Do-It-Yourself
Tips To Achieving A High
Search Engine Ranking
From The Editor's Desk
 So
you want to try your hand at getting high search engine rankings without
spending money? If you intend to do this, you'll have to learn
many things...so here are a few tips.
1. The title and description tags on your web site are important, so
to get a better idea of what they should say you can visit http://www.selfpromotion.com.
2. Keywords that are relevant to your site are important, and you can
learn more about this at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/,
where you can generate the most popular search terms that people are
using.
3. You need to check your meta tags to determine if there are
too many characters in your title, keyword and description, and you
can do this at http://www.scrubtheweb.com/abs/meta-check.html,
where a handy tool will do the checking for you.
After you do all that, read the information in this newsletter pertaining
to "search engine submissions".
Good Luck.
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Are
Your Emails Being Heard
by: David Lake
Yes, the
headline is spelled right. What if you had a way to make your
clients remember you and your e-mail. In order to do this,
you would have to do something different that virtually no
other online marketer is doing. That should be easy enough,
right. Well, it might not be as difficult as you think. There
is a fairly new trend in e-mail marketing that involves e-mails
that Contain an audible message that you can record and personalize.
Did you know people remember 5 times more when they see and
hear information compared to when they just see it. I am sure
you have always thought your conversion rate should be higher,
right. Most folks on the Internet are settling for a far lower
conversion rate simply because they have not yet found a cost
effective way to successfully communicate their "sales
pitch" to their potential customers. Many online business
are now using follow-up e-mail and auto response systems to
increase their conversion rates, and now there is a way to
make these follow-up messages an even better marketing tool.
Have you ever wished you could just talk to your customers.
I am sure you have. All of us, as small business owners, feel
like if we could just talk to many of our potential customers
we could persuade them into doing business with us. We have
all faced the problem of gaining our customers trust in this
faceless online world. One quote to base your online business
by is that "people do business with people" I know
this quote is simple, but it is the truth. Too many folks
on the Internet try to remain anonymous, yet gain the trust
and respect of their customers, that is a hard thing to do.
You have to become a real person to your potential clients.
Just think about the last time you went into a store to make
a fairly large ticket purchase. Sure the store had some information
on the tag above the product, the price was clearly marked,
and the checkout process was straightforward, but you probably
still wanted to talk to a sales person didn't you? Why? Hearing
the person say what you already knew about the product made
you feel better about buying the product. The same applies
to your online customers. Just hearing you say the very same
things they have read online somehow makes them believe you
more and consequently they are more likely to do business
with you.
Audible e-mails immediately and automatically grab your reader's
attention. They humanizes and personalize your message because
they speak directly to your reader in your personal voice.
Audio users have reported a doubling and tripling of response
rates. When you send your potential clients some sort of follow-up
messages to encourage them to buy your product or service,
what if you could talk to them via a prerecorded message.
This would do a lot of thing for your e-mail follow-up campaign.
· it will make your e-mail stand out
· it will make your business appear more Professional
· it will add integrity to your business in the customers
eyes
· it will make a bigger "branding" impact
· it will increase conversion rates immediately.
To find out more about sending e-mail that contains audio
messages and one of the best follow-up auto responder systems
on the Internet visit http://greatfollowup.ProAutoResponder.com
About The Author - David Lake
http://www.AffiliateAnswers.com/proautoresponder/
1-866-207-6055
david@affiliateanswers.com
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Direct
Mail Marketing Now As Easy As Email
by: Michael Lemm
Is the United States Postal Service (USPS) a marketing innovator?
As it turns out, the kind folks in the blue shorts are in fact
making it easy for even the smallest business to duke it out
with their biggest competitors by using the USPS new "mailing
online (MOL)" direct mail service - check it out at http://www.usps.com/mailingonline
With MOL, you can escape the dreary part of direct mail marketing
- the printing, the stuffing, the stamps, etc. MOL users simply
create a document, upload it to the MOL website with their mailing
list and credit card information, and press "go".
Within 48 hours, the members of your mailing list are receiving
the marketing message in their postal mailboxes.
Speed & Price
The best two parts of the MOL service are the speed and the
price. Jobs uploaded early in the business day can be printed
and postmarked the following day. The per piece cost is not
much more than the price of a single stamp since even MOL jobs
sent First Class get a "presorted" USPS discount.
A 4.24 by 6 inch postcard can be printed and mailed First Class
for just 24 cents. A one and two-thirds page business letter
or brochure can be sent "envelope free" (the last
third is needed for the address) for just 56 cents per piece.
And the minimum number of pieces you can send per job? One.
That's right, while other direct mail houses turn away customers
with minimums under several thousand, the USPS takes all customers
and gives them all equally great service.
Before MOL you had to create your master document, drop it off
at the printer, wait until it was done to figure postage, apply
postage and addresses, and drop it off at the post office. This
whole process could take you a whole month to finish. And if
you're say mailing from the West Coast… it would be another
week before East Coast recipients received their copy. With
MOL your document is printed and dropped in the mail from several
dozen USPS distribution points across the country…so everyone
gets their document at the same time no matter where they live
in the US.
As Easy As Typing An Email
MOL users don't need to know anything more about document creation
than how to type and save a document on their hard drive. Novice
computer users can use their PC "Notepad" utility
and save the document as a text (TXT) file. Most users will
probably use Microsoft Word and create a slightly more appealing
document. You may already have access to documents through your
company that have a more professional appearance. You could
also invest in a copy of Microsoft Publisher as it provides
many templates to choose from and makes professional document
creation a snap.
Content Creation - Keep It Simple
The biggest challenge will be in generation of content you believe
is worth the price of postage. The following types of content
pieces will get your creative juices flowing…. pretty much
write themselves….and are worth reading:
1. Price & Product Postcards - Many of you may dream
of being able to instantly contact your customers and tell them
whenever you come out with a new product or price point. MOL
makes that a snap. Simply write a 5-7 word headline followed
by a three- sentence description ending with a phone number
or web address for more information.
2. Personal Postcards - Remember your customers birthday,
anniversary, graduation or other significant occasion. Be sure
and include a brief description of some product you want to
highlight…even just a web address.
3. Monthly or Quarterly Newsletter - Most of you would
look forward to writing a monthly newsletter with the same excitement
as having a monthly root canal…..but the customer retention
benefits and referral business make it a smart business decision.
The easy way to do a one or two page newsletter would be to
simply include one or more of the following:
- Summarize price and product news…simply repeat what you
sent out (or should have sent out) on the postcards.
- Summarize industry headlines related to your business…give
your views, or if you don't have a view simply reprint the views
of others (with proper attribution of course).
- Case Study…write up three paragraphs on a new or existing
customer you helped solve a problem…or their experience
with one of your products.
- Top 10 List….any of you with any experience at all can
write a years worth of top 10 lists in a day. How about the
top 10 benefits of a particular product? How about the top 10
reasons to (insert topic)? Or how about the top 10 mistakes
made by (insert topic)?
Just Ask For Referrals!
If you do nothing else, just send out a monthly postcard asking
for referrals. The commitment to a monthly postcard does two
separately important things for you. It keeps your contact information
in front of your customer and it reminds them on a monthly basis
that they have immediate access to a friend in the "ABC"
business. And of course the number one reason you don't get
referrals is you don't ask for referrals. Well, if you're too
shy to ask in person or on the phone, let the postcard do the
talking!
If you haven't attempted direct mail marketing before because
you thought it too costly, too time consuming, or too much work….think
again. Things have changed in your favor. The time is right
for you to give it a try.
About The Author:
Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications….providing
a variety of voice, data, and internet solutions for homes and
businesses ( http://www.billzilla.com/mscprez
) Try his Toll Free ISP service for business travelers:
http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R7915_TollFreeISP
Do-It-Yourself Public Relations
by: Bonnie Jo Davis
"Advertising
is what you pay for. Publicity is what you pray for."
What is a small business owner to do? You have dozens, hundreds
or even thousands of competitors around the world. How do you
make yourself known amid all the noise and confusion? One thing
is for certain. You may or may not have a budget for marketing
and promotion but you want to get the most bang for your buck.
Stretch your budget by developing a low cost public relations
campaign that you can handle in house. Publicity is a much more
powerful tool than advertising and a successful campaign lends
credibility to you and your company.
Use the following tips to take advantage of the many opportunities
to make yourself known in the on-line and off-line world. Think
creatively and you'll come up with even more ideas to propel
your public relations campaign ahead.
1) Write articles such as customer case studies, book reviews,
how to advice, editorials, etc. and develop a snazzy by-line
that drives readers to your web site. Submit your articles to
directories, newsgroups, e-zines, web sites and off-line newsletters
and magazines. You'll be astonished at how far one article can
reach and how it can convert readers to loyal, long-term clients.
If you need guidance with this technique consider signing up
for the "Expert Articles" teleclass held by Dr. Rachna
D. Jain. E-mail Dr. Jain at Coach6-46006@autocontactor.com for
more information.
2) Speak for free at your local Chamber of Commerce, trade
associations and clubs. Ask the sponsoring organization
to hand out your business cards and brochures to all attendees
prior to the event. Collect business cards and hold a prize
drawing at the end of your speech. Use the business cards to
send out "thank you for attending" e-mails after the
event and ask for permission to add the recipient to your newsletter
list. Build this list and communicate regularly.
3) Approach local and national radio shows covering your
target audience and offer to appear as a guest. You will
need to craft a pitch letter that can be sent via e-mail to
the producer of the show. Make your pitch exciting and spend
a great deal of time on the benefits listeners will derive from
your segment. To find radio stations search the brs web-radio
site at http://www.radio-directory.com/.
4) Write a free e-book on a topic of use to your potential
clients. People have become accustomed to receiving free
information that is nicely formatted and easy to read. You can
advertise your products and services in your free e-book and
sell or swap advertising with other related businesses. Tip
e-books (101 ways to... ) and article compilations are very
popular. Promote your free e-book at http://www.ebookdirectory.com/
and http://www.free-ebooks.net/. Make your e-book viral by authorizing
readers to freely distribute copies.
5) A well written and intriguing press release can lead to
stories in the press that increase sales, enhance credibility
and give your company a competitive advantage. For free
distribution use PR Web at http://www.prweb.com. PR Web maintains
a database of over 60,000 media contacts who receive daily e-mail
listings of press releases which match their topic criteria.
If you need help creating and formatting your press releases
consider purchasing software such as Press Release O-Matic at
http://www.press-release-creator.com/.
6) Sponsor events and contests. Grand openings of shopping
centers, businesses, car dealerships, etc. are some events you
may want to sponsor along with fairs, festivals, open houses
and community events. You can locate on-line contests to sponsor
at About.com. They offer a very good searchable directory of
contests at http://contests.about.com/. Be sure to publicize
your sponsorship on your web site and mention it in your newsletter
and in your press releases.
7) Solicit testimonials and use them. Request a testimonial
from every past and current client. Offer sample testimonials
or an outline to those clients who are reluctant writers. Send
out testimonials to prospects, include them in your marketing
materials, add them to your web site and e-mail signature block,
add one to each press release and put them on the back of your
business cards.
8) Frequent the newsgroups, topical lists and on-line boards
that cater to your profession or your target audience. Offer
free advice, URLs of helpful articles or web sites and your
opinion. Don't overtly promote. Be wise and helpful while showing
your expertise and your reputation as someone to be trusted
will grow. Marcia Yudkin of http://www.yudkin.com has done this
very successfully for years. Now she's known near and far for
her marketing expertise and her opinion is very well respected.
Building your public relations presence is an ongoing process
that is most effectively achieved when you employ multiple strategies.
Develop a plan, think creatively, promote consistently and your
business will stand out from the crowd!
About The Author:
Bonnie Jo Davis is an experienced shoestring marketer who specializes
in article submission for fun and for profit! Sign-up for her
FREE "Solving The Article Submission Puzzle" e-course
by visiting http://www.articlesthatsell.com/ecourse.htm.
c) 2003, Davis Virtual Assistance. All rights reserved.
Promote your Web Store
by: Nowshade Kabir
After
spending substantial time and efforts the big day came when
you finally published your website on the Internet. You
are now ready to show your website to the world. But, with
over a billion pages vying for traffic how do you make people
visiting your site?
Web promotion is an on going process. There are many
methods of promoting websites, but, the first and foremost
step that you have to take to generate traffic for your
website is to submit your site to major search engines and
directories. For most of the sites search engines are the
primary source of first time visitors.
How important are the search engines? Data show that
more than 80% of Internet users find the sites they're looking
for through search engines. Over 57% of Internet users search
the Internet everyday. Up to 450 Million searches take place
in a day and most interestingly, 55% of all Internet purchases
originate at a search engine.
Before you start submitting your website to the search engines,
you have to understand that you want your prospective audience
to find you when they search for a site similar to you using
specific keywords. Now, you know that when a person runs
a query on a search engine for a website, usually he looks
no further then first three pages of relevant results. You
have to figure out a way how to get within those three pages.
Better even if you can get yourself within top ten search
results. Considering that a query usually delivers millions
of pages - this is not an easy task!
As the search engines want to deliver most relevant pages
at the top, they use highly sophisticated and complex algorithms
to rank websites. But the main aspects, that they consider
in order to optimize your ranking position, are your targeted
keywords, relevancy of the site contents and value of the
links that are pointing to your site.
Keywords
Target the wrong keywords and either you don't get any visitor
or you get the visitors that you really don't need. How
can you figure out which are the right keywords for you?
If you are confused about the words that you should target
to get the best result, start your search from one of your
successful competitors' website. Check the source codes
of the Index page of the website. It should not be difficult
for you to figure out what are the keywords that they are
targeting. Since a broad keyword like computer, textile
etc. generates millions of search results, you have to try
to find words as specific and as segmented as possible.
For example: if you are a textile company that sells fabrics
and one of the best selling items of yours is jeans fabrics
let's see what should be your targeted keyword. A query
on Google shows that the word "fabric" brings
5,640,000 results. Way too much for you to even try get
at the top! The next search of "jeans fabric"
gets 148,000 results. Still a lot! If stonewashed jeans
fabric is one of the items that you sell, let's see what
we get from a query on it. Just 602 results!
Well, this is a number you can deal with! Now if you use
a few proper optimization mechanisms, chances are there
that in no times you may get yourself on the first ten of
this search result.
If you know the broad keywords that you should target but
don't have any idea how to make it more specific, use this
little tool from Overture to show you what queries people
make relevant to this keyword. Click here for the tool.
Place keywords in right locations
For search engines the page title is the most important
part of the page. Make sure that you use your targeted keyword
over there. For the previous example your title may look
like: 'Supplier of Quality Stonewashed Jeans Fabric'.
Use your keywords in different forms in Meta tags and Description.
Use singular and plural variations of the words. Since search
engines also look at the content of your page, try using
keywords in your headlines and don't forget to mention them
in the first paragraph of the page.
But do not over do it! If the search engines feel that you
are over using a word to lift your ranking, they may consider
it as spamming, and block your website from their listing.
Content is the king
According to research, the primary reason for people to
be on the Internet is information. People want information,
quality information, lots of it and in most of the cases
for free! This is the reason why the search engine spiders
are created to look for good, relevant textual contents.
If you are looking for a top position on a specific search,
your website must have quality relevant content.
If yours is a website that only sells product or services,
you may ask, how can you possibly have enough content? Apart
from detail description of the products or services that
you provide, you should also emphasize on the benefits of
the products. If you have related to your products articles,
whitepapers etc. you must post them on your site as well.
It's important to post quality information related to your
products or services as this also position your website
as a knowledgeable leader in your respective industry and
create interest among your audience to revisit the site.
Try renewing information on your site on a regular interval.
This, as well, will increase repeat visits from people and
the search engine spiders.
Submission to search engines
Once you are ready to submit your site to search engines,
all you have to do is to go to the relevant search engine
site, fill up the form there and submit. You can do it manually
for each search engine separately or you can use programs
to do it automatically. If you miss a search engine, you
don't have to worry about it much, as the search engine
spiders or "Bots", as they are also called, constantly
look for new websites to index. However, it's a good idea
to submit to the major search engines and directories regularly.
You should also resubmit your website to the search engines
in order to expedite the process of indexing after each
significant change you made to the site.
About The Author:
Nowshade Kabir, Ph.D., is the founder, primary developer
and present CEO, of Rusbiz.com, a global business to business
e-commerce portal with feature like storefronts, aggregated
catalog, e-marketplace, trade leads, internal messaging
system supply chain solutions, etc. With a doctorate in
Information Technology, Dr. Kabir has worked an advisor
to government projects and has over 12 years experience
in International Trade. An author of many B2B and business
related articles; he publishes a bi-weekly E-zine for online
business community. You can subscribe to his newsletter
free of charge from http://www.rusbiz.com.
nowshade@rusbiz.com
There are a
lot of ways to market online without going broke in the
process.
My advice to all Internet advertisers...use this effective
medium frequently to "extend the reach" of traditional
print or broadcast media and to reinforce your branding...and
check out some of the reliable online marketing firms who
can help you develop a strong Internet presence, and perhaps
a high volume of Internet sales. In this lagging economy,
many will work close to the vest on pricing to help you
develop your online and off-line business using guerilla
and other marketing techniques.
Test a variety of reasonably priced online media,
and see what works best for you. When you find
a winning combination, bet the ranch on it!
Whatever you do, keep an open mind to all new advertising
techniques and ...test, test, test.
Let
us hear from you. Just submit the full details of any services
you feel might benefit our readers, and we'll review the
information. If we agree it has merit, we'll publish it
in the newsletter.
All submissions should be sent to:
editorials@inetadnews.com
Your
comments, questions and submissions
are always welcome and appreciated.
Copyright
© 2005-2006 Creative Media Group - All rights reserved.
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