Website Marketing Resource

Why is profiting on the Internet so hard for most people? If there is so much money to made, why do so many continue to struggle? There are secrets to profiting wildly online, and I assume you’re as deserving as the next person, so what rationale could you possibly use for justifying missing out?

First of all, it is helpful to understand the prevailing mentality among not-so-successful Internet marketers, so you can learn to avoid it and join the ranks of the top one percent of marketers who are able to enjoy true lifestyle ? the combination of time and money.

One aspect of this mentality is the false belief among some marketers that is possible to profit long-term without offering potential customers something of real value, let alone underpromising and overdelivering..

If you only learn one thing in your lifetime about business, it should be the full awareness of the extraordinary power of delivering incredible value to your potential customer, whether you wish to sell your own product or make an affiliate sale.

5 Simple Steps to Great Search Engine Rankings
 by: Jason A. Martin

Having your website rank well in the major search engines is crucial to a successful Internet business. However, the information on doing so, which abounds on the Internet, can be perceived as complex and contradictive. Many website owners end up overwhelmed by all the data and simply quit and move on to other areas of promotion. By following the handful of steps presented in this article you will be well on your way to solid rankings.

Primer

Each webpage is its own unit, which has its own title and theme. A theme is most commonly referred to as keywords or a keyword phrase. The theme should be based on the most dominant data for that webpage. Therefore, if you have a webpage that lists ten types of coffee cups, “coffee cups” would be the likely choice for the theme. However, if the theme is too general then you should work to compact it as there will be far too many results in the search engine to contend with. Perhaps your webpage lists ten types of coffee cups which all have American symbols on them. Two of the various possible themes would then be “American coffee cups” and “patriotic coffee cups”. To determine if a theme might be too broad, search for the theme at a popular search engine and see how many results come up. It is typical to see up to a few million results for any theme. However, one hundred million results would be extremely high and a different theme should be chosen.

Duplicate content is one of the problems that we regularly come across as part of the search engine optimization services we offer. If the search engines determine your site contains similar content, this may result in penalties and even exclusion from the search engines. Fortunately it’s a problem that is easily rectified.

Your primary weapon of choice against duplicate content can be found within "The Robot Exclusion Protocol" which has now been adopted by all the major search engines.

There are two ways to control how the search engine spiders index your site.

1. The Robot Exclusion File or "robots.txt" and

2. The Robots < Meta > Tag

The Robots Exclusion File (Robots.txt)
This is a simple text file that can be created in Notepad. Once created you must upload the file into the root directory of your website e.g. www.yourwebsite.com/robots.txt. Before a search engine spider indexes your website they look for this file which tells them exactly how to index your site’s content.

The use of the robots.txt file is most suited to static html sites or for excluding certain files in dynamic sites. If the majority of your site is dynamically created then consider using the Robots Tag.

When is the last time you received an unexpected gift? Or a larger gift than you had expected?

Every quarter, I receive something special from the gardening magazine to which I subscribe: a packet of seeds or a ten page booklet on bird calls or a pair of knee pads for getting down and NOT dirty in my garden.

My cheese service surprises me with a hunk of Gouda, a quality merlot with one third off, a discount coupon to be used by a certain date.

The result? I buy more cheese and wine than I should, and I’ve extended my Gardening magazine subscription to 2010.

Gifts and bonuses pay off: increased sales, and the opportunity to sell more pricy offers to customers who know and trust you.

Here are several suggestions of ways and wherefores for bonuses in your marketing.

1) build your opt-in list by offering a bonus of a specially selected e-book. The book will complement product(s) you intend offering later. Repeat this practice offering quality material, not TIRED material.

Keep Your Web Site Content Relevant
 by: John Metzler

Visitors and search engines love content-rich web sites, but just having a lot of content on your web site is not enough. It all has to be relevant to a main topic with each page or section of the web site having a specific theme (And yes, this includes any resource or links pages the site may have). Each page should have its own topic and content should not stray to a different topic.

If you are promoting your graphic design business and have a page on business card design, stay on the topic and refrain from using a page title such as “Graphic Design company in Vancouver, Canada - business cards, logos, letterheads”. Your want the business card design to be the most important key phrase.

There are two main reasons for content relevancy. The first is so that visitors have an easy time understanding the flow of your web site. Visitors who have to search through multiple pages to find the information they’re looking for won’t be visitors much longer. The average web site user takes about three seconds to decide whether or not stay on a site. A clear idea of what your site is about should be apparent immediately, followed by easy navigation to other pages that display further topics in more detail.

Now that we’ve explored the importance of sending permission-based email, let’s take a closer look at some of the techniques and practices that the most experienced email marketers use. These best practices can make the difference between rapidly growing your list through word of mouth, increasing your sales, and building strong relationships and losing subscribers to list attrition, aggravating customers, and getting your messages blocked before they even reach your recipients.

From Names & Subject Lines

For most people, a majority of emails received are junk email. As a result, each of us has developed a little ritual we follow when checking our email. Initially, most people looked first at the subject lines to determine whether to read a message. Today, however, studies have shown that recipients glance at the "From" field to see if they recognize the sender’s name or email address. Then, only if they recognize the From Name do they look at the "Subject" field to see if it’s of interest to them. This is why we recommend using a From Name that is either your organization’s name or a well-known person within your organization-and to keep that name consistent with every mailing.

Well, an effective link building strategy is not building some 50-100 back links with sites with ‘X’ PR. It is more of getting links from the informative websites that is visited often by the people who could be your future customers. In broad sense the websites related to your focus industry.

Link popularity refers to the number of links pointing to and from related sites and is an extremely important method of improving your site’s relevancy in search engines.

There are three types of links that will increase the link popularity of your site; internal, incoming and, to a lesser extent, outgoing links.

Let’s take a look at each one in more detail.

Internal links

Internal links are amount of links to and from pages in a site. Cross-linking your important related pages is recommended for a better search engine visibility. This assists search engine spiders to find and index your most key pages faster, particularly if some pages are hidden deep within your site.

Site maps

Search engine optimization refers to the technique of making your web pages search engine friendly so that search engines are more easy to understand and analyze your website. Consequently, your site has a better chance to gain high search engine ranking.

However, please be reminded that high search engine ranking is not your only objective, and your objective should be website traffic and conversion. The following advice helps you to achieve the objectives.

1. Make Sure Your Site Will Not Be Penalized

Webmasters realize the importance of attaining top search engine rankings. Hence, they perform many search engine optimization activities on their sites. However, improper implementation of search engine optimization can get your site heavily penalized by search engines. To avoid your website being penalized, webmasters must not commit to the following practices:

- Use of hidden texts or hidden links on web pages.
- Use of cloaking
- Excessive automated queries to search engines like Google
- Web pages loaded with irrelevant words
- Keyword stuffing
- Multiple pages, sub-domains, domains with substantially duplicate content

2. Select Correct Keyword Phrases

As an artist, the key to selling more artwork is maximizing its exposure. The internet is an increasingly popular tool for promoting original art, and if done properly, can be quite profitable.

One of the most effective (and free!) online marketing tools for artists is the blog. Artist blogs provide an easy way to display your art, discuss your creative process, post exhibition announcements and more. Best of all, blogs require no working knowledge of HTML and the search engines love their dynamic content.

What is a blog and how will it sell my art?

A “blog” is a web-based diary or journal. The author of a blog, also known as a “Blogger”, publishes content on a regular basis about a focused topic. These regular postings typically provide a “community” feel by allowing site visitors to post feedback to your journal entries. This mode of communication can deepen relationships with potential art buyers, leading to increased sales.

What does the internet owe me for all my hard work? What am I entitled to in return for the money I spend advertising my business every month? What, in the grand scheme of things, do I rightly deserve for giving 100% of myself to the success of my networking ventures? Not a single thing.

Don’t misunderstand me here. The question is not “What would I like to see in the way of profits from my efforts?” Clearly, I hope and work for the best possible results.

However, my projections and anticipations are an entirely seperate issue for the moment. The matter at hand is the ideal the we deserve success because, after all, the internet “levels the playing field”.

I read a lot of forum posts made by people who “just don’t know what to do” or “are almost out of money (sob)”. I can almost hear the whine in their voice as I read their little pity rant.

I’m sorry to see people struggling with money issues, and I know it can be very frustrating to work so hard at a venture and make zilch after months of perseverance. I’ve been there before, and I’ll probably be there again because that’s life for everyone but the Rockefellars.