Optimizing Your Keywords for Selling Your Products and Services

Selling your products and/or services, whether online or in a brick-and-mortar store, requires content. The content must contain keywords and/or keyphrases for effective searchability. The content must resonate with the people who are reading what you have to say and what you represent. In short, your content must connect with your readers on an emotional level.

Choosing the most effective keywords and/or keyphrases
If you know anything at all about content, you know that keywords and key phrases are important for your business because you need them to allow other people to find you through those words. When a person is searching for what you do or what you produce, you want to be the first person to pop up. If your content is everything that it should be, you will find yourself at the top (or near the top) of the search engine’s pages. Of course, it seems like a very simple process to put the proper keywords/key phrases into your content. However, you may have to do a little research before you have figured out the exact formula that works most effectively for your particular business.

It is important to understand that the keywords and/or keyphrases that you choose will not all be equally effective. Some will be more effective than others. One really easy way to determine which keywords and/or keyphrases are most effective is through whichever analytics tool you choose to use. If you choose to use this approach, you can actually consider your selection of keywords in a rather clinical manner. It is an oversimplification to think that you just choose a keyword or key phrase and hope that it lands on the top of the search engine’s pages. You have much more control over the outcome of your selections than you may think.

Marrying keywords/keyphrases to the wants and needs of your buyers
In order for you to marry the keywords/key phrases to the wants and needs of your buyer, you need to have a really clear understanding of how your buyer thinks and how he or she reacts. Along with that, you should carefully consider how to prioritize your keywords once you have chosen them. One thing that is important is that you will need to give equal attention to each keyword or key phrase. That will take more time than if you didn’t approach it that way; however, it will be well worth the effort. The two basic issues that you will want to determine are:

Weighing each keyword or key phrase individually.
Determine if that particular keyword or key phrase is the best choice that you could have made.
It is critical that you understand your clients’ needs when choosing keywords and/or keyphrases for their businesses as well as choosing the most appropriate keywords and/or keyphrases for your business as well. Once you have determined that your word choices are spot on, the next thing that you will need to do is to implement those keywords and/or keyphrases and let them work their magic.
Pay close attention to keyword/keyphrase searches
The fact is that each business has different needs and the chosen keywords/key phrases will reflect those differences. What goes along with that is the content itself. Pay close attention to what the content is saying and how it is expressing the information that is being communicated. Keyword/keyphrase searches can be simple or they can be more advanced, depending on what you need (or what other searchers need) and whether you are satisfied with the results that you achieve.

Consider the keywords/keyphrases carefully
Even though you have done an amazing job of coming up with keywords and conducting your searches based on that, it is really important that you pay attention to the related keywords that Google generates as well. You may derive a great deal of value from those additional keywords/key phrases and you may not have thought of those before. They potentially hold a lot of value for your business as well as for the businesses of your clients.

Conclusion
Allowing your keywords and/or keyphrases to sell your products and/or services is smart business practice. It is important that you remember to set the proper tone for your keywords and/or keyphrases. After all, they are a reflection of you and your business. This approach to keywords should be incorporated into your marketing strategy from the beginning and you can hone it as you go to ensure that it continues to work well for your business. Stick with whatever is working and change whatever is not.

Michael Cohn is the founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CompuKol Communications. He has over 25 years of experience in IT and web technologies. Mr. Cohn spent a significant amount of time at a major telecommunications company, where his main focus was on initiating and leading synergy efforts across all business units by dramatically improving efficiency, online collaboration, and the company’s Intranet capabilities, which accelerated gains in business productivity. He also reduced company travel and travel costs by introducing and implementing various collaboration technologies.

His expertise includes business analysis; project management; management of global cross-matrix teams; systems engineering and analysis, architecture, prototyping and integration; technology evaluation and assessment; systems development; performance evaluation; and management of off-shore development.

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Search Engine Marketing and Your Site

Search marketing is now widely recognised as a highly effective way of reaching customers online. Last year, over £2 Billion was spent globally in online marketing and the figures are set to soar. More companies with an online presence are turning to search marketing to reach prospective customers, generate traffic to their site and convert them into sales. So, how does it all work? If you’re considering investing a percentage of your hard earned marketing budget on search marketing you should have a basic understanding of where it’s going and how it works. Most search marketing companies talk about improved web site and page ranking but what exactly does that mean? What you want is to increase traffic to your site, improve sales and raise the brand. How does that happen?

SEM or SM?

Search marketing which has now dropped the less glamorous “engine” from its previous industry name of Search Engine Marketing really consists of two disciplines – paid search and organic or natural search. Paid search is of course what keeps Google in hyper-growth or more specifically Google Adwords. In the UK we must not forget Yahoo Search Marketing (Overture), Miva and Mirago. These engines all enable advertisers to Pay-for-Position (PfP) or Pay-per-Click (PPC). It’s important to note that such marketing is a form of advertising and such adverts wherever they appear should be announced as “sponsored” or labelled as advertising.

Paid Search

The PfP networks mentioned above are referred to as networks because, in nearly all cases, their adverts are shown across a network of sites. The sites in the network depend on the relationship that the main ad technology provider has with search portals. For example, if you search for something on Google and look at the Google AdWords shown, you will see the same ads on Aol.co.uk. You may see some differences due to advertisers’ budgets causing fluctuations in impressions, but they are same.

Organic Search?

Organic search or natural search results are provided by crawling search engines – more on those later. The important thing to remember is that paid search is advertising and organic search is editorial. Well, that’s the analogy the search marketing industry uses to describe in Newspaper-like terminology the complex world of search. It’s a rather good analogy because it allows us search people to explain Search Engine Optimisation.

Organic Search and PR

So if you wanted to advertise in a national newspaper you could book it directly, use a media buyer, engage a creative agency and possibly a media planner. Well you can do all of that too with paid search. The management of paid search is big business. But what about editorial or those crawled results? Well to influence editorial, you might engage a PR agency. Of course a PR agency’s not going to guarantee front page news but it will devise a strategy and execute on it to get results. Well in the world of search, to try and influence crawling search engines and their organic results, you should consider Search Engine Optimisation and you might consider a Search Engine Optimisation agency. Another point for clarity, Search Engine Optimisation is a really bad term. You don’t and can’t optimise search engines you actually optimise the website you want to perform well in search engines. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with SEO and not a more logical name like “website search optimisation”.

The find, crawl, read, index and rank

At ivantage.co.uk we always think of “ranking” on crawling search engines as just one of four steps in generating traffic and conversions in the process of successful Search Engine Optimisation. Your site, like every other site, needs not only to be ranked by search engines but found, crawled, read, indexed and then ranked by crawling search engines.

The UK’s leading crawling search engines, spiders and robots

Notice I talk about crawling search engines. What on earth are these? Actually you’ll have heard of most of them, there really aren’t that many and certainly the only ones you need to worry about, as far as traffic is concerned, are Google, Yahoo, MSN, (Ask Jeeves) Teoma and Mirago. Each search engine generally has a portal component which is the bit consumers visit to conduct their searches and a crawling component called the robot or spider. So each of the search engines I mentioned above has its own robot, each uniquely named Googlebot, Slurp, MSNbot, Teoma and Henry respectively.

So how does your site get found?

Well, robots work by following links. So getting a link from an established site to your site is vital. You can also see if search engines know about your site already by using the command site:www.yoursite.co.uk in the search box at Google for example. This asks the search engine to retrieve all the pages it has in its database (or index) from your domain. This allows you to see which pages the search engines know about. If you are not listed you need to establish links – ask friends, colleagues and business associates and submit your site at DMOZ and the Yahoo directories (note this is different to the Yahoo search engine) . You can also submit your site for crawling at most search engines, but be aware; submitting for crawling is not as good and being found for crawling!

So, how about being crawled, read and indexed?

Well, again the command site:www.mysite.co.uk on Google and on other search engines can really serve you well. Have a look at what text the search engines are indexing and the see if the links work. This can tell you a lot about how well read and understood your site is. One of the most important things you can do to improve your search engine readability is to use a unique, descriptive HTML Title on every page of your website. Also use a Description and Abstract Meta Tag (information inserted into the “head” area of your web pages) and remember that Title and Meta tags have two purposes. The first purpose is to compel users to click through from a search page to your website. Such Titles and Meta Tags are often displayed to users using search engines and so using promotional text such as “Free Delivery” or real unique selling points entice users to click through. The second purpose is ranking – so use keywords in the Title and Meta tags that have potential to generate the right kind of traffic to your site, but match the content of each page.

So what’s the key to good ranking?

The key to ranking is a great site with great content and an enviable back linking structure that has been established organically because other site owners have felt it important and useful to link to your site. Search engines really look for sites that are part of a thematic community and sites that rank the best are those that demonstrate authority over their subject matter with important, fresh, content, referenced by other websites active in the same community.

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A Simple Guide to Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is by far the most efficient and effective way to advertise your business. With over 86% of internet users using Google as their search engine, the need for your business to show on the first page of Google has never been greater.

Many people are unaware of search engine marketing and just take for granted the results that appear when they search for something on a search engine such as Google.

However, search engine marketing seems to defy to current doom and gloom of the recession. Think about this:

“The average Britain spends 164 minutes online everyday, compared with 148 minutes watching TV”

Over half the world’s population now has access to the web and nearly 90% of them find what they’re looking for using search engines. 36% of people think that the result at the top of the first page is the market leader and 80% of people make their choice from first page listings alone. With over 21 billion web pages wanting a first page position how can you get your website on the first page.

This is called search engine marketing and I have listed a few techniques and tips to get you started with optimising your website to rank well on a search engine. Remember that this is a basic guide to help to you on your way.

Link building

First we have to look at how search engines rank a website and decide which order to list them. The simple (very very very simple) version is, Google changed everything the way many search engine rank. The initial creators of Google (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) wanted to create a search engine that could rank a website for quality and list them in order of quality to the user. The way they decided to rank a website was to count how many other websites link to it. If other websites link to it then it must be good. So, essentially links mean votes. Like I said, this is the very simple version and there is so much more to it than this but it is a great place to start as it holds the most importance.

  • See who links to you and then see who links to your competitors and try to muscle in on some of their action. Simply go to yahoo.co.uk, then in the search box type “link:yourcompetitor.com”. This will bring up a list of websites linking to your competitors website. Then contact them and ask them to link to you too.
  • Don’t be stingy. Make sure you have links going out from your website. Important though that you link to high quality websites, i.e. If your website is a property website, have links to the relevant governing bodies, Wikipedia or the largest property portals. Search engines will see your site as being a good place to get good content.
  • Submit your website to online directories. This can be very boring and takes hours. But once you have had your site accepted in to a directory. You’ll have a link back to your website. Remember. The more the better.
  • Subscribe to forums in your niche. You can include a link in your signature straight to your website. Remember though. Do not spam on a forum. Forum users will not like it and the moderator will probably kick you off. If you use a forum properly though you will find it quite engaging.
  • Read blogs relating to you niche market. This is very educational as well as beneficial for link building. Read the blog then leave a comment about that blog. Don’t forget to include a link to your website though. Just don’t make it too obvious.

Social Media (web2.0)

“Facebook”, “YouTube”, “Flickr”, “Myspace” – These are all social media websites. They provide a means for people from all over the world to join online and share information. The way in which people communicate vary though. “Flickr” allow people to upload photos and share them with other users or even comment on pictures uploaded. “Youtube” allow people to upload videos etc. The number of people visiting these websites to share information is in the millions. So maybe you could use these social communities to spread the word about your website. Social media is a great way to connect with hard to reach people that share the same interests. There are a number of ways to do this.

  • Make your content interesting enough for people to want to view it. Then,unlike search engine optimisation, change the content often, This will make people want to keep visiting you.
  • Make it easy for people to tag or bookmark your new content. Bookmarking is very fashionable at the moment. The most popular way of doing this is by getting an “addthis” button due to its ease of use, however, there are many buttons available.
  • Use more than just text in your site. Create a video and submit it to a video sharing website like “youtube”, Create a PDF version of your content and create an audio version too. Submit it to appropriate websites. Don’t forget the link back to your site.
  • Blog.Blog.Blog then blog some more. The simple truth is that the majority of internet users love blogs. So do search engines. Create a blog and use it. A lot. Submit it to sites like “technorati.com”. If it is good enough people will link to you and then share and tell others about your writings.
  • Make friends. The social media community, are very social and friendly. They will want to talk to you and ask you questions. Make sure you are polite and take time to answer any messages. Negative feedback spreads faster than positive feedback.

Pay Per Click

This is a method in which you pay to get people to your website. Have you ever done a search on Google and found there are two columns. The Colum on the right is called sponsored links. They are adverts from businesses. They do not pay anything for appearing there but they do pay when you click on the advert (pay per click). This is a very fast way to get people to your website but you do have to pay. I would recommend getting a pay per click company to help here. It will save you a lot of money. However, if you must have ago your self here are some very basic tips.

  • Budget. Make sure you create a sensible budget and stick to it. Don’t get in to a bidding war.
  • Don’t just rely on pay per click as the be all and end all for your business marketing. PPC is great for promoting specific products and services very quickly but you always have to pay for the result.
  • Analyze your cost per click and cost per acquisition closely. Then compare it to your other marketing activities. See which one works best.
  • Remember that sites such as Google take into account the quality of your website content being marketed more than how much you are bidding. PPC is my favorite part of search engine marketing due mainly to the sheer speed of return on investment BUT make sure it is done properly other wise it can be devastating.
  • Always have two ads running at the same time for each product but with different ad text. Google will use the most successful advert for you and show that advert more often, helping you gain more traffic. Change to poorest performing advert and see if it improves. Keep repeating. This will eventually lead to you having the best possible advert showing.

Search engine optimisation

Remember the two columns we just mentioned. Search engine optimization is the are of optimizing your website enough for Google to rank it on the left hand column. This list is ordered on how relevant your website is. And you don’t have to pay for these listings. Ever noticed how all the big companies appear at the top of the first page. Now we should as “which came first – The chicken or the egg?”. Search engine optimisation is generally split into two categories onsite optimisation and off site optimisation. The first, when done property is very important but it will only get you to the starting line. Offsite optimization is the race itself. A good search engine optimisation campaign should include all the search engine marketing techniques mentioned and when you really get into it you can learn the more advanced techniques. Below are a few basics.

  • Include your keywords in your domain, title, meta tags. The first thing a search engine spider will read is your domain name. i.e [http://www.yourdomain.com]. This doesn’t mean anything to a search engine so ideally use [http://www.yourdomain.com/your-key-words], or even better [http://www.your-key-words.com] . Then the next part is your title. Don’t just have “home Page” or “Front Page”. I would have “your domain – your key words”. This also matches the domain name. Then repeat the same in your meta data. And sprinkle it throughout your web page. Keep it readable though.
  • Make each page different. This helps search engines differentiate them and should lead to them indexing each of your pages separately.
  • Get a site map and submit it to major search engines. Don’t pay for this service though. It amazes me that people actually charge for this. Just type into Google “sitemap” and you should be presented with website that will generate you a sitemap for free.
  • Keep going. Older sites generally rank better than new sites. It is believed that older websites must be more reliable. As there is nothing we can do about this just focus your time on other offsite optimisation such as link building, social media optimization and if you just can’t wait, Pay per click. Search engine optimisation is a long term solution but boy is it worth waiting for.
  • Validate your HTML code. Visit “validator.w3.org/ “.This will ensure that web browsers show your website correctly and helps search engine to index your site. There is no point in optimising your website if it doesn’t work properly.

Other useful tips

  • Get Google analytics. It is one thing having a website but you need to know what people are doing when they are on it. Google analytics is very comprehensive and FREE but it does not report in real time. Woopra however does report in real time. The choice is yours. Before doing anything else you should get one of these other wise how will you know your efforts are paying off.
  • If you decide to use a company to undertake your search engine marketing campaign (recommended) make sure you choose your search engine marketing company wisely. Don’t just go on recommendation. It is going to be a long working relationship so the important thing is that you get on with them. Do your own research on the industry. Think twice about search engine marketing firms that say they can guarantee a first page listing in a short time, the methods they use WILL end up in your website being banned. BMW found this out the hard way.

Search engine marketing is not an easy option but when done properly will bring untold rewards.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but it will give people new to the concept a few things to get on with and research. Look out for more articles that will start to break the subjects down into more detail.

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How To Develop A Website Content Strategy

A website content strategy is a plan of how you are going to use content material to develop and market your online business. Content isn’t just limited to written text. It can involve videos, polls, graphics, images and many other things which make your website more interesting for your readers.

There are two fundamental components of a website content strategy:

The content material you actually publish onto your website. This includes, how frequently you publish, what you write about, how far in advance you plan and produce the content, etc.
The content you use to promote and market your website, such as social media posts and emails to your subscriber list.
Why Is A Content Strategy Important?
Having a strategy means you can plan ahead. Instead of simply publishing a new post on any random subject, you can plan subjects strategically based on special offers, the time of the year etc. Planning ahead also helps you post on a regular, steady schedule. This is important for keeping readers interested and the search engines happy, as they like new content.

Creating An Online Content Strategy

Regardless of how valuable your content is, if you publish a huge chunk of text that looks boring, you won’t get many readers. The eye isn’t drawn to large sections of text. This is why it’s so important to have different types of content on your website when promoting your online business.

Video

Videos are one of the top ways to bring in more traffic and keep people on your website for longer. There are numerous ways to make videos and it doesn’t mean you have to stand in front of a camera. You can create videos using just text, images and a voice-over.

Interactive Content

Polls and surveys are a great form of interactive content. People enjoy interacting online. It makes it more interesting for them and encourages them to stay on your website for longer. This drives up your income and boosts the reputation of your business, thus causing it to rank higher in the search engines.

Social Media

Having a live feed of opinions people are making about your content can encourage people to visit your website. Posting testimonials that people have given about your business will also make good quality content that people will want to read. You could even invite some of your regular readers to be interviewed for your next blog post.

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Make Money Online With Your Own Internet Business

The Make Money Farce
You have seen them and probably received thousands of them since you have begun internet marketing. They come out the wood works, don’t they? Opportunities promising that you too can make money online with little to no effort. You then invest your money into the opportunity only to find out there aren’t any pies in the sky… only the cold hard reality that you just spent some of your rent money on someone’s new car.

Yes, this is the reality many internet marketers face. I have been there. I started in this business with my father and let me tell you… we have seen every scam under the sun. Why? Because we were those people who had a dream and wanted to help other people through success only to find out there ain’t no free lunch in business. The cold hard truth is that “business is business”. Period. There are a million work from home opportunities contrived each year. There are many more gullible individuals who buy into the dream. In the end, they are left like me and my dad… a few thousand dollars shorter.

But, It’s Online And It Has To Be TRUE
Here is a revelation. People who scam lie. They don’t just lie a little, its more like lie a lot. They want you to trust them, and to believe their story. But when it comes to delivering… well. You know. You’ve been there a thousand and one times. You’ve spent your money on the magic potions of the internet only to realize that you are out of money and now have a rash (the legendary rash of discouragement).

I’m not here to sell you a pie in the sky. I am here to be your jolt of reality. Sleeper, it’s time to wake up! The internet is not some new invention that defies the laws of business. It is business on steroids. Imagine the business rules you know and then multiply them by the sheer volume of variables now introduced by the online component. The internet can allow you to become very wealthy or very broke.

So… Can I Make Money Online Or Not?!
You can young Jedi. I know some of the things I’ve said may be a little cheeky but I am serious. There is no money like “internet business” online money. The thing is you have to see it for what it is. Your internet business is just that… a business. Do not enter the online business field with any other mindset than “I am going to run MY business”.

There is nothing more rewarding and satisfying professionally then running your own business. And if ran right, your internet business can feed you and your family. You may be looking for quick ways to make money. Once you setup your business depending upon the model you use the money can come quick. It all comes down to you and your imagination. Add hustle, grind, and grit and you got something.

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How a Multi-Faceted Approach to Site Promotion Can Secure Your Search Engine Positions

Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul

In my last article on site promotion, I talked about why using one site promotion technique is a short-term solution. Now I’m going to illustrate why site promotion is multi-faceted, and show an example of how these techniques can build on one another to help you get better search engine results from your search engine optimization efforts, as well as more traffic to your site overall.

Then, in the next part, I’ll tell you more about what some of the components to site promotion are, and how they can work together to help you maintain your travel levels and search engine position despite the ever-changing search engine algorithms.

Truly effective site promotion lies in using a group of tools and techniques to draw traffic to your site from many sources that build on each other, rather than just one.

To illustrate how some of these promotion techniques work together and build on each other, we need to go back to the previous example of my own site for a moment.

Each day, I get about 80 – 100 visitors to just my home page from search engines – this month you can verify that by looking at the referrer list at the bottom of my home page (see the resource box at the end of the article). As stated in the last article, visitors clicked through to my site for 1959 different keyphrases. 15% of those phrases yielded more than 10 unique visitors, with the top result sending 214 people to my site.

That traffic is invaluable and shows proof of how you can use my multi-pronged methodology to enable you to get top rankings even for more difficult terms. The methods I use are a combination of different website promotion methods that have combined to keep me consistently ranking in first page results for literally hundreds of terms. One of the more difficult of these feats was ranking for the term “free traffic” in both Google and Yahoo on the first page.

So how do I use other site promotion techniques to help keep my site from being dropped from search engine results? And how can you learn how to do the same?

Okay, let’s go back to our example, and look at May again. The next most frequent way I get a visitor to my site is from someone clicking through to a link – 15 -20% of my traffic comes this way.

My stats say that “1663 different pages-url” that were linked to me brought me visitors. The top three links back to me brought me over 1700 visitors. After the top thirty, most links brought me only 10 visitors or less each.

But even when a site brings me only one visitor, having several hundred sites do this adds up to a lot of potential clients.

So, obviously, getting links back to my site wasn’t the only important part of this particular method of site promotion. It was getting people to actually click through those links to my site. The trick is to get your link listed in places where visitors who are looking for your information will be, and getting that link to appear with keyword related text that you control.

Syndicating your site via RSS is one of the ways that this feat can be made easier – but again, they are but a part of a well-rounded search engine solution. And there are certain things you need to think about when setting up your blog that yield the most search-engine friendly results, as alluded to in part three of this series.

Do you know what else is important about having many links pointing back to your site? Other than the fact that, set up correctly, a percentage of people will click on them and visit you?

It’s the fact that search engines often find new content to include in their results through links that follow back through to your site. That’s one of the top functions of the search engine spiders that crawl the web. They follow links that lead to other links, and so on, deciding how to fill a deficit in their databases with the sites they find.

Not only that, but if the search engine algorithms should all change today, and state that quantity of links pointing back to you will give you only a little bit of positive karma, and that, from now on, only the quality of those links really gives you a big boost, if you used the methods I teach, including ways to optimize your links, you’d still covered.

This isn’t particularly difficult to emulate – if you use a multitude of ways to promote your site to search engines, as well as other ways to increase your site’s traffic. Each one of the techniques builds on the others, helping you maintain your search engine rankings, and bringing new visitors from other sources. I’ll have a sample list for you and a few resources in the next part.

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The Basics Of Free Web Site Promotion

It’s easy to forget the fundamental components of Web site promotion. Winding back the clock to the days when many Webmasters couldn’t afford prolonged advertising campaigns, the majority of people starting out with a new Web site were forced to discover the art of free Web site promotion. In recent times, however, with “pay per click” advertising becoming less expensive and various other marketing activities becoming increasingly cheaper, the art of effectively promoting your site for free appears to have been lost. The purpose of this article is to act as a refresher course for any Webmasters who are keen to keep their promotional activities down to a shoestring budget.

The practices you perform when promoting your site for free are just as important as any paid advertisements you might run. Indeed, drawing a steady flow of visitors to your Web site needn’t be an expensive affair. So, what things really matter if you’re serious about increasing your site’s traffic for free?

1) You should ensure your site is easy to link to. Even Webmasters who enjoy what your site has to offer may not consciously think to link you. In any case, you should remind your visitors, preferably on every page, how to go about adding your link. Not only will this bring extra visitors, it will improve your site’s relevancy for the search engines. Additionally, establishing link exchanges with similar-themed sites as yours is a remarkably popular and effective way of boosting your traffic levels for free. Your aim should be to establish as many relevant link-backs as possible.

2) You might like to consider adding a hyperlink to your Web site in your e-mail signature. If you’re feeling creative, you could do what some Webmasters do and add a small slogan, too. As well as this and within reason, you should respond to every legitimate e-mail you receive so that your Web address sticks in the mind of your contacts.

3) You should utilise search engines since they’re an ideal form of free traffic. Ensuring your pages are search engine friendly is crucial. The majority of people find information on the Internet via search engines and it’s important that you correctly research how to optimise your site. A good listing on a popular search engine can works wonders for traffic levels, so try spending some time optimising your pages. If you’re unsure and need some guidance with the technicalities, there are numerous sites and forums on the Internet that can help you out.

4) Entering your site for awards is an excellent way to gain recognition. However, when suggesting your site for review, be sure to avoid “automatic award submitting” services, since these can significantly lower your chances of winning. They don’t generally fare too well with the judges either.

5) Although not entirely free, you might like to experiment with running competitions on your site. Even if the prize is inexpensive (e.g. a t-shirt with your Web address on the front), it’s a sure-fire way to reel-in interested visitors. Besides, directories specialising in listing competitions may also link to your site and send you additional visitors.

6) Submitting your site to the Open Directory (dmoz.org) is a free necessity for generating more site visitors. Not only will a listing here help to increase your site’s relevancy (for search engine purposes), it will be accessible via countless other Web locations who use the Open Directory to power their own sites.

7) If you want to instantly draw some attention to your site, then tell all your friends about it. Word of mouth advertising is the best possible form of promotion anyone can muster, and incidentally, it’s completely free!

8) Try telling visitors how to bookmark your site. There are still many Web surfers out there inexperienced with the Internet. You’d be surprised at how many also don’t know how to bookmark a Web site they’ve found. That said, when designing your pages, it’s a good idea to tell visitors how to add a bookmark. Alternatively, you could add a “click here to bookmark us” hyperlink.

9) Newsgroups are perfect for gaining site recognition. Recklessly promoting your site in newsgroups, however, is frowned upon. The key to promoting your site in newsgroups is to participate in newsgroup discussions that interest you. To promote your Web site (and to avoid any behaviour that may be deemed inappropriate), simply include your Web address in your signature. If readers appreciate your point of view, then it’s likely that they will take some time to visit your Web site.

10) You should endeavour to update your site regularly. Fresh, regularly-updated content will enable you to gather a keen audience, and what’s more, it will keep visitors returning. It’s far easier to retain existing visitors than to find new ones. Therefore, your content should be structured in such a way that it entices people to return.

11) You may not have realised but how a person finds their way around your Web site is a make-or-break scenario for traffic levels. If people can’t find what they’re looking for then they won’t view your site in a favourable light – and chances are they won’t return. Therefore, when designing your site’s pages, keep site navigation in mind, since consistent traffic levels are swayed by your site’s user-friendliness. All your content should be easy to locate within three mouse clicks. Think “simple navigation”. If visitors can find what they’re looking for within the shortest amount of time possible then by and large, they will keep a mental note of your site and may pay a visit in the future.

12) Sites that are fast to load keep visitors visiting, and they’ll undoubtedly help to increase your Web site traffic flow. Keeping site loading times down is a free and sensible way to indirectly increase traffic. How many times have you visited a Web page, only to find that it takes an age to load? My guess is that you didn’t bother waiting around. On the Internet, if you want to be successful, then your site should (ideally) strike a balance between presentation and loading time.

Summary: A massive, targeted advertising campaign is the ideal solution for quick traffic. However, most ordinary Webmasters are not working for large corporations who can afford this level of promotion. The fact is you don’t necessarily have to pay for high traffic levels, although if you are opting for the “free” route, you will have to work hard if your endeavours are to be successful. Remember: some of the best and most effective ways to increase traffic do not always require a wallet!

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Traffic Building – How to Create a Landslide of Visitors to Your Website

Traffic, everyone wants it and is trying really hard to get more people to their site. Traffic is what generates more traffic, and vitally for website owners, increases their revenue. When you are planning a web site, part of your thinking should include a strategy for building traffic and realistic time scales and budgets for doing it. Be prepared to wait several months for your traffic to build, unless, of course, you have the budget for some instant advertising.
Here are four essential key elements of traffic building:

Pay-per-click (PPC)

Link building

Search engine and directory submissions

Article marketing

Pay per Click Advertising

There are dozens of PPC advertising opportunities but until you understand how PPC bidding works and how to make a profit stick with Google Adwords. Pay per Click advertising like AdWords is worth spending money on. I would suggest reading up on AdWords books and articles on how to use this great advertising avenue to its fullest.

Link Building

Search engines such as Google see links from other sites as a vote of confidence in your site and will boost its position in their search engine results accordingly. Acquiring links from other sites is a slow process and requires a much organised approach. On the plus side, running a link building campaign means that you are not solely relying on search engines to bring you visitors. A link from an authoritative site lends you credibility, a link from a popular site sends you traffic and a link from a relevant site boosts your search results. Reciprocal linking is an effective, free way to get more visitors to your site.

Search engines

Getting your site listed with all of the major search engines and directories is essential for building traffic. Increasing search engine traffic organically can be an essential part of the promotional mix of for your website. When setting up a website, a vital task to carry out is to submit it to website directories.

Article Marketing

Article marketing has come a long way to become one of the core traffic building strategies for internet marketers and webmasters. Writing and submitting quality articles to article directories is an excellent way of promoting your site and sending it lots of targeted traffic. Article traffic is big, big, big: and here is why. When you write articles and submit them to the highest ranked article directories, for well targeted keywords, they can rush to the top of the search engine rankings.

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Why is Article Marketing Such a Powerful Traffic Building Strategy?

Of all the diverse traffic building strategies available to internet marketers, article marketing, is by far the most powerful method of increasing web site traffic, boosting sales, and maximizing profits.

If you have not yet implemented a powerful traffic building strategy for your website, you should definitely consider writing and publishing articles for the following reasons.

Writing useful, informative, high caliber articles about your market niche will identify you, to your readers, as an expert in your field.  

Being recognized as an “expert”  instills an aura of credibility, builds trust, and confidence with your potential customers.   Your prospects will feel more comfortable when buying from you, and an increase in sales from your online business will be the direct result.  

Cost effectiveness is also another reason why article marketing is such a powerful traffic building strategy.

It is not extraordinarily expensive to hire a ghost writer to create articles for you, if you don’t have the time available or ability to do so for yourself.  

It costs nothing to submit your articles to article directories for publication, and if time is a prohibition, there are tools that are now commonly available to automatically submit your articles to several directories at once.  

Multiple directory submissions dramatically increases the back links to your website, which in turn translates to increased traffic, and an increase in web site sales.  

Article marketing is an extremely important and powerful traffic building strategy, for increasing back links, that the search engines robots are constantly on the lookout for.

Including keywords when writing your articles, and submitting multiple articles to the article directories, is a very powerful traffic building strategy that makes your website more visible to the search engines.  Your web site will be quickly indexed by the search engines when using this strategy.

Published articles become viral in nature.  All your articles will contain an author’s bio or author’s resource box, where you can give a brief pitch about your business, and insert the URL for your web site.   The author’s resource box is always located at the end of your article and is usually limited to about 250 – 300 words.

Unlike other advertising strategies; when your articles are published by the directories, your website URL, which is contained in the author’s resource box, will become viral and will be disseminated throughout the internet universe to remain there indefinitely.

Your article will be archived in the various article directories, and will over time continue to funnel thousands of permanent back links to your website.  

That is the primary reason why your article should be well written, useful, well thought out, and keyword rich.  

It should now be evident to you why article marketing is such a powerful traffic building strategy in comparison to other traffic driving methods.

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Going Pro – The Annual Market Revenue of Motivational Speaking

DIGITAL MARKETING

For much of history of mankind, the concept of promotion of goods and services, which, simplistically, we may refer to as “marketing” – has existed in the real world. With the advent of the internet- the creator and the crucible for the creation of this New World – came the “Virtual World”, also be referred to as the electronic or the Digital World, the process of marketing also underwent a paradigm change.
In the 21st Century, marketing in the digital world, or ‘Digital Marketing’, has revolutionized the manner and process goods and services are delivered to the consumer-customer.
With better & economical delivery of ‘data’ and an explosion in handheld ‘mobile’ devices, Digital marketing has pervaded our lives like no other. Digital methods of communication and marketing are faster, versatile, practical and streamlined. Digital Marketing is set to replace the more traditional systems and delivery of information altogether. Generations of yore may lament the impending demise of paper-based marketing methods, traditional TV, and radio mediums but the younger generation is truly embracing the brave new world of digital media and marketing.

Digital Marketing – Will change the way humanity lives, loves, consumes and shops. And it has only just begun.

We have to come on a stage where you have can earn so much money just with the help of digital marketing only.

We proudly provide one of the most comprehensive search engine optimization packages available. We go far beyond the traditional, short-sighted view that getting anyone and everyone to your website is the key to increasing sales. In fact, The SERVEXION India approach is to attract target market consumers to your site and then encourage them to convert from website visitor to buyer. In the end, your company should be getting a great return on your investment (ROI).

Search engine optimization is a long, carefully planned and executed a method for generating more target market visits to a website. Every company in the world that needs to use a website to display its products and services requires the services of an expert SEO consultant. Hiring an experienced, professional SEO company is the first step toward achieving your goals. Companies of varying sizes count on us to bring in website traffic and in turn, they are increasing their bottom lines.

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