Website Marketing Resource

A few months ago I was looking through the search engines to see if my website was even found for certain keywords. Well it wasn’t. I knew something needed to be done, because I was losing potential customers to my Martial Art and Self Defense Classes. As the Internet grows exponentially, the important of a web presence is important.

After reading countless articles, spending hours optimizing every aspect of my site, I finally started to see the results. Targeted geographical keywords hit # 1 in Google. The name of my company has over 9 million references on keyword searches for that name and My url is currently number 7 out of 9 million. Not bad huh?

Well lets take a minute to discuss the basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo use spider-web crawlers to seek out text content of WebPages. Spiders also follow links both internal to a site and external of the site to gather their information. The information they gather is used and to create the information you see when you do a search in a search engine. A complex logarithm based upon textual content, keyword density, inbound and outbound links, alt text, meta tags, etc are used to determine the SERP’s (Search Engine Results).

Newbie Guide to Quick PageRank and Rankings
 by: Robert Flournoy

Being relatively new to search engine optimization techniques, I dreaded confronting the mysterious Google aging penalty which, by some accounts, plagues websites for well over a year. Moreover, I figured that achieving a decent PageRank (not that it really matters) would be as elusive as first page Google rankings. Well, after about 3 months of worrying, I’m fortunate enough to say that my newly registered domain has emerged from the depths of anonymity with a PageRank 5 and more importantly, several first page search result rankings.

Since I never came across an easy to digest newbie “how to guide”, I figure why not share my experiences? With that said, I’d like to layout exactly what I did so other newbies have a framework by which satisfactory PageRank and first page rankings can be achieved. It should come as no surprise that my short-term success was a result of domain selection, unique content and link building.

Domain

1. Keyword rich domain, not too long and yet catchy. Don’t go overboard with keywords and hyphens. The shorter the better.

Marketing should be treated like a science. If you are serious about making money on the Internet, it is absolutely crucial that you spend some time testing your results and refining your approach.

Let me drive this point home. Say for example you have a website that gives you a visit to sale ratio of about 200 to 1. Not really bad as far as web sites go. Most do far worse.

Now, assume that you get 5,000 visits per month. Do the math. That’s 25 sales per month. If your profit from each sale is $50, you are making $1250 per month profit from your website.

Now, what would happen, if by changing one small thing on your website, you could improve that ratio to say 150 to 1. It may not seem significant, but let’s see how it works on paper.

Now, instead of 25 sales per month, you are doing 33. Multiply that by $50 and you are now making $1650 per month. That’s a difference of $400. It’s not like you’re having to work any harder for that additional $400. Your website is always there.

The consumer of today is increasingly bombarded by marketing messages from various media channels. For those that tire of the constant onslaught of ads, they have the option to "opt-out". They may choose not to open up your email ads or simply "mute" their remote control so that they don’t listen to your audio message.

So, how do you, as a online marketer, ensure that your marketing messages reach your customer? What steps can you take so that your marketing campaign is "read", "seen" or "heard"?

The answer: Provide opt-in email marketing.

Opt-in email marketing provides a reasonable, go-to-the-market model that will ensure that your messages are "read", "seen" or "heard".

What is email opt-in marketing all about?

Opt-in marketing is not merely a one-time process about asking your customer to opt-in or opt-out of a specified medium (in this case, your autoresponder emails).

It involves the customer giving you the permission to send your marketing materials and giving you private information on where to send them to. The customer is more likely to "read", "hear" or "see" your marketing message if he/she has already given you the prior permission to do so.

PowerfulYet Simple Persuasion Techniques to Improve Website Marketing
 by: Alan Richardson

The art of getting skeptical prospects to believe the claims you make in your web site promotions, to agree with what you’re saying, is one of the most difficult challenges facing advertisers and copywriters. And bottomline - if the prospect doesn’t believe you, he’s not going to buy from you.

One of the most effective writing methods for getting prospects to believe your claims and turning them into customers is a technique known as ‘Pacing and Leading’. Let me define these terms.

Pacing statements are statements of fact. They are easily proven as true or are commonly accepted as true. Some examples;

· “No effective solution is possible unless one understands the problem”

· “Doctor visits are increasing across Americawith more heart disease and obesity than ever before”

Seethe prospect is consciously aware of the veracity of these statements.

Leading statements are the statements, the claims, you want your prospect to believe, but have not been proven true, or are not commonly accepted as true. Some examples:

· “The use of commonly available vitamins and minerals is insufficient for improving our health.”

The first question most people have is, "What the heck is a "Google?" It is a play on the word "googol," which is the mathematical figure 1 followed by 100 zeros. Depending on the level of your love for math, this is either the greatest or lamest name for a search engine. Regardless, the clever kids at Google have turned it into a cultural standard.

The Beginning

Larry Page and Sergey Brin co-founded Google in January of 1996, then known as BackRub. The boys were in the early twenties and classic computer geeks. Sergey was born in Moscow, alum of the University of Michigan and visiting Stanford. Larry was assigned to be his guide. During this visit, they obviously hit it off or today nobody would give a hoot about linking strategies.

Although two men and the name "BackRub" may raise some questions, the name actually referred to a method for producing search engine rankings. Specifically, the BackRub search engine was designed to analyze the "back links" to a site. Although BackRub developed a following with those in the know, nothing much happened for a few years.

1998

Establishing & maintaining rapport with your online audience is perhaps the single most important ingredient in marketing online. Actually in marketing period, but even more so online because of the lack of personal contact. Rapport is at the core of selling, always has been, always will be.

Let me tell you a little story.

Earlier this week, I got a call from a salesman after leaving a message about getting my stereo repaired. My expensive, but aging Nakamichi CD player is on the fritz, & I’m virtually tuneless. Not good.

It was a notable conversation for anybody interested in the art & science of persuasion. And in particular, the role rapport plays in that process.

My apprehension was this.

I bought the unit about 8 years ago, & I’m thinking. OK, this is going to cost me some money. I could probably now go out & buy a new CD player for the same amount. Just getting an estimate is going to cost me.

So the guy calls up, & immediately starts building rapport with me. How does he do it?

Do you know that you can promote your home business absolutely free of cost? Moreover you can generate quality traffic of the potential prospects who will come to your site because they are interested in what you sell.

Yes! It can be done absolutely free. And it is fun too.

# Write and publish articles ?

This is the best traffic generation method. Write articles centered on the theme of your home business niche and submit them to the article directories. There are thousands of article website that are eager to publish your articles. When you write make it sure that you write an article well. Your article when published will be an unending source of quality traffic.

Your resource box in the end of article will serve as the link to your website. Make your article interesting enough so that the reader reads till the end and is intrigued enough to click the link in the end.

Writing a good article is not that difficult. Think about an idea and expand it. Write as much you can while taking care of the typos and grammatical error. After you finish it close it down and relax. Review it next day for editing. You will be surprised to find the changes you can make to improve your articles.

The Most Underused Component in Web Site Advertising
 by: Alan Richardson

Perhaps the most powerful component of any Web site sales copy is the use of testimonials. Inserted in your sales copy, unbiased words of praise from satisfied customers have the following potent effect for your prospect. Effective testimonials;

Rationalize your prospect’s buying decision

Back up the claims you make for your product or service

Vouch for the benefits of your product or service.

However, despite their clout as an influential sales tool, it is amazing how many clients fail to effectively gather and use this precious commodity. Some tips for including this essential component in your future promotions.

· Whenever a great unsolicited testimonial from a customer crosses your desk, contact the customer for permission to use all or part of it in your marketing campaign. And also request a photo.

· Always include the full name, as well as address under the testimonial.

RSS feeds and blogs (and blog and pinging) are part of the latest hyper-frenzy in internet marketing. Tools and services are mushrooming all over. But there seem to be some rather distorted ideas about all this.

Unless you want to get into the technical stuff, exactly what an RSS feed is doesn’t really matter. Now I care because I use them for a lot of things, work with code and do geeky tech stuff. But from a marketing perspective the underlying technical structure is only relevant because it clues us in on what to use an RSS feed for. And that’s the thing you have to understand.

An RSS marketing feed is not about the feed’s content in most cases. Feeds that carry large quantities of content are usually referred to as data feeds and that’s not what people are going to put in their RSS aggregators. A basic RSS feed consists of a varied number of items with title, a link to the full content source and a short extract or description from the full source. There’s more but that’s the basics.

If you subscribe (by email) to something like the daily New York Times headlines, think about what a typical item looks like: