Saturday, May 03, 2008

101 Website Marketing Serenades


Website Marketing 101

When it comes to website marketing and promotions, you need to start here...

Every website, whether new, old, or just a thought needs to consider the marketing that will be put that website in front of it's targeted audience. Sounds easy huh? It just takes time, perseverance, and the will to succeed! A budget will help too!

The hardest part is sorting through all the crap that's available to (supposedly) help you. Yes, I said crap.

There is a mountain of businesses out there making incredible claims about FREE traffic generation, FREE hits, Mega sales, $20,000 in 3 hours,- or worse, for a small fee of $29.95 we can... blah, blah, blah.

Save your money! I have spent enough for all of us.

Following through with our suggestions offers you the most lucrative, ethical, and professional ways to achieve substantial results and still sleep at night. No, you don't have to go for your wallet, I will tell you about these programs in this article (for no charge). A good education will assist you the most.

If you already have a site, we recommend a Website Analysis.

Before You Build

#1 Have a plan - Not just a good idea. Take your idea and formulate a complete plan around your goals. Highlight any USP's you may have.

#2 Build Meta-tags into every category page! This is crucial to targeted traffic success with the Directories and Search Engines. You need to be found, not by your company name (only) but by "keywords" that the general public would use to find your type of business or service. DO NOT just pick any words, this is critical!

#3 Use those keyword phrases throughout your site or particular page. Reinforce what topic you are addressing within that page (content).

#4 Publish an article or newsletter that shows you are an authority on the topics you cover (or try to sell). Just a spiffy sales letter is not enough. This is also critical in acquiring the email addresses of prospective customers.

#5 Create some banner ads with impact for future partnership advertising. You will use these on your site as well as banner partners you can swap impressions with.

#6 Begin considering what types of businesses or partners would or could compliment your offerings. Start a list.

#7 Important: Create a budget for marketing your website. Yes, there are many things that you can implement for free, however, successful websites HAVE spent money wisely to get them to where they are. Don't be fooled, you WILL spend money on marketing your website - it could be potentially more than what your website costs you to build. The verse goes like this... "Build it and they won't come". You may have already learned this, and that is why you're here.

Good luck with your promotions!

Author, Scott 'Gears', is the Founder and Sr. Project Manager for Hyperformance Media.com, a Technology Marketing Company serving online businesses since 1996. His 23+ years of experience in the computer industry will help you succeed. Their website offers free education & resources that will assist any business in successfully marketing their company online. ss@hyperformancemedia.com.

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Outsorcing Marketing Verse


Outsourcing

Can your business benefit?

Depending on the project, outsourcing can sometimes be a very cost-effective business decision. Sure, we can all accomplish some of it in-house, but can we do it all, and do it well?

Would it surprise you to know that Compaq Computer™ outsources? How about Underwriters Laboratories™? Gateway Computers™? Yes, even the Chicagoland Area Chamber of Commerce™! I was involved with projects involving each one of these companies. They all outsourced specific portions of their projects. Even Hyperformance Media out-sources specific project requirements! Every business does not know every other business.

What I mean is, your business can not know everything there is to know about printing (for example). Therefore, in certain situations, it would benefit your company to outsource this service to some printing specialists. It could save you time, money, and benefits, leaving your employees their time to continue to do what they do best, their job - with minimum productivity loss!

In this simple example you can begin to see the many benefits.


  • You have professionals creating the desired product.
  • They will do a better job in less time.
  • No need to buy additional equipment or software.
  • No set-up, no training, no lost time.
  • No payroll, benefits, or accounting headaches.
  • Your employees remain focused on their goals and your business productivity!

These are just a few of the many reasons used to justify the outsourcing of some projects versus attempting to do everything in-house.

Your business website is a mission-critical marketing tool. Used properly, your website should be your most outspoken salesperson. Your business should be getting more business from the Web, if not doing business on the Web.

The successful marketing of your business website should NOT be taken lightly. Yes, your company now has a webmaster on the payroll full-time, not to mention the design and development staff, but is your web presence working? Are you achieving results besides just looking good?

Outsourcing the marketing services of your website gives you the experience you desire and the results you need. Your business needs to be found yesterday! Your business needs customers to grow, not just survive! Who has your market share?

Let's talk about getting some of that back! Let's talk about what changes can be put in place to GET BUSINESS from your website.

Today, tomorrow, and every year going forward!

Thanks - and good luck with your promotions!

Author, Scott 'Gears', is the Founder and Sr. Project Manager for Hyperformance Media.com, a Technology Marketing Company serving online businesses since 1996. His 23+ years of experience in the computer industry will help you succeed. Their website offers free education & resources that will assist any business in successfully marketing their company online. ss@hyperformancemedia.com.

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Worldwide Viral URL Opus


URL Everywhere

Your URL (www) should be everywhere and more. I know many of you are going to think this is common sense, but how many of these are you using? Your web address should be on every piece of anything your business does, period.

Your customers can come from anywhere, at anytime. Yep, the airport at 3:32 a.m., or how about the car behind you?

Below is a list of some of the obvious and the not so obvious places you should be advertising your website. Some of them cost you nothing, most of them cost you very little. Do you want more customers than your competitors? Then put yourself 'out there' - more than your competition! You'll be surprised at how much traffic you can directly generate.

Hopefully you are using all of this first set...


  • Invoices - Make sure, or get it on your next re-order.
  • Statements - Another one, get it printed!
  • Business Cards - Every card should have the website address and appropriate e-mail address. Letterhead - Right after your address should be your web address.
  • Envelopes - This all goes to Branding effectively and getting people to your site.
  • Company Vehicles - Often overlooked, but I thought I would add it here... don't forget these!
  • Corrugate Products - Each and every package or product you ship should have your web address either stamped on it (cheap) or printed on the next run.
  • Everything you publish with your company name should also carry your URL. Your Holiday cards for example...
  • Advertising - It amazes me not only how much business spends on print advertising, but how many of them do not include their web address in the Ads. It's 'way' better than your phone number at 5:00 a.m. Saturday morning? You already pay to print everything, just be sure you're adding the line: www.we are real.com

Do you have all of those? Good job! Now try these...

You never know where your visitors (customers) could come from.


  • Your Answering Machine message..."be sure to visit our website at www." Your "On Hold" message..."for additional savings, visit our website at www."
  • Include your website business card with every bill you pay! You'll be surprised.
  • On a Bus waiting bench. Just your URL, thousands of people keep seeing these every-single-day.
  • Engrave the bottoms of your gym shoes. This way, everywhere you walk in the mud or snow leaves your URL impression... C'mon, laugh with me!
  • Clear window stickers - The greatest invention, removable, for car window, car door, trunk, etc. * License Plates or Frames - If legal, make your "other plate" an Ad for your website!
  • Bumper Stickers - Don't laugh, - you can make them classy, and they're inexpensive to boot! Use for cars, sponsorships, tradeshows, mail one with every order, etc.

Best of Luck in your Business Promotions!

Author, Scott 'Gears', is the Founder and Sr. Project Manager for Hyperformance Media.com, a Technology Marketing Company serving online businesses since 1996. His 23+ years of experience in the computer industry will help you succeed. Their website offers free education & resources that will assist any business in successfully marketing their company online. ss@hyperformancemedia.com.

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Wrong Web Promoted Ode

WEB SITE PROMOTION

Time Wasters and Energy Suckers

Stop wasting your time and having your energy sucked dry! What do I mean by this statement? You're all over the internet trying to find out where to promote that new business you entered into, or trying to promote your own business. You've been told by so called experts to promote your new business to free classified ad sites or FFA pages.

They even told you that you will get a ton of traffic to your new site. And you will have 100's or even 1000's in your downline if you advertise your business this way. "Keep at it," they say, and within a couple of weeks you will see exponential results.

So you follow their advice. Night after night you come home from work and advertise your business to free classified ads and FFA pages. You just know that sooner or later your efforts will pay off.

And then reality hits like a ton of bricks! You've been advertising your business for two months now. To your dismay you find that you don't even have one lead or one referral.

What you might have though if you upgraded to the PRO version of the FFA submission is a credit card bill. The bill can be anywhere from $20.00 to $40.00 US dollars.

What you definitely do have is your email client filled with tons of counter ads. So what's the best way to advertise your new business?

Submit articles to ezines and promote your business with the help of others. This is the most cost effective way to promote your business. All it costs you is the time to write your article, and you don't receive a ton of counter ads in your inbox.

If you like this article and know of someone who may benefit from it, please feel free to forward it to them.

Written by Dianne Salmon, author of Time Wasters and Energy Suckers, and is the owner of http://www.choiceresources.com Dianne offers free tips advice and information on starting, growing, and expanding your internet business. Subscribe to the Choice Resources newsletter by sending an email to Dianne@choiceresources.com.

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Home Shopping Networks Poem


What The Home Shopping Networks Can Teach Us About Online Marketing

Who would have thought that a TV network dedicated to selling products on a cable network could become a success?

Besides most people hate commercials… What would make them sit down, watch a shopping network and, ultimately, buy?

Simple… the networks applied principles that have been selling products for hundreds of years.

1. Get targeted prospect’s attention. The networks have a matter of seconds to grab those people flipping the channels looking for something to watch.

• Their solution is an excited host and an attractive display.

• These images say a thousand words, but, on the internet, this task is quite daunting. That is why you must have an exciting headline to get people’s attention, yet leave out the fancy graphics… they take too long to download, while a headline pops up on the screen in a matter of seconds…just like on the home shopping networks.

2. Handle the customer’s objections. The first thing the prospect sees, after his interest is perked, is the price at the bottom of the screen. He is now asking, “Is this product worth the price and will it meet my needs?” This is where the salesmen and women show their expert sales skills.

• Before they get on air, they have done their research and know potential customer’s needs and objections.

• They know that for each need and objection you ignore, you may be missing out on a sale.

• This same concept can be applied to the internet. By writing to your customer in a way that he feels that you have the perfect product for him, you can make a sale.

3. Show the benefits and justify the sale with features. My favorite products to watch being sold are clothing. They have been selling the same types of clothes for years, but they are able to sell thousands and thousands of clothes that would never sell in a department store.

• They do this by citing benefits, like, “You will look beautiful, and you will receive lots of compliments.” This gets the potential customer’s attention, but they are still hesitant because they want to make sure they are opening up their pocketbook for a quality product.

So the sales person will say, “This shirt is different because it has original stripes, and it is a perfect fit.” Now the customer will have the justification he needs to make the purchase.

• On the internet, this step is absolutely vital, and the customer must know why he should buy your product. Do this by making him picture what it would be like for him to use your product.

4. My favorite part… testimonials. On the home shopping network, they always have people calling in to explain why they made their purchase. The customers are doing this so they can justify their purchase to themselves. Everyone wants to make sure he has made the right purchase and so he calls in, so the sales person will say, “Yes, you were absolutely right, and everyone else should take your advice.”

• I like the testimonials so much because I always have to laugh at the various reasons people will use to justify their purchase.

As I am writing this article and listening to QVC, a woman just called in and gave an extremely detailed explanation of why she purchases from QVC and not from department stores. The woman says she has been buying from QVC since the inception of the network and she likes it because she does not have to go outside to buy her clothes.

• This example shows that you need to give testimonials that allow prospects to find reasons to justify their purchase. People want to buy, but they are not going to, unless they have a reason.

All this information is just a touch of everything you can learn from the home shopping networks.

So get tuned in!

Written by Hans Klein. 100% Free- Discover more Internet marketing tips, tricks and strategies to quickly and easily promote your business or product on the Internet. Just visit http://www.WealthStarters.com to learn more.

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SEO Serenade


Search Warrant

So, you've just paid Ј300 - Ј10,000 for a new web site to be designed 'registered your URL' and now it's sitting on the World Wide Web. All your new stationery and Business Cards give the Web Site address quite clearly. The designer assures you that it has been 'submitted' to all the 'Search Engines' and, when you type in the address, there it is.

You've told your customers all about it and they visit it occasionally ... No-one else seems to find it. No new enquiries and the visitor counter is moving slowly nowhere. Sound familiar?

What could have gone wrong? Was it all a waste of valuable marketing resources? Is the Web a wasteland and has the 'dot.com' bubble really burst?

The simple answer is that nothing has gone wrong, all that remains to be done is to 'market your site' effectively and the enquiries should come flooding in.

So let's go back to good, old fashioned, Sales and Marketing basics - AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

Unless you get the customers attention they won't even know your Web Site exists and, if they don't know it exists, how can they find it among the 2.6 billion other Sites on the Web!!

Entrusting the 'selling' of your site to a Web Page designer is a little like expecting a printer to distribute your brochures to your prospective customers and waiting for the orders. The responsibility, therefore, is yours and you, or a member of your marketing team, have to grit your teeth and get on with it.

Interest, Desire and Action should emanate from the design and content of your Web Page, however the first step, Getting Attention, has to be done successfully before any of this can take place. This article focuses on this vital first step

How to get Attention on the Net

To get attention on the World Wide Web you have to get your site listed on the major search engines, and that means within the top 20 places, otherwise your prospective customers will find a similar product, or service, long before they reach you.

Imagine the Internet is like a giant Yellow Pages, with no index, wherever it falls open is where your prospective customer starts to look. It is therefore essential that your site is right at the top of the first page they see.

80% of all traffic to a Web Site is through the major search engines and 'off-line' marketing activity currently accounts for only 2% of 'hits'. This will probably continue into the future, so no amount of advertising will bring the response that a search engine 'listing' will bring, particularly if you are using the Internet to reach the International Market.

To achieve a high listing you, or someone in your team, have to understand how search engines work and then adapt the web site to get their attention. Alternatively you could pay a consultancy to achieve the same results - however no-one will understand your customers the way you do therefore the time and effort invested in developing net skills in house would be worth it. In addition it would be more beneficial if the person selected were from a Sales and Marketing background, who knows the products, with a smattering of IT know how, than a 'techie' - After all, this is marketing.

However, a mistake often arises from a simple misconception. The customer you are targeting with the web site is not the end user - your product, or service, and the design of the site, once they get there is supposed to do this.

The customer for the web site itself is the search engine and its 'buyers'

The 'buyers' fall into 2 categories Search Engine 'spiders' or 'robots' who are totally logical, electronic and not very clever and Human reviewers who are not so logical, know what they do, and don't, like and may be influenced by a snappy description. Let's take each in turn

Search Engine Spiders

Spiders are computer programs that roam the World Wide Web ceaselessly, travelling from page to page of every web site they visit remembering every word on every page. They like pages that change and ignore pages that haven't changed since the last time they were there.

They can only reach a Web site by one of two methods

1 By being told about it - this you can do by registering your site with the search Engine and, eventually, it will send a spider out to visit it.

2 By visiting a Web Site from a link that has been established from another Web Site that it knows about and regularly visits.

The First Rule, therefore, is to register your Web Site with all the major search engines and to begin to develop reciprocal links with other complimentary web sites. The more links you have coming in to your site the more important it must be in the eyes of the spider!

What do the Spiders look for when they visit a site?

Contrary to popular belief, they do not all look for 'keywords' - for instance the Excite, Lycos and Google spiders ignore keywords almost altogether - no amount of conjuring with keywords will get your site to the top 20 in these search engines. What will get your site higher in the ratings is the of the site and the of the site. You can check out what the and of the site are by selecting View, Source in the menu bar of your Web Browser - this shows you what the spider, not the visitor, sees.

The Second Rule, therefore, is not to call your site by the name of the company ( as most businesses do) unless your company name is so well known that everyone will search for it, or the name of your company says what you do quite clearly and unambiguously. No-one cares who you are, it's what you do for them, that counts. If this sounds a little like 'selling the benefits, not the features' it's meant to.

For example - imagine your company is called ABC Electronics and that you manufacture electric vehicles in the UK. Then the of your site could be 'Electric Cars and Vehicles UK, ABC Electronics'

Anyone searching for electric cars and vehicles would find your site at the top of the list, or very close. Whereas if the site were called 'ABC Electronics Limited' it would come much lower in the Search Engine listings, if at all, unless someone searched for 'ABC Electronics Limited' and, bear in mind, the intention of the Internet is to reach a wider audience - if they knew who you were, wouldn't they have already contacted you by other means?

Therefore the single most important part of marketing your site is getting the right. However the preceding sentence is written in invisible ink and most businesses will continue to ignore this simple fact.

The Third Rule is to beware of 'frames' within your web site, particularly the first page, since some of the spiders can only index what is inside the top frame and not the links you would like it to in the main frame.

If you need to use frames as a navigation tool then consider using a 'portal' , or 'doorway', page, or one without a frame, as the first, or entry, page of your site. This, at least, should be identified by all the relevant search engines. You would then link this page to the framed pages on your main site. This may result in some of the Search engines only listing one of the pages on your site, however that is a price you may have to pay.

The Fourth Rule is to ensure that the of the site, in particular the first paragraph of text on the page, contains some of the keywords and / or phrases that your prospective customer will be searching for.

There are some technicalities to observe, such as repeating the keywords within the between 3 and 7 times is optimum. Any more than that and the spiders will penalise you and possibly ignore your site altogether, any less than that and you are not taking full advantage of the spiders totally logical process.

Avoid having repetitive text the same colour as the background in the hope of fooling the spider - this is a myth and will result in the spider banning you from the search engine!

So, for the Electronics Company example above. If the text was to the effect 'Formed in 1985 ABC Electronics is based in Andover, Hampshire, close to the M5, etc. etc.' the spider will not find the words Electric Cars and Vehicles in the and therefore reduce your rating.

However if the said

'Electric Cars and Vehicles (as a headline) - Formed in 1985 ABC Electronics is a world leader in the design and development of Electric Cars and Vehicles for the Armed Forces, Electric Vehicles for the Ambulance Service, etc, etc' the spider would find a high 'density' of keywords in the and improve your sites' rating.

The Fifth Rule is to understand and develop the sites Tags.

Tags are not as important, to some search engines, as the and keyword density of the , but they do include a variety of different items that some search engines and all human reviewers may see which include , , etc. If you employ a range of tactics it will increase your overall success.

This is now the place for on the site - these would be the words that your prospective customers would search for through the search engine. In doing this try to think the way the customer would think - in other words sell benefits, solve problems, anticipate the questions they would be asking. AltaVista and Mirago operate almost exclusively on and tend to ignore .

List all your keywords on a word processing page then prioritise them. What do you think will be the order that people will type in keywords to search for your service or product? Remember, try to think like your customers think, so, for instance, if you produce massage oil is it possible that they will type in sports injury (or injuries)? What does your product do, or solve, not just what is it.

The next step is to pluralise your key words, as in the example above if someone typed in sports injury and your keyword was injuries they would miss you. If you make orange, oranges then searching on either word will find you.

Consider putting in mis-spelt keywords if those words are commonly mis-spelt or mistyped for instance 'servcie'. This is to ensure that people who mis spell or mis type can also find you.

However, a word of warning, the market leader in a particular product range is very low in the ratings on most search engines because their designer mis-spelt a keyword in the design of the web site. If you're not sure whether or not this is true go to www.google.com and search for 'veleting' or the word Barnaley (for Barnsley) - It's amazing what some people do

Also, it may be useful to include a ridiculous such as 'agriptanch', why? Because when you need to find out if your site is registered with a based search engine you simply search on 'agriptanch' and if your site is registered up it comes. If not you may have to re-register it.

The next step is to take a calculated gamble and opt for one of the following methods of using the keywords:

Target vs. Blanket

This is deciding whether or not to use a series of keywords that will cover everything anyone could possibly type in when looking for your product or service, or taking the gamble and knowing what he or she will type in and just put that as a keyword or phrase.

So, for example, if you dealt with a specific subject such as Sea Fishing then you may use just that phrase knowing that the majority of people who were searching for you would type that in as their query.

Target will bring you higher on a search engine listing but you have to be certain that people will search for exactly that word, or phrase.

Blanket covers a larger list of key words you will therefore be listed in more categories but lower on the listings for each, since the density is lower.

You are allowed approximately 200 per page, of course, if you choose to target the prospective customer you may only use 2 or 3 of these. Nevertheless the correct format for is word, comma, space e.g. "cleaning, upholstery, upholstery cleaning, etc"

The Sixth rule is possibly the most misunderstood rule of all : Spiders cannot follow graphically embedded links. This means that when your web page designer has put all those buttons and GIFS and animations on the page, if there are no text links to other pages then the search engine will only see one page. This means that if you have a 100 page web site, as far as the search engines are concerned you have given them a book with all the pages stuck together, unless they are linked in a way that the spiders can follow. There are very simple bits of coding that can be placed in the source code of each page to ensure the spiders access all pages.

There are other, more sophisticated ways to attract the attention of the spiders, such as the development and publishing of separate 'portal' pages, each directed back to your index page. However, by adapting the information above and applying it to your companies web site you will start to see a rapid increase in visitors and a promotion to the upper echelons of the 'Spider' based Search engines.

Human Reviewers

These are people who are either employed by the search engine company or are volunteer editors. They control what appears where in the King of all search engines, Yahoo, and in the human edited directory known as Open Directory. In order to attract their attention you need to develop snappy, factual, compulsive sales copy for the and the element of the web site.

Although these appear in the tags and are therefore unseen by the normal viewer, they are also the words that are used when registering with the Human edited Search Engines. they are the words that will entice them to review and, hopefully, categorise your site.

Restrict the to 150 characters, including spaces, it does not require keywords, but make it appealing to a human being since they probably see hundreds of sites per day. avoid phrases like 'simply the best', 'the only web site to visit'. Just like the editor of a newspaper, or magazine they are looking for interesting, quality, information for their clients who are the end users, the people who are ceaselessly searching the Internet for exactly the type of service, or product, you provide.

Finally

Whatever you invest in web site development is wasted money unless you are willing to 'market the site' to the Internet 'buyers'. With 2.605 Billion Web Sites out there (yes it has increased by 5,000,000 since you started to read this article) it's a little like throwing a pin on the floor, in a house, in London, and expecting someone to find it - without giving them the address.

Go back to basics in sales and marketing - identify the buyer, study the buyer, understand buyer behaviour and then make it easy for them to buy. And remember, if you have a 10 page web site that's 10 opportunities they have to 'buy' since each can have it's own , , and .

Ensure that you get the Attention of the Search Engine Buyers, work with your marketing department on developing a Site that Interests the end user, builds their Desire to buy your service, or product, and deliver a compelling call to Action that produces e - success for your on-line business.

Author, John Saxon, is a Companion of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management and a Director of Fastlink Solutions Limited and Site-Pro Limited. He has had a number of articles published in different mediums including the internet and the ISMM Magazine. His web sites may be visited at http://www.fastlinksolutions.co.uk and http://www.site-pro.co.uk.

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High Search Engine Ranking Verse


The (Not So) Shocking Truth About Getting A High Search Engine Ranking

I have seen my site hit #3 at Google, and some of my fellow entrepreneurs are wondering how I did it. Well, it's no big secret, and it won't cost you anything but your time. Here's what I did:


  • I searched online for information about the title and description tags to get a better idea of what they should say. http://www.selfpromotion.com is a great site for this kind of information. It's all about search engine positioning, and it's free to sign up. However, your account only stays active for 4 weeks, after which the webmaster asks that you donate money to his site to keep your account active.
  • I used Overture's free keyword tool at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. Just enter keywords that are relevant to your site, and Overture will generate the most popular search terms that people are using. I picked the most popular terms (making sure they were relevant), and made a list of keywords for each page of my site in Notepad.
  • Next, I visited http://www.scrubtheweb.com/abs/meta-check.html. This handy tool will check your meta tags and tell you if there are too many characters in your title, keyword and description. The above site is just one of many meta tag analyzers available on the net, so beware - every analyzer says something different when it comes to how many characters your meta tags should have. My advice? Pick one and stick with it, at least for a while. Otherwise, you will just get frustrated.
  • As soon as I uploaded my pages with their new meta tags, I resubmitted to the search engines using (the former) World Submitter - http://www.worldwidepromoter.com/?strategy. Note: there are some search engines that require you to submit your site manually in order to get listed. Selfpromotion.com has great information and articles about how to properly submit to these engines. I wouldn't suggest submitting to the search engines more than once or twice per month, unless you want to run the risk of being accused of spamming them.
  • If I see the opportunity to add my link on a relevant site, I go for it. The more links your site has to other sites, the higher you will rank in the search engines. However, you will want to avoid linking with sites that are your direct competition.

You may just find that selfpromotion.com is the only place you need to go for information about search engine positioning. I did quite a bit of research and found several sites with great information, so I just tried to combine them all. Am I a glutton for punishment? Probably ;) But even though it took hours to redo all of my meta tags from scratch, it was well worth it to see my site in Google's Top 10!

Powerful ad copy is the key to producing the visits and sales you want. Drop by http://www.strategyadservice.com for low-cost, effective solutions! (c) Elizabeth Piotrowski.

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Internet Entrepreneur's Opus


Target Practice And The Internet Entrepreneur

Internet marketing, a lot of the time really is hit and miss. Always keep in mind that when you promote your site you are, in effect trying to get the word out to the whole world. Not an easy task! How can there NOT be variables when you are advertising to billions? It isn't always where you advertise that makes the difference; it's HOW.

First and foremost, it is SO important to have effective ad copy. Without it, you truly are wasting your time and money. Along with effective ads, it's imperative that you have variety! Don't advertise all over the place with the same ad. The surfer of today seems to get bored very quickly, so it's important to pique their curiosity as often as possible.

Rotate your ads - this means, that if you post to ffa.net with Ad A on Monday, you will post to that site with Ad B on Tuesday. And track your ads so you know which ones are getting the most clicks. Once you know this, you can scratch the less-effective ads off your list, and write new and improved versions.

The time of day you submit can also make a difference. You have to test/track this as well. Try different times of the day, different days of the week, and different ads on each site. See how your ads do when you advertise once a week, twice a week or every day. It's a lot of work!

I have found ffas to be quite effective. Now, before you say "UGH!" let me tell you - ffas aren't the only advertising method that generate mounds of email! If you don't like the idea of submitting to individual ffa pages, try a database submitter, like worldsubmitter.com or mymegasubmitter.com. Your ad can be on thousands of sites in minutes. And don't forget to set up a 'junk' email account BEFORE you post to the ffas, or you will be in trouble!

Next are the safelists. I submit to under 40 safelists daily, but receive over 1000 emails in each of my 7 mailboxes every 2 days! The point is, whether you use ffas or safelists, you cannot escape a full inbox :) Safelist examples are adtactics.com and mbpsafelist.com, and they get pretty good results if your headline is effective. If you can, try a sponsor ad (your ad at the top of every email sent to the safelist) - incredible results, but only for the first 3 or 4 days - I noticed a loss of interest shortly thereafter.

The list goes on and on - start page programs, banner exchanges, reciprocal links, classified ads, ezine advertising - try all of the above. Find the mix that works best for you. And, when it stops working, either drop it entirely or mix differently. Eventually you will find a winning combination.

(c) Elizabeth Piotrowski. Powerful ad copy is the key to producing the visits and sales you want. Drop by http://www.strategyadservice.com for low-cost, effective solutions!

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Free Viral Traffic Ode


Getting Free Viral Traffic Using Automated Visitor Referral Systems

Would you like to get unlimited viral traffic to your site, for free?

It sounds too good to be true, of course. Many companies will promise to do this for you. The catch - you have to put a banner ad, text link or popup on your page. This is not a good deal as it will increase your traffic by only 1% to 2% on each level. Furthermore, it involves the hassle of an affiliate programme.

However, it is possible for you to get free viral traffic to your site using the visitors you have. All you have to do is make it easy for them to tell their friends about your site. (Note that this tactic may not work if your site is a boring one and your visitors have no intention of telling their friends about your site.) Normally, it is too much trouble to shoot off an email. Therefore, if you want news of your site to spread rapidly by word of mouth, you must make it easy for your visitors to refer their friends to your site. The easiest way to do this is using a form. All they need to do is fill in their name, email, and the emails of a few friends, then hit the button. A quick email will be shot off to their friends with a link to your site. To have this kind of form, all you need is a HTML editor to make the form and a script to process the mailing.

The easy part is making the form. However, having a script to process the mailing is far harder. This will definitely create plenty of problems for you, unless you find a free service which will provide the mailing script. Also, it would be nice if that service could throw in a free form-building tool.

There is no shortage of such services; but most of them cleverly include a banner ad as part of the form built for you. Having seen many such services, I have made one which DOES NOT force you to put an unwanted ad on your page!

Enter TechnoSoft21 ViralTraffic, the all-new free service which provides a form-builder and a form processing script to anyone who needs it. All you need to do is head to the site, fill out a form which generates the code for you, then copy and paste the code into your own website. When you view your site, you will see that it DOES NOT have a banner ad or any other ad on it! You will be ready to get the tidal wave of traffic to your site! To get started, just go to http://www.technosoft21.com/viraltraffic/

P.S. If for some reason or another you don't want to use TechnoSoft21 ViralTraffic, you will probably have to construct your own form processing script in FrontPage WebBots, PHP, CGI, Perl, C, AppleScript, Python or another language. (TechnoSoft21 ViralTraffic is powered by PHP scripts.) It's tough work, but it's fun. If you're game enough... go for it!

Benjamin Choi is the CEO and founder of TechnoSoft21 software and web systems (http://www.technosoft21.com). He is an active web developer, software programmer and site promoter.

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Hosting Problem Solved Poem


Solving Common Problems with Hosting Companies

For those of you with Web sites, you probably know what a “host” is. It’s a company that provides a location, or address, on the Internet where your Web site resides.

In other words, just like a physical business needs an address, so does a Web site. You can’t have a Web site and just “stick it up” on the Web. Unless you want to set up your own server, you have to go through a hosting company who gives you that address, including server space and bandwidth, that enables the search engines and visitors to find your site.

Let’s look at some common problems we often have with hosting companies:


  • You can never find an actual person to talk to! They may have a 24-hour customer service line open, but you can never get through to a real person.
  • Hosting companies often think that the “lowest price” will always get the sale, but they fail to realize that what people really want is excellent customer service, servers that are up almost 100% of the time, and a variety of services that come with the hosting package.
  • Many hosting companies don’t provide any other functionality other than Web site hosting. They don’t provide a “control panel” full of goodies such as PGP secure e-mail, shopping carts, log analysis, database creation, etc.
  • Guess what? Technical support people often don’t make the best “customer support” people. They may be technical gurus, but their main interest lies in their high tech servers and other functionality, rather than solving the simple problems of their customers.
  • In other words, weak customer service is a major problem with the majority of hosting companies these days.

Solution:

I recently had the pleasure of being introduced to Combustion Hosting Company, and to say I was impressed is a vast understatement.

Here are some things that struck me as unbelievable. When the phone rings, whoever answers the phone is required to stand up to answer it and talk. After all, the sheer act of standing up requires that they’re on the ball and are listening to your problems and concerns. And, you actually speak to a “real” person!

With Combustion, if you have a problem, they don’t just “tell” you how to solve it, they solve it for you! Also, their services certainly aren’t limited to “hosting.” They can set you up with an account to where you can access the Internet through local access numbers no matter where you travel.

Their prices are extremely reasonable – much better than I had been paying previously. Plus, the “extras” I’ve received by going with Combustion are amazing.

But the one thing that makes Combustion shine over most Web hosting companies is their devotion to providing good customer service, and this is an area in which they truly excel.

So, if you’re in the market for a new Web site, or if you aren’t pleased with your current host, consider Combustion Hosting. It will be one of the smartest moves you could ever make for your Web site. http://www.combustionhosting.com/moreinfo

If you want further proof as to the benefits of using Combustion, read: http://www.techvibes.com/absolutenm/templates/template.asp?articleid=39&zoneid=2

Author, Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing courses (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com) and is the content provider for GRSeo software (http://www.se-optimizer.com). She also teaches 2-, 3-, and 5-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

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Search Engine Submissions Serenade


Search Engine Submissions Made Easy!

One area of search engine marketing that has changed dramatically over the years is submissions. Submitting to the search engines used to be so complicated, with having to choose between manual versus software submissions; only being able to submit so many pages a day; having to be careful about oversubmitting; and the list goes on.

Submissions used to be the worst part of the search engine optimization process, at least for me.

Now, I can literally write this whole article in two words:

Pay Inclusion

Yep, there you have it. If you want to take the headache out of submissions and if you want to make things much easier for YOU, use pay inclusion!

It’s hard for someone like me to admit how powerful pay inclusion programs are, because I’ve been in this “game” long enough to remember when everything was free. So, moving into the pay realm has been a difficult thing to do.

However, the benefits of pay inclusion far outweigh the cost.

Benefits of Pay Inclusion


  • Your pages are indexed much faster than submitting through free add URL or waiting for the spiders to find the pages on their own.
  • By using pay inclusion, your pages are getting outside of the 95%+ spam that the engines say come through free add URL submissions.
  • With pay inclusion, your pages are respidered on a very regular basis, depending on the engine. For example, Inktomi and Fast respider their pay inclusion pages every 48 hours.
  • With pay inclusion, you never have to submit your pages again! As long as you continue to use pay inclusion, your pages will continue to get respidered based on each engine’s schedule.
  • Because your pages are respidered on a regular basis without your doing one single thing to initiate this action, you can make changes to your pages today and begin to see the results of those changes within a week. If you didn’t use pay inclusion, you may not see the results of the changes for a month or two.
  • If you use pay inclusion, you’re forming a “partnership” with the search engines, which I personally feel is important and very beneficial. You’re now outside of the realm of the millions of spammers, and that’s exactly where you want to be.
  • Most of the pay inclusion programs offer some sort of submission reports.
  • Pay inclusion programs are ideal for dynamically generated sites.

Now that we’ve looked at the benefits of pay inclusion, let's create an example to see how inexpensive it really is. Let’s say we have a brand new Web site, and we have three main pages that we want to submit through pay inclusion.

Pay Inclusion Programs

Inktomi (Provides secondary search results to engines such as MSN and HotBot) http://www.positiontech.com/directSubmit.htm

Benefits:


  • Upon submission, your pages will make it into the Inktomi index within 72 hours, as a general rule.
  • Your pages are respidered every 48 hours.
  • The term of the pay inclusion program is 12 months.
  • Reporting services are included, such as verification of page acceptance; refresh reports; URL validation; and account management.
  • Here’s the audience reach of some of the engines that use Inktomi’s secondary results, according to Nielsen NetRatings in October 2002: MSN: 28.1%; Overture: 5.4%; LookSmart: 3.0%; (also provides results to the “new” HotBot) (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)
  • Cost? $39 for the first URL, and $25 each for additional URL’s up to 1000. So, the total cost for our three pages would be $89. (See Special Note at the bottom of this article on how you can save 20% off the price of Inktomi and Fast pay inclusion – for a limited time only.)

Fast (Provides search results to AlltheWeb, Lycos, and HotBot) http://www.positiontech.com/directSubmit.htm

You can use Position Tech to submit your Fast pages too, so be sure to enroll in both pay inclusion programs at the same time.

Benefits:


  • Upon submission, your pages will make it into the Fast index within 48 hours, as a general rule.
  • Your pages are respidered every 48 hours.
  • The term of the pay inclusion program is 12 months.
  • Reporting services are included, such as verification of page acceptance; refresh reports; URL validation; and account management.
  • With Fast, you can choose between several different programs, including some that include a free onsite search engine, bulk inclusion, etc.
  • The audience reach of Fast, according to Nielsen NetRatings in October 2002, was: Lycos: 4.4%; (also provides results to the “new” HotBot) (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)
  • Cost? $34 for the first URL, and $16 each for additional URL’s up to 1000. So, the total cost for our three pages would be $66. (See Special Note at the bottom of this article on how you can save 20% off the price of Inktomi and Fast pay inclusion – for a limited time only.)

Teoma and Ask Jeeves (Provides results to Teoma, Ask Jeeves, and HotBot) http://ask.ineedhits.com/

The only way to get in the Teoma index is through pay inclusion. This is one engine that doesn’t have a free add URL page.

Benefits:


  • Upon submission, your pages will make it into the Teoma and Ask Jeeves indices within 7 days.
  • Your pages are respidered every 7 days.
  • The term of the pay inclusion program is 12 months.
  • Reporting services are included, such as click-through reporting.
  • The audience reach of Teoma/Ask Jeeves, according to Nielsen NetRatings in October 2002, was: Ask Jeeves: 10.3% (also provides results to the “new” HotBot) (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)
  • Cost? $30 for the first URL, and $18 each for additional URL’s up to 1000. So, the total cost for our three pages would be $66.

AltaVista (Provides results to AltaVista) http://addurl.altavista.com/

Benefits:


  • Upon submission, your pages will make it into the AltaVista index within 2 business days.
  • Your pages are respidered every 24 hours.
  • The term of the pay inclusion program is 6 months.
  • Reporting services are included, such as tracking submissions and transactions through their online Account Management Center.
  • The audience reach of AltaVista, according to Nielsen NetRatings in October 2002, was: AltaVista: 4.4% (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)
  • Cost? $39 for the first URL, and $29 each for 2-10 URL’s, then $19 each for 11 to 500 URLs. So, the total cost for our three pages for **six months** would be $97. The cost per year would be $194.

Downside:

AltaVista’s pay inclusion is more expensive than the others, and AV doesn’t have the coverage that some of the other engines have. Plus, their pay inclusion program is only for six months, as compared to a full year with the other programs.

So, you’ll have to decide whether you feel it’s worth the cost.

AltaVista is the one engine where you can still use their free add URL without being placed into the same category as the huge group of “free add URL spammers,” because AltaVista’s free add URL process doesn’t allow mass submissions. Instead, their unique “puzzle submission” process requires you to enter a submission code into the submission box, and you can only submit five URLs at no cost. So, if you want to use free add URL for one of the engines, AltaVista’s is the one to use. http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new

Total Costs so Far

With our example, considering that this is a brand new Web site with zero visibility, we’ll figure out the cost for our three pages based on using AltaVista’s pay inclusion program and on not using their program.

Subtotal of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs Without AltaVista: $221 (for 3 pages) (Includes the Inktomi engines, the Fast engines, Teoma, and Ask Jeeves. This does NOT include AltaVista.)

Subtotal of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs With AltaVista: $415 (for 3 pages) (Includes the Inktomi engines, the Fast engines, Teoma, Ask Jeeves, and AltaVista.)

Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com

You might be wondering why I haven’t listed the Yahoo! directory in this listing of pay inclusion programs. With the way that Yahoo! now displays results, which are almost a duplication of Google results, the importance of submitting to the Yahoo! directory at a yearly cost of $299 has diminished. Depending on where things go from here, with Yahoo! having purchased the Inktomi engine, this is subject to immediate change. But, at this point in time, paying to be included in the Yahoo! directory isn’t anywhere near as important as it once was. If you have good visibility in Google, you should have good visibility in Yahoo!.

But, our site is brand new, and the advantage to Yahoo!’s pay inclusion program is that your site will be reviewed for possible inclusion within 7 working days. So, depending on our finances, we may want to add Yahoo!’s pay inclusion costs, just so we can get fast visibility for our new site.

(According to Nielson NetRankings in October 2002, the audience reach of Yahoo! was 28.5%. http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)

Total of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs Including Yahoo!, but not AltaVista: $520 (Includes the Inktomi engines, the Fast engines, Teoma, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo!. This does NOT include AltaVista.)

Total of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs Including both Yahoo! and AltaVista: $714 (Includes the Inktomi engines, the Fast engines, Teoma, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo!, and AltaVista.)

What about Google?

Google http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Google is the only major engine that doesn’t have a pay inclusion program. So, the only way to get your pages into the index is to let the spider find the pages on its own through links on other pages or to submit through Google’s free add URL.

Personally, I always let the spider find the pages on its own and never submit to Google manually. By going this route, while your site is busy being spidered by the other engines and you’re busy building link popularity, by the time that Google “finds” your pages, you should have had time to build some link popularity, which we all know is so important with Google.

According to Nielson NetRankings in October 2002, the audience reach of Google alone was 29.2%. Add to that AOL at 19.7%, Yahoo! at 28.5%, and Netscape at 5.5%, and it’s quite easy to see the power behind Google. (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)

In Conclusion

Rather than worrying with submitting your pages manually to each of the major engines, take advantage of the tremendous benefits of using pay inclusion.

Then, let Google find your pages on its own, and hold off submitting to the Yahoo! directory for a while.

Based on our example here, if we were submitting three pages, our total yearly cost would be either $221 and $415, depending on whether or not we chose to use AltaVista’s pay inclusion program.

So, as you can see, the benefits far outweigh the costs. Repeating what I said earlier in this article, the “key” to successful submissions these days can be summed up in two words: pay inclusion.

Special Note:

After writing this article, I found that Lycos is offering a discount on both Fast and Inktomi pay inclusion programs for a limited time. If you submit to both engines, you can receive a 20% discount! I don’t know how long this will last, but here’s the URL:

http://insite.lycos.com/searchservices/select/select_overview.asp?co=undefined

Author, Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing courses (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com) and is the content provider for GRSeo software (http://www.se-optimizer.com). She also teaches 2-, 3-, and 5-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

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Trust Building Verse


How To Build Trust and Sell More Products!

If the headline is what gets them there, then it's the *proof* that keeps them there. Follow closely...


  • A powerful headline is 10% what you say and 90% what you prove.
  • Headlines can simultaneously create curiosity and skepticism.
  • Until proven otherwise, your headline is an empty promise.

It's important that you fully understand that the tidal wave of lies and deceit online have created a gap between you and your target market.

Bridge that gap with TRUST!


  • Build trust by quickly and immediately proving your headline.
  • Proof creates trust.
  • Trust eliminates skepticism.
  • Trust transforms the curious visitor into a customer for life.

The ultimate headline that can make you rich is the compelling headline supported by jury convicting undeniable proof that YOU yourself did what the headlines promises.

This proof can eliminate all reasonable doubt.

Draw your visitors in with your headline, blow their socks off with the proof.

Prove the headline to be actual, factual and true and watch your cash flow explode into a magnificent mushroom cloud of profits.

Slick words do not build trust, they fuel skepticism.


  • Proof makes your website read differently.
  • Same words, but a different frame of mind.

Instead of a fast talking slick internet pitchman, PROOF transforms your website and words into a copywriting masterpiece where the visitor feels that you know what you are talking about.

That feeling can more quickly and easily move customers to your order page resulting in higher sales for you and a satisfying purchase for your visitors.

Stephen Pierce has been online marketing investment services since 1998. Join his FREE "One-Minute!" Marketing Letter http://www.the-whole-truth.com/oneminute.html to get your hands on some real world "insider" marketing tips.

Written by Stephen Pierce, author of two #1 bestselling eBooks at ClickBank. The first being "Rapid Fire Swing Trading" and his newest release "The Truth About Internet Marketing". Making over +$30,000.00 a month in consistent net profits, ClickBank regards Pierce as one of their top product movers.

You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated. spierce@the-whole-truth.com. (c) Stephen Pierce - All Rights Reserved.

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