In online marketing it is critical that you keep up with what is going on in your industry. You do need to know who is doing what - and why they are doing it. You do need to take the time to research potential joint venture partners, products, and competing businesses.
Here are four excellent tools and how to use them.
1) Internet Archive - Also known as "The Way Back Machine"
There are actually many facets to this amazing site but the feature that I use most is the ability to look at a historical snapshot of a website/domain.
There is a box on the site where you can enter any url, and it will show you "snapshots" taken of that website over time.
For example, if your were to enter my domain "williecrawford.com" you would be able to sift through actual archived pages from my website between December 1998 and today. Every week or two a new snapshot of the site was taken and stored in the Archive.org database.
That lets you confirm how long a website has been online (provided it was archived), lets you see how a business evolved over time, and will even reveal to you things a marketer may have been testing that perhaps did not work out.
I use this tool to confirm how long a site/person has been in business. I also use it to confirm how long a person has actually been in a particular niche or discipline. I use it in deciding who to actually form business relationships with.
If you discover practices contrary to your standards, or that a potential business partner has not been totally honest with you, then you certainly want to proceed with caution or look deeper.
2) Google Alerts
You can set an alert to have Google notify you via email any time that it finds a new occurrence of a term online (on a webpage, blog, etc.)
I set alerts for my name, my product names, my urls, and competitors' names/products/urls.
Any time the system finds someone "talking about" the target term, it will send you an email (at whatever frequency you specify) notifying you of the new finds.
Once a day, I get emails notifying me of where my target terms have just been discovered. This points you to places where you are being blogged about, mentioned in articles, discussed on forums, etc. It could alert you to positive or negative publicity that you want to be aware of.
3) Tweet Beeps - Similar To Google Alerts, Only On Twitter.com
Found at http://tweetbeep.com, I use Tweet Beeps the same way that I use Google Alerts. Any time that my target phrases are found in ANY Twitter posts, I get a notification.
That will point out to you discussions that you may want to join for various reasons, to include "damage control," thanking them for a nice compliment, to answer questions about your product, etc.
One creative way to use Tweet Beeps would be to ask those "tweeting" positive things about your product for testimonials, or to become your affiliates.
4) International Association Of Joint Venture Brokers
Found at http://IAJVB.ORG, The International Association of Joint Venture Brokers is a collection of joint venture brokers, super affiliates, product owners, publishers, and webmasters who use the site to keep track of product launches.
The site is a database of upcoming and ongoing product launches, live events, tele-events, and even free giveaways.
Members of the site enter their events into the database as an easy way to recruit new affiliates AND to let other members know that they are "claiming" a given launch date.
Savvy affiliates search through the database looking for product launches in their niche. They understand that when you know about an upcoming launch a month or more in advance, you can do things to gain a tremendous advantage in the search engines before most other affiliates EVER hear rumors of the launch.
During many product launches, your potential customers often go to the search engines to see what reviewers have to say about a given product.
Affiliates who knew about, and obtained a review copy of a product a month in advance, will have their reviews listed at the top of the search engines, getting sales from people who are not even on their lists or have ever previously visited their websites.
Members pull up the listings of other launches planned in their niche and use that information to plan when they will do their own launch. This keeps them from going "head-to-head" with big launches that would otherwise drown out their own. This also shows them launches that they could perhaps piggyback on.
They can often get mention of their product INCLUDED in an upcoming product, or they can plan on releasing their product just as the commotion from a big launch is dying down.
Perhaps your product does the same thing as product with a huge launch planned, but your product is cheaper. You could time your launch to catch potential customers who have a heightened awareness of the problem that your product solves, but who could not afford the other product. You can sell to a lot of customers who actually feel POWERFUL resentment towards the product that they wanted but could not afford.
As you can see good intelligence is extremely valuable. You absolutely must know what is going on in your niche. Fortunately, with the above four tools, it is very easy.
Source From SitePro News
Friday, October 30, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Increase Landing Page Conversion By Testing These 5 Elements
Are you satisfied with the conversion rate on your landing page?
I hope the answer to that question - no matter what your conversion rate is an emphatic "No!" Because no matter what your conversion rate is, there is always the chance that it can be better.
You will never know how much money you are leaving on the table until you start measuring, optimizing and testing. If you are a newbie to website testing, there are two different schools of thought as to how you should get started.
The first says you should start with an "unimportant" page on your site. Use that page as your "practice field" to avoid making any grave mistakes while you are learning the ins and outs of testing. I, on the other hand, subscribe to the second school of thought: start with a high traffic web page so you can see results more quickly. If there is one thing the internet era has done to all of us, it is turned us into a society of "immediate gratification seekers". We want results now. We do not want to wait for the answer.
The danger in starting your website testing with an "unimportant page" is that it will take too long to see any real results. You will grow impatient, You will get bored, and chances are You will abandon the concept of testing before you have had a chance to appreciate its amazing merits.
So let us start with your highest traffic page (if you are scared You will make a mess, start with the second or third highest traffic page - but do not worry. As long as you back up ahead of time, anything you "mess up" can be undone!)
The page components you want to test are:
1. Your Headline
Without a doubt, your headline is the most important component of your web page. it is the first thing your visitor will see when landing on your site. It will either compel him to continue reading, or convince him he is at the wrong page.
And the best part is, it is super easy to test. You do not need to get your graphic artist involved, or even your copywriter. You can easily craft a few benefits-laden headlines to test on your own. I suggest writing at least four different headlines and designing an A/B test to verify the effectiveness of each.
2. Your Opening Paragraph
Just as in offline direct mail marketing, the opening paragraph of your web page sales letter must pull the reader into your copy and make him want to read more.
Because many small business owners have a harder time writing opening paragraphs than headlines, you might want to get your copywriter involved in this one. But again, a simple A/B test can be used to measure the effectiveness of each paragraph.
3. Your Call to Action
There are dozens of different ways to spell out to your reader exactly what you want him to do. And depending on your product, your niche, your audience, etc, some will definitely be more effective than others.
This is one component of your web page that you do not want to leave to chance. Rather than simply copying what other marketers are doing, choose several different calls to action and test them each against each other.
4. Your Product Benefits
Your sales copy will be most effective when you list the most important benefit first. But Wait!! Your prospect might have a different opinion of which is the most important benefit.
Try varying the order of your benefit statements to test which positioning converts at the highest rate. This could also provide some valuable insight into rewriting your entire sales letter for higher conversions - or writing the sales letter for your next product.
5. Your Graphics and Visual Elements
They say a picture is worth a thousand words - but what is the wrong picture worth? Some colors, graphics and photographs can actually hurt your conversion rate. Some can provide a so-so conversion rate. While others can have your conversion rate soaring through the roof.
The only way You will know for sure that you are using the right visual elements is to test. A multivariate test will allow you to test several different elements simultaneously to ensure you have the right combination.
Once these initial tests are done, it will be time to move on to more tests. Never rest on your laurels and never assume that your conversion rate is as good as it could possibly be. There will always be room for improvement - and room for more testing.
Source From Entireweb Newsletter
I hope the answer to that question - no matter what your conversion rate is an emphatic "No!" Because no matter what your conversion rate is, there is always the chance that it can be better.
You will never know how much money you are leaving on the table until you start measuring, optimizing and testing. If you are a newbie to website testing, there are two different schools of thought as to how you should get started.
The first says you should start with an "unimportant" page on your site. Use that page as your "practice field" to avoid making any grave mistakes while you are learning the ins and outs of testing. I, on the other hand, subscribe to the second school of thought: start with a high traffic web page so you can see results more quickly. If there is one thing the internet era has done to all of us, it is turned us into a society of "immediate gratification seekers". We want results now. We do not want to wait for the answer.
The danger in starting your website testing with an "unimportant page" is that it will take too long to see any real results. You will grow impatient, You will get bored, and chances are You will abandon the concept of testing before you have had a chance to appreciate its amazing merits.
So let us start with your highest traffic page (if you are scared You will make a mess, start with the second or third highest traffic page - but do not worry. As long as you back up ahead of time, anything you "mess up" can be undone!)
The page components you want to test are:
1. Your Headline
Without a doubt, your headline is the most important component of your web page. it is the first thing your visitor will see when landing on your site. It will either compel him to continue reading, or convince him he is at the wrong page.
And the best part is, it is super easy to test. You do not need to get your graphic artist involved, or even your copywriter. You can easily craft a few benefits-laden headlines to test on your own. I suggest writing at least four different headlines and designing an A/B test to verify the effectiveness of each.
2. Your Opening Paragraph
Just as in offline direct mail marketing, the opening paragraph of your web page sales letter must pull the reader into your copy and make him want to read more.
Because many small business owners have a harder time writing opening paragraphs than headlines, you might want to get your copywriter involved in this one. But again, a simple A/B test can be used to measure the effectiveness of each paragraph.
3. Your Call to Action
There are dozens of different ways to spell out to your reader exactly what you want him to do. And depending on your product, your niche, your audience, etc, some will definitely be more effective than others.
This is one component of your web page that you do not want to leave to chance. Rather than simply copying what other marketers are doing, choose several different calls to action and test them each against each other.
4. Your Product Benefits
Your sales copy will be most effective when you list the most important benefit first. But Wait!! Your prospect might have a different opinion of which is the most important benefit.
Try varying the order of your benefit statements to test which positioning converts at the highest rate. This could also provide some valuable insight into rewriting your entire sales letter for higher conversions - or writing the sales letter for your next product.
5. Your Graphics and Visual Elements
They say a picture is worth a thousand words - but what is the wrong picture worth? Some colors, graphics and photographs can actually hurt your conversion rate. Some can provide a so-so conversion rate. While others can have your conversion rate soaring through the roof.
The only way You will know for sure that you are using the right visual elements is to test. A multivariate test will allow you to test several different elements simultaneously to ensure you have the right combination.
Once these initial tests are done, it will be time to move on to more tests. Never rest on your laurels and never assume that your conversion rate is as good as it could possibly be. There will always be room for improvement - and room for more testing.
Source From Entireweb Newsletter
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Improve Every Aspect Of Your Business With Twitter!
You have seen countless articles and e-books written about it, but do you know how to market online with Twitter? If you do not, you are not alone. Most marketers are still boggled when it comes to using Twitter in their promotion efforts. The main reason is because marketers do not realize the sheer ingenuity of our favorite microblog's 140-character limit communication.
The reality is that the internet is information overload for most people. The genius of Twitter is that communication is forced into small chunks of information which most people can willingly digest. Presented with the option, people are more inclined to read a sentence or two as opposed to a long, involved blog entry or email! In this article, I will demonstrate how Twitter can not only be used by your business for marketing purposes, but also for customer service, product development, free publicity, and valuable access to experts!
Twitter for Marketing
If marketing entails everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential customers, including all communication, relationship building, and brand recognition - Twitter makes it instant.
For this reason, it is the perfect social networking platform for announcing sales, specials, and promotions. Many larger companies, such as Dell, have a Twitter account to announce sales as soon as they become available. As a small business owner, you can harness the power of Twitter this way too!
If you can get hundreds, or even thousands of people interested in your niche to follow your company's tweets, you have a targeted list of prospects at your fingertips. Simply tweet a brief detail or two about the special, and include your link. It is that simple!
A list of businesses on Twitter:
http://www.twibs.com
As a marketer, you know that the speed at which you can get your message out to your potential clients before your competition can reach them essentially determines your success. Twitter affords marketers the advantage of communicating with thousands of new prospects at the speed of light, and allows them to see your offer in real time.
Twitter for Customer Service
Many companies are designating human resources and time exclusively to enhance their customer service via social networking. Companies can find out the challenges, questions, and troubles that their clients are facing by reading their tweets to others.
Customer service representatives or public relations liaisons can immediately resolve any problems by engaging themselves in the conversation. Customer service representatives who engage their clientele via Twitter improve their company's transparency, and show that they not only are concerned about their customers, but they also care about their brand.
Twitter for Product Development
Twitter can be used as an instant survey tool for product development. You can simply ask the likes and dislikes of others with a simple tweet and can incorporate or improve your current products or services.
It is catching on. In fact, software development corporation Eclipse is working on a Twitter plug-in called Twitterclipse, which will tweet announcements, findings and questions within their development team. It is faster and more convenient than email, and also avails an RSS feed for posting their development updates within the Eclipse website.
Twitter for Free Publicity and Brand Awareness
As you know, free publicity is priceless - and it can be difficult for a small business to get access to the media. Companies regularly pay millions of dollars to imprint their brand in the minds of prospective clients.
With Twitter's personalization features you can place your brand or company logo on your Twitter page. Because of the viral nature of Twitter, traffic and publicity comes for free.
People will associate your Tweets with your company, and their trust will grow in your products and services.
Twitter Gives You Access to Important People
No other media gives you direct access to leaders in your market like the internet does. Twitter gives you personal access to leaders and mentors that you have only ever dreamt of connecting with.
I bet you did not think you would ever get the chance to be 1-on-1 with Brian Tracy on Twitter, right?
http://twitter.com/BrianTracy_
---
Editor's Note: Several Twitter related sites provide a means to identify Twitter users in your geographical area or relevant to your business:
http://mrtweet.net
http://www.twellow.com
http://justtweetit.com
http://www.twitterlocal.net
---
Simply follow them, and open up the channels of communication with your tweets! The leaders of your field impart valuable knowledge that you can apply to your online business, and can be a great source of free marketing tips.
Improve Every Aspect Of Your Business With Twitter!
Twitter is extremely simple, but this fact also adds to its versatility. You may not realize the effect of Twitter on your business when your followers are at a single digit - but just imagine the scope of your business reaching tens of thousands of followers! Many online businesses are using Twitter now... what are you waiting for?
Source From SitePro News
The reality is that the internet is information overload for most people. The genius of Twitter is that communication is forced into small chunks of information which most people can willingly digest. Presented with the option, people are more inclined to read a sentence or two as opposed to a long, involved blog entry or email! In this article, I will demonstrate how Twitter can not only be used by your business for marketing purposes, but also for customer service, product development, free publicity, and valuable access to experts!
Twitter for Marketing
If marketing entails everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential customers, including all communication, relationship building, and brand recognition - Twitter makes it instant.
For this reason, it is the perfect social networking platform for announcing sales, specials, and promotions. Many larger companies, such as Dell, have a Twitter account to announce sales as soon as they become available. As a small business owner, you can harness the power of Twitter this way too!
If you can get hundreds, or even thousands of people interested in your niche to follow your company's tweets, you have a targeted list of prospects at your fingertips. Simply tweet a brief detail or two about the special, and include your link. It is that simple!
A list of businesses on Twitter:
http://www.twibs.com
As a marketer, you know that the speed at which you can get your message out to your potential clients before your competition can reach them essentially determines your success. Twitter affords marketers the advantage of communicating with thousands of new prospects at the speed of light, and allows them to see your offer in real time.
Twitter for Customer Service
Many companies are designating human resources and time exclusively to enhance their customer service via social networking. Companies can find out the challenges, questions, and troubles that their clients are facing by reading their tweets to others.
Customer service representatives or public relations liaisons can immediately resolve any problems by engaging themselves in the conversation. Customer service representatives who engage their clientele via Twitter improve their company's transparency, and show that they not only are concerned about their customers, but they also care about their brand.
Twitter for Product Development
Twitter can be used as an instant survey tool for product development. You can simply ask the likes and dislikes of others with a simple tweet and can incorporate or improve your current products or services.
It is catching on. In fact, software development corporation Eclipse is working on a Twitter plug-in called Twitterclipse, which will tweet announcements, findings and questions within their development team. It is faster and more convenient than email, and also avails an RSS feed for posting their development updates within the Eclipse website.
Twitter for Free Publicity and Brand Awareness
As you know, free publicity is priceless - and it can be difficult for a small business to get access to the media. Companies regularly pay millions of dollars to imprint their brand in the minds of prospective clients.
With Twitter's personalization features you can place your brand or company logo on your Twitter page. Because of the viral nature of Twitter, traffic and publicity comes for free.
People will associate your Tweets with your company, and their trust will grow in your products and services.
Twitter Gives You Access to Important People
No other media gives you direct access to leaders in your market like the internet does. Twitter gives you personal access to leaders and mentors that you have only ever dreamt of connecting with.
I bet you did not think you would ever get the chance to be 1-on-1 with Brian Tracy on Twitter, right?
http://twitter.com/BrianTracy_
---
Editor's Note: Several Twitter related sites provide a means to identify Twitter users in your geographical area or relevant to your business:
http://mrtweet.net
http://www.twellow.com
http://justtweetit.com
http://www.twitterlocal.net
---
Simply follow them, and open up the channels of communication with your tweets! The leaders of your field impart valuable knowledge that you can apply to your online business, and can be a great source of free marketing tips.
Improve Every Aspect Of Your Business With Twitter!
Twitter is extremely simple, but this fact also adds to its versatility. You may not realize the effect of Twitter on your business when your followers are at a single digit - but just imagine the scope of your business reaching tens of thousands of followers! Many online businesses are using Twitter now... what are you waiting for?
Source From SitePro News
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
How & Why You Should Perform An SEO Audit On Your Website
What makes or break an SEO campaign is knowing where to start, what is important and what is simply not worth the time. Resources are never infinite. If you are not careful you can spend them spinning wheels and tweaking things that will have no real effect on your search traffic. Plan effectively, and you will achieve true growth and a positive return on your investment.
The difference lies in understanding how search engines work - how they crawl the web and how they use that data to rank web pages - and how your website does or does not meet these criteria.
The Technical Audit
The first order of action is the technical audit of your site. Tackle these issues first because this represents the foundation of your site. Some technical problems can render web pages invisible to search engines. Identifying and resolving these issues upfront is critical.
A technical audit should include:
Code cleanliness / content visibility
• Does the site use JavaScript heavily?
• Is the code bloated?
• Is content generated by JavaScript or otherwise not SEO-friendly?
File size / page load time
Navigation structure
• Is the navigation Flash or JavaScript driven? If so, does it degrade gracefully for browsers
that do not support these technologies (like a search crawler)?
URL structure
• Are there session ID's in the page URLs?
• Are the URLs long and do they include multiple variables and parameters?
• Do the URLs contain keywords?
Title tag / headlines
• Does the site have unique titles and headlines on each page (sometimes content
management and eCommerce systems were not built with this feature)?
Current index
• Have search engines fully indexed the site? If not, why?
Cannibalization issues
• Are there multiple URLs for the home page or other pages?
This technical audit can sometimes uncover serious problems.
If your site includes session IDs in all URLs, for example, you have got a major problem. Search engines do not index URLs that include session IDs. Some older content management and eCommerce systems were built this way, and, to put it frankly, there is no point in launching an SEO campaign if this can not be fixed.
Other problems are not quite as detrimental to SEO but still should get attention.
If your site navigation is generated by JavaScript and does not occur as standard HTML in your source code, it is likely that search engines are not seeing it. This means they also are not reading the words in your links - an important signal for page relevance. In the worst cases, they have not indexed pages linked to this way at all. Rebuilding your navigation to be SEO-friendly can yield positive results without requiring significant costs.
The Content Audit
Having content that is relevant to your site topic and attracts links is a crucial piece of the puzzle. This is a bit simpler than the technical aspects, but simple does not mean easy. Your content can target keywords, but the user experience must always come first. When in doubt, sacrifice keyword use for better copy.
Some of the content aspects that are important:
Keyword targeting
• Do your title tags include relevant keywords?
• What about your heading tags and body copy?
• Does your site navigation use relevant keywords or more general language like "services?"
Link attraction
• Do you have link-worthy content? Has anybody linked to it yet?
Readability
• This gets more into usability issues than SEO, but it is vastly important. Does your content
grab the reader? How well does it convert visitors into customers?
While targeting keywords is important, the general rule here is never to sacrifice your user's experience for SEO. They do not like it, and they will get cranky and leave. And forget about attracting links if users do not enjoy your pages.
The Trust Audit
Why do search engines rank some pages over others? The simple answer: they trust that the content will satisfy the user.
Google's algorithm has always been focused centrally on signals of trust. There is money in ranking well, and for this reason webmasters, bless our hearts, can not be trusted to be honest or objective about how much trust we deserve.
This is why Larry and Sergey (Google founders) decided to focus on links as a signal of trust and authority. The basic idea is that the more links that point to a page, the more authoritative and trustworthy the page. The other major search engines followed suit.
Over time, since links were "out of the bag" and link building schemes erupted across the web, search engines have honed their algorithms to use other signals to determine trust.
Still, links are the single most important aspect of trust - and, in almost every case, SEO as a whole. Even tiny sites with just a few, poorly-optimized pages can rank well for competitive keywords if they simply have a powerful enough inbound link profile.
What to look at in evaluating website trust:
Inbound link profile
• How many links does the website have?
• Are any of these links on websites with a high PageRank or a large number
of inbound links?
• What anchor text is used in inbound links?
• What pages do these links point to?
Site age
• How long has the site been live?
• How long has the domain been registered? The older the better.
• How long is the domain registered for? The longer the better.
Outbound links
• Does the website link to other websites?
• Are any of the websites this website links to spam? Do they look to have been penalized by
Google? Are they in a "bad neighborhood?"
• Has the webmaster obviously engaged in link schemes, reciprocal or otherwise?
These questions are not always easy to answer, but they are important. Many of them are crucial.
Before you start researching keywords, creating content, building links or otherwise optimizing your website (or hire a professional to do so), you need to know where you stand and what to expect moving forward. The answers are not always pleasant, but if building the volume and relevance of your search engine traffic matters to you these answers matter too.
Source From SitePro News
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Search Engines and the Art of Niche Marketing
One Page, One Subject
Building a new website and looking for a good search engine results ranking is getting to be a major challenge now that most subjects you can possibly think of are covered by a variety of pages. All the major subjects such as travel, sport, news and sales are covered by millions of web pages. This means that getting top search ranking is really difficult to achieve, and hence the growth in SEO services as authors battle it out for top spot on those all important Google results pages.
Even when your subject matter is a little off the beaten track, you have probably found you have locked in a search results battle with all sorts of other sites and related topics. This is where the niche window starts to open, when you see other results coming up next to yours that are not offering quite the same service or information that you are. There is really no need to be in competition with these sites.
As the web develops and expands, the chances are steadily increasing that a user searching and finding a site will find one where the content is an exact match with their interest. For web authors this means one thing - it is no longer sufficient to produce one page covering multiple topics - you need to split up your content. Doing this is simple enough. Read through your content and split it up into the different topics or aspects that you cover. Now filter these sections of the information onto different pages, each keyworded to their own niche. Of course you should take care to have a home page that retains the address of your existing one, so that you do not lose that hard won place in google's index.
The Smaller the Niche, the Higher the Rank
Lets imagine you had a site about shopping bags. You could cover size, strength and design of bags on different pages. This way, someone searching for shopping bag strength can find a page right on topic, and Google will rank it very highly for relevance.
The more comprehensively a subject is covered on the web, the smaller the niche you need to target. This provides a chance to create a high ranking page even on a subject as comprehensively covered as a pro sport, provided you are covering information on a small enough niche. Maybe just the history of shirt designs for a particular football team, or the length of downhill courses at different winter Olympics locations.
Do not Contaminate Your Content
A friend of mine built a web site to sell his rental apartment in Cyprus. On his front page he also included a short list of places where you can buy flights to the island. He thought that by doing this his page might come up when people searched for flights, but of course there is no possible chance he could rank ahead of all the airlines and travel companies, so in practice all he ha3/10/09d achieved was to reduce the relevancy of his site to the core subject of rental apartments in Cyprus. Of course his customers may well want flight advice and he should provide that, but it must be on a separate page.
The point you need to remember is that however tempted you might be, do not try to cover a second subject on the same page, because this will reduce the relevancy of the page when someone searches on your core content.
Let Google Do Their Job
Remember what Google's job is - to bring the best information to the top of the results page. Of course we can spend a lot of time trying to work out what Google's definition of 'best' is, but you do not need to worry about that. For a niche site the definition of best is what you and your readers think it should be. It is up to Google to develop their rules to bring your site to its rightful place in their search rankings, and we all know they are constantly changing their rules to try and achieve this. There is one simple rule that will hold firm through all the rule variations - a site dedicated to the subject a web user searches for will always be rated better than a site covering a wide range of information. You can use this knowledge to create successful new websites. A page can cover the smallest imaginable subject niche and still be a success, so if you have knowledge on a narrow subject, and one that could be of interest to other people, this could be an ideal subject for a website. Given the size of the web and the number of users, what subject could there be that is not of interest to anyone?
Of course, the first test you should always do with a new web project is to do a trial search before you write a single word, and see how well covered the subject is already. The more coverage a subject already has, the smaller the niche you will need to target. My most successful websites have been created in response to failed searches for quality information, times when I can not find what I want on the web. I have then gathered the information I want for myself, by researching around the web, libraries and friends for bits of information, done my own trial and error research and assembled all these results into a brand new collection of knowledge. All that is left is to write it.
Your Readers Will Help You Develop Your Site
Website content development only really starts in earnest once you have got a new site moving up the rankings on a niche topic and developing a readership. Make sure your contact details are easy to find because readers tend to get in touch with additional information and questions. This helps you build the content and ensures you are targeting the information people want.
Source From SEO News
Building a new website and looking for a good search engine results ranking is getting to be a major challenge now that most subjects you can possibly think of are covered by a variety of pages. All the major subjects such as travel, sport, news and sales are covered by millions of web pages. This means that getting top search ranking is really difficult to achieve, and hence the growth in SEO services as authors battle it out for top spot on those all important Google results pages.
Even when your subject matter is a little off the beaten track, you have probably found you have locked in a search results battle with all sorts of other sites and related topics. This is where the niche window starts to open, when you see other results coming up next to yours that are not offering quite the same service or information that you are. There is really no need to be in competition with these sites.
As the web develops and expands, the chances are steadily increasing that a user searching and finding a site will find one where the content is an exact match with their interest. For web authors this means one thing - it is no longer sufficient to produce one page covering multiple topics - you need to split up your content. Doing this is simple enough. Read through your content and split it up into the different topics or aspects that you cover. Now filter these sections of the information onto different pages, each keyworded to their own niche. Of course you should take care to have a home page that retains the address of your existing one, so that you do not lose that hard won place in google's index.
The Smaller the Niche, the Higher the Rank
Lets imagine you had a site about shopping bags. You could cover size, strength and design of bags on different pages. This way, someone searching for shopping bag strength can find a page right on topic, and Google will rank it very highly for relevance.
The more comprehensively a subject is covered on the web, the smaller the niche you need to target. This provides a chance to create a high ranking page even on a subject as comprehensively covered as a pro sport, provided you are covering information on a small enough niche. Maybe just the history of shirt designs for a particular football team, or the length of downhill courses at different winter Olympics locations.
Do not Contaminate Your Content
A friend of mine built a web site to sell his rental apartment in Cyprus. On his front page he also included a short list of places where you can buy flights to the island. He thought that by doing this his page might come up when people searched for flights, but of course there is no possible chance he could rank ahead of all the airlines and travel companies, so in practice all he ha3/10/09d achieved was to reduce the relevancy of his site to the core subject of rental apartments in Cyprus. Of course his customers may well want flight advice and he should provide that, but it must be on a separate page.
The point you need to remember is that however tempted you might be, do not try to cover a second subject on the same page, because this will reduce the relevancy of the page when someone searches on your core content.
Let Google Do Their Job
Remember what Google's job is - to bring the best information to the top of the results page. Of course we can spend a lot of time trying to work out what Google's definition of 'best' is, but you do not need to worry about that. For a niche site the definition of best is what you and your readers think it should be. It is up to Google to develop their rules to bring your site to its rightful place in their search rankings, and we all know they are constantly changing their rules to try and achieve this. There is one simple rule that will hold firm through all the rule variations - a site dedicated to the subject a web user searches for will always be rated better than a site covering a wide range of information. You can use this knowledge to create successful new websites. A page can cover the smallest imaginable subject niche and still be a success, so if you have knowledge on a narrow subject, and one that could be of interest to other people, this could be an ideal subject for a website. Given the size of the web and the number of users, what subject could there be that is not of interest to anyone?
Of course, the first test you should always do with a new web project is to do a trial search before you write a single word, and see how well covered the subject is already. The more coverage a subject already has, the smaller the niche you will need to target. My most successful websites have been created in response to failed searches for quality information, times when I can not find what I want on the web. I have then gathered the information I want for myself, by researching around the web, libraries and friends for bits of information, done my own trial and error research and assembled all these results into a brand new collection of knowledge. All that is left is to write it.
Your Readers Will Help You Develop Your Site
Website content development only really starts in earnest once you have got a new site moving up the rankings on a niche topic and developing a readership. Make sure your contact details are easy to find because readers tend to get in touch with additional information and questions. This helps you build the content and ensures you are targeting the information people want.
Source From SEO News
Thursday, October 15, 2009
How to Cut Marketing Costs without Endangering Business Growth
As business owners and/or marketers, we are all under pressure to cut costs. Unfortunately, many business owners get so intent on reducing costs, they lose sight of what it is going to do to the business. It is hard to grow - or even survive - if you do not have any customers. Reducing marketing costs without screwing up your ability to grow is easier than you might think.
Here are five ways to do that.
1. Eliminate waste
Over the years I have looked at hundreds of marketing programs, and I can tell you honestly that nearly all of them have some kind of hole that either drains money directly or allows leads to be lost.
Before you cut anything, take a good hard look at what you are doing. Are there programs that are not delivering the results you anticipated? Fix them or get rid of them. Is there anything that ca not be traced to increasing sales opportunities? Unless you have a pile of extra money, now is not the time to be spending money on marketing efforts that do not generate more leads or develop the ones you have.
2. Make fewer mistakes
Another way to say this is: turn to people who know what they are doing.
Marketing - which has never been exactly simple - has changed a lot in the past few years. Customers and prospects are in charge now, and they are looking for you online. If you are not on the internet, you are not in the game. While I admire business owners who try to figure marketing out for themselves, it wastes a lot of time and it leads to mistakes that could be avoided with some experience.
You may not need a proven marketing pro on staff, but if you do not have one somewhere on your team you are probably wasting money.
3. Nurture what you have got
Successful lead generation programs bring in people in different stages of the buying process. Some are ready to commit more to you than others are. Some are ready to talk to a sales person and some are not.
Think of any lead generation activity you have ever done: search marketing, email, advertising, telemarketing, networking, trade shows - it does not matter. Were all of the people who responded ready to schedule a two-hour demo of your product? Of course not.
But that doesnot make those people any less likely to buy from you in the future as long as you maintain a relationship with them.
If you are one of those businesses that has a bunch of inactive prospects sitting in a database (or on your desk), you may be better off nurturing those people than paying to find new ones. And nurturing leads can be a lot less expensive than generating them in the first place.
4. Increase conversions - not just inbound leads or traffic
This point is similar to the one above it, but it is important enough to look at from a different angle.
Let us say you have 2000 visitors a month going to your website and 60% of them leave your homepage without going anywhere else. Which do you think would be cheaper, changing your website so that an additional 20% (400 visitors) stay on your site or doubling traffic to the site? The results are the same.
(Hint: if you picked the first option, you are right).
Complex purchases - such as technology, high ticket goods, and on-going services - are made up of many different conversion points where the buyer decides whether or not to spend any more time with you. Each of those conversion points can be tweaked to pass more prospects through and provide a better return on your investment.
5. Consider outsourcing
To have a successful marketing program today requires skills in multiple disciplines - some of which did not even exist a decade or so ago. For example, you need:
Website strategy and development, search engine optimization, paid search marketing, prospect conversion optimization, lead nurturing and web marketing - just to name a few.
Staffing an in-house team with all of this expertise would cost more than most small to mid-sized businesses are willing or able to invest. Yet you can easily - and cost effectively - get this expertise from an outside firm or group of individuals.
It is worth looking into.
Source From Entireweb Newsletter.
Here are five ways to do that.
1. Eliminate waste
Over the years I have looked at hundreds of marketing programs, and I can tell you honestly that nearly all of them have some kind of hole that either drains money directly or allows leads to be lost.
Before you cut anything, take a good hard look at what you are doing. Are there programs that are not delivering the results you anticipated? Fix them or get rid of them. Is there anything that ca not be traced to increasing sales opportunities? Unless you have a pile of extra money, now is not the time to be spending money on marketing efforts that do not generate more leads or develop the ones you have.
2. Make fewer mistakes
Another way to say this is: turn to people who know what they are doing.
Marketing - which has never been exactly simple - has changed a lot in the past few years. Customers and prospects are in charge now, and they are looking for you online. If you are not on the internet, you are not in the game. While I admire business owners who try to figure marketing out for themselves, it wastes a lot of time and it leads to mistakes that could be avoided with some experience.
You may not need a proven marketing pro on staff, but if you do not have one somewhere on your team you are probably wasting money.
3. Nurture what you have got
Successful lead generation programs bring in people in different stages of the buying process. Some are ready to commit more to you than others are. Some are ready to talk to a sales person and some are not.
Think of any lead generation activity you have ever done: search marketing, email, advertising, telemarketing, networking, trade shows - it does not matter. Were all of the people who responded ready to schedule a two-hour demo of your product? Of course not.
But that doesnot make those people any less likely to buy from you in the future as long as you maintain a relationship with them.
If you are one of those businesses that has a bunch of inactive prospects sitting in a database (or on your desk), you may be better off nurturing those people than paying to find new ones. And nurturing leads can be a lot less expensive than generating them in the first place.
4. Increase conversions - not just inbound leads or traffic
This point is similar to the one above it, but it is important enough to look at from a different angle.
Let us say you have 2000 visitors a month going to your website and 60% of them leave your homepage without going anywhere else. Which do you think would be cheaper, changing your website so that an additional 20% (400 visitors) stay on your site or doubling traffic to the site? The results are the same.
(Hint: if you picked the first option, you are right).
Complex purchases - such as technology, high ticket goods, and on-going services - are made up of many different conversion points where the buyer decides whether or not to spend any more time with you. Each of those conversion points can be tweaked to pass more prospects through and provide a better return on your investment.
5. Consider outsourcing
To have a successful marketing program today requires skills in multiple disciplines - some of which did not even exist a decade or so ago. For example, you need:
Website strategy and development, search engine optimization, paid search marketing, prospect conversion optimization, lead nurturing and web marketing - just to name a few.
Staffing an in-house team with all of this expertise would cost more than most small to mid-sized businesses are willing or able to invest. Yet you can easily - and cost effectively - get this expertise from an outside firm or group of individuals.
It is worth looking into.
Source From Entireweb Newsletter.
Monday, October 12, 2009
9 Hot Tips to Improve Site Conversions
"Site conversion" is a very dry and unexciting way of saying "how to get more profits from the same amount of website traffic." Is not that a more upbeat way of expressing it? Who does not want to get more profits from the same number of visitors?
Increasing your conversion rate is a straightforward, even dramatic way of positively impacting your bottom line. It really cannot be emphasized too much that any improvement at all in your conversion rate means additional revenue that is total profit.
Remember this fact when you are told that the way to "make more money" is to invest in more traffic-generating schemes (and dreams, at times). Before you start spending more money to generate additional traffic, you need to do as much as you can with the traffic you are already getting. If you keep the horse ahead of the cart in your planning, you will have an efficient, stable, measurable conversion rate from which you can extrapolate x amount of additional profit from y amount of new-traffic generation.
The following tips are not in any particular order (except for Number 1), and can be modified and reordered to suit your particular situation. Take ownership of the change and improvement, and make sure everyone involved understands the importance of maximizing every revenue source, beginning with the existing ones!
1. Before you can repair or improve something, you have to have a good way of measuring where you are, what you are doing, where you are going, etc. You can sign up for a free Google Analytics account and use other low- and no-cost tools to develop your "analytics" and "metrics" - essentially fancy words that tell you how you're doing with numbers.
2. Create landing pages that are both keyword- and campaign-specific. Try separating any related pay-per-click keywords into smaller and tighter groups, and then create the landing pages for each of those new subgroups. Conversions will almost certainly be better if keywords, advertising approaches and landing pages are thematically related and tightly integrated.
3. Test different headlines and copy writing. This might be the most effective way of quickly showing improvements. Therefore, you need to write compelling copy or find someone else who can do it for you. There is plenty of free advice about this (much of it worth every penny you pay for it), but the importance of copywriting as it affects site conversions cannot possibly be overstated. This is key.
4. It is very important to test your pricing, as it really does make a huge difference in conversions. If your goal is to maximize customer value, then the highest converting price may not actually be the optimal one. In other words, if you raise your price by 50% and only see a 10% reduction in conversions, you will more than compensate for the drop. Going the other direction, if you lower the price 15% and this doubles or triples your ratio, your gain compensates for your price reduction. Test your prices, and test them in both directions.
5. Website load time has become an oft-overlooked item in this age of "broadband everywhere." Load time is critically important in reducing your "bounce rate" on landing pages. There are various online services that will measure your load speed (websiteoptimization.com), and when you know what it is, you can reduce it by compressing images, removing redundant items, optimizing your style sheets (CSS) and HTML code, and so on. The referenced website will also give you advice on other ways to improve your site's load speed.
6. Clearly identify the sales path(s) and discard any points of resistance, or bottlenecks. Even if you have just a single product, there may be a number of different "paths" that lead to a sale. Perhaps you have a landing page to acquire visitor contact data, which then takes them to a sales page, thence to an order page, and so on. Check your metrics and analytics carefully and you should start seeing patterns in how your visitors navigate your site. If you can see when, where and how visitors are leaving the site, you can delete unnecessary steps, enhance the sales copy or the "call to action," insert a few testimonials, emphasize your warranty or something else to capture that business. Do everything you can to keep the sales process simple and straightforward. The less confusing it is, the less resistance visitors will display.
7. Let your praises come from others' lips. Sometimes talking about oneself can sound egotistical, and it has been clearly proven that third-party testimonials boost conversions. In marketing it is called "social proof" when you bring in statements and assessments from others to buttress your message. If you add testimonials - short blurbs, highlighted quotes, letters - to your various landing pages, sales pages and even shopping cart pages, you will almost invariably notice an improvement in your conversion rate.
8. You need to understand the mind of your market, and your customer's experience with your website. Place an order on the site yourself as you step into the mind of a first-time visitor. Identify the hang-ups, inefficiencies and confusing or missing components that hinder your conversions. In concert with step #6 above, you want to identify why you are not converting, so that you can make the necessary improvements, whatever they may be, to improve your ratio.
9. Some people believe passionately in the power of media on landing, sales and order pages to raise conversions considerably. Others are not convinced, and there is not much hard data from controlled studies to consult. You should consider testing this idea yourself. You should try pages both with and without automatic play engaged. The idea is to lower buyer resistance, and if media helps, all the better. Music, motion graphics and video do add life and personality to your website, but there is a "sweet spot" (balancing point) and the fact remains that different age and cultural groups respond differently to the media. You need to make changes here in the context of your site's demographics. You will not put rock music on your page of ladies' perfumes, probably - unless you have a 20-something demographic and it is a signature fragrance from U2 or some other chart-topping band.
Are not most of these lists called the "top 10" this or that? You can count this tip as a bonus, then: Keep track of everything you do! Nothing "goes without saying" anymore, so you are hereby reminded that all your hard work can go for naught if you do not keep good records of what changes you are making, when, where, why and how. Chart your progress, review it regularly and do not be afraid to make continuing refinements as you move along your strategic path.
Finally, as a "super bonus tip" - use some kind of sales accelerator, "offer intensifier" or other method to move people faster through the sales process. It could be a special "one time" or "limited time" offer, a limited quantity offer or even a "special event" promotion. Research what is going on at other sites in your industry and others, and stay abreast of what seems to be working. Add your creativity to the mix, tailor things to your company's situation and you should start seeing increased conversion rates in short order.
Source From SitePro News
Increasing your conversion rate is a straightforward, even dramatic way of positively impacting your bottom line. It really cannot be emphasized too much that any improvement at all in your conversion rate means additional revenue that is total profit.
Remember this fact when you are told that the way to "make more money" is to invest in more traffic-generating schemes (and dreams, at times). Before you start spending more money to generate additional traffic, you need to do as much as you can with the traffic you are already getting. If you keep the horse ahead of the cart in your planning, you will have an efficient, stable, measurable conversion rate from which you can extrapolate x amount of additional profit from y amount of new-traffic generation.
The following tips are not in any particular order (except for Number 1), and can be modified and reordered to suit your particular situation. Take ownership of the change and improvement, and make sure everyone involved understands the importance of maximizing every revenue source, beginning with the existing ones!
1. Before you can repair or improve something, you have to have a good way of measuring where you are, what you are doing, where you are going, etc. You can sign up for a free Google Analytics account and use other low- and no-cost tools to develop your "analytics" and "metrics" - essentially fancy words that tell you how you're doing with numbers.
2. Create landing pages that are both keyword- and campaign-specific. Try separating any related pay-per-click keywords into smaller and tighter groups, and then create the landing pages for each of those new subgroups. Conversions will almost certainly be better if keywords, advertising approaches and landing pages are thematically related and tightly integrated.
3. Test different headlines and copy writing. This might be the most effective way of quickly showing improvements. Therefore, you need to write compelling copy or find someone else who can do it for you. There is plenty of free advice about this (much of it worth every penny you pay for it), but the importance of copywriting as it affects site conversions cannot possibly be overstated. This is key.
4. It is very important to test your pricing, as it really does make a huge difference in conversions. If your goal is to maximize customer value, then the highest converting price may not actually be the optimal one. In other words, if you raise your price by 50% and only see a 10% reduction in conversions, you will more than compensate for the drop. Going the other direction, if you lower the price 15% and this doubles or triples your ratio, your gain compensates for your price reduction. Test your prices, and test them in both directions.
5. Website load time has become an oft-overlooked item in this age of "broadband everywhere." Load time is critically important in reducing your "bounce rate" on landing pages. There are various online services that will measure your load speed (websiteoptimization.com), and when you know what it is, you can reduce it by compressing images, removing redundant items, optimizing your style sheets (CSS) and HTML code, and so on. The referenced website will also give you advice on other ways to improve your site's load speed.
6. Clearly identify the sales path(s) and discard any points of resistance, or bottlenecks. Even if you have just a single product, there may be a number of different "paths" that lead to a sale. Perhaps you have a landing page to acquire visitor contact data, which then takes them to a sales page, thence to an order page, and so on. Check your metrics and analytics carefully and you should start seeing patterns in how your visitors navigate your site. If you can see when, where and how visitors are leaving the site, you can delete unnecessary steps, enhance the sales copy or the "call to action," insert a few testimonials, emphasize your warranty or something else to capture that business. Do everything you can to keep the sales process simple and straightforward. The less confusing it is, the less resistance visitors will display.
7. Let your praises come from others' lips. Sometimes talking about oneself can sound egotistical, and it has been clearly proven that third-party testimonials boost conversions. In marketing it is called "social proof" when you bring in statements and assessments from others to buttress your message. If you add testimonials - short blurbs, highlighted quotes, letters - to your various landing pages, sales pages and even shopping cart pages, you will almost invariably notice an improvement in your conversion rate.
8. You need to understand the mind of your market, and your customer's experience with your website. Place an order on the site yourself as you step into the mind of a first-time visitor. Identify the hang-ups, inefficiencies and confusing or missing components that hinder your conversions. In concert with step #6 above, you want to identify why you are not converting, so that you can make the necessary improvements, whatever they may be, to improve your ratio.
9. Some people believe passionately in the power of media on landing, sales and order pages to raise conversions considerably. Others are not convinced, and there is not much hard data from controlled studies to consult. You should consider testing this idea yourself. You should try pages both with and without automatic play engaged. The idea is to lower buyer resistance, and if media helps, all the better. Music, motion graphics and video do add life and personality to your website, but there is a "sweet spot" (balancing point) and the fact remains that different age and cultural groups respond differently to the media. You need to make changes here in the context of your site's demographics. You will not put rock music on your page of ladies' perfumes, probably - unless you have a 20-something demographic and it is a signature fragrance from U2 or some other chart-topping band.
Are not most of these lists called the "top 10" this or that? You can count this tip as a bonus, then: Keep track of everything you do! Nothing "goes without saying" anymore, so you are hereby reminded that all your hard work can go for naught if you do not keep good records of what changes you are making, when, where, why and how. Chart your progress, review it regularly and do not be afraid to make continuing refinements as you move along your strategic path.
Finally, as a "super bonus tip" - use some kind of sales accelerator, "offer intensifier" or other method to move people faster through the sales process. It could be a special "one time" or "limited time" offer, a limited quantity offer or even a "special event" promotion. Research what is going on at other sites in your industry and others, and stay abreast of what seems to be working. Add your creativity to the mix, tailor things to your company's situation and you should start seeing increased conversion rates in short order.
Source From SitePro News
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