internet marketer to constantly update himself weekly, if not monthly, of online markets. There are many ways to market your website .

– Find A Competent and Reliable Internet Marketer –

Justify the costs of hiring an Internet Marketer - First of all, getting an internet marketer is not essential for every website. If your website is a business website or a website which you want to generate revenue from, it is good to seek a competent internet marketer to work on your website. The costs spent on your website for internet marketing has to be justified and often, they are justified by having more revenue and traffic to your web site.

A prospect’s mind is an intimate place where something I call The Inner Score Keeping System dwells.

Simply put, it’s a fundamental model that you can use as a metaphor to help explain the way prospects govern their inner decision-making.

It’s true that a potential buyer will profile several things in the background while evaluating an offer. Many little decisions are made along the way that lead up to the BIG yes or no final decision.

Some of these are subconscious thoughts while other times one may even notice their own mind chatter. However, in any case, a decision process is in action.

In the situation where a prospect is evaluating a sales offer, here is an overview of events going on deep inside the prospect’s mind.

While responding to the offer, the prospect instinctively invokes a scoring system, which helps in evaluating the offer.

We ALL have this judgment system inside of us that we respond with.

This Inner Score Keeping System occurs mostly behind the scenes as we don’t focus on the inner process. Although it is transparent to us, it’s still there.

By Catherine Franz

Search engine spiders read and record page titles first. Here are five tips on how you can get the search engine spiders to read your titles and use them in their optimization process:

1. Character count is important: Google’s maximum character count for page titles is 83. Yahoo’s maximum character count is 111.

2. Don’t use filler words like: and, for, the. They are dropped anyway by the search engines.

3. Remove redundant or unsearch worthy words or phrases, for instance: Welcome to, this is about, or Products Page. Anything people would not normally search on. This also uses up the limitations on character count (mentioned in #1 above).

4. Include word plurals, for instance: sales lead and sales leads.

5. Include various spellings or misspellings of the words, for example, saleslead and sales lead, could be used as one word or someone might search on them as two separate words.

Catherine Franz, a Business Coach, specializes in writing, marketing and product development. Newsletters and additional articles: http://www.abundancecenter.com blog: http://abundance.blogs.com

Just yesterday a colleague of mine, whom I’ll call “Sandy,” asked my advice about marketing her new information product online. She saw some of my banner ads on a particular Web site, and wanted to know if she should put her own up there.

I said they didn’t work that well for me, but I suggested she try it, because it was a site often visited by her target market.

“But how do I know it will work for me?” she said.

“You don’t,” I answered.

“What?” she said.

“Test it!” I said. “Try anything for a bit and see how it works for you.”

Test, Test, and Test Again

I then shared with her one of the most important concepts I’ve learned over the past eight months of going to live internet marketing seminars.

Here were guys (yes, all guys, for now : )) who have each made millions — millions! — from selling information online.

But they didn’t just become millionaires out of the blue with their first idea and their first marketing strategies. They had failures. In fact, after talking with them, I learned they had MANY failures.

Personalized search is a hot topic especially since Yahoo! and Microsoft have announced they are aggressively developing this service. Most likely, people will be leery of personalized search if they think that this is just be another way for companies to market to them. Search engine research has shown that there are typically two types of searchers: information seekers and buyers.

Information Seekers

If personalized search is to work for the information seekers, then instead of lots of targeted marketing, the personalized search experience had better offer targeted information that the person can use. A better information search experience without having to bypass a slew of commercial sites would appeal to the information seeker.

Buyers

What if you already have the information you need or don’t want any information, but just want to make an online purchase? For buyers, information-only sites are something to be by-passed in the SERP’s. If personalized search can deliver the products and services the buyer wants, and not just what the marketers want to push before them, then buyers may find some value in personalized search.

Personal Choice