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Archive for March, 2010
Google Reinvents the Phone with Google Voice
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
When it comes to “cool tools”, Google is the master inventor. Say what you want about Google, but they know what they’re doing when it comes to giving the public what they want and need. Take the telephone for instance. An old invention that now has been given a new twist with ” Google Voice” (G.V.) . Hold onto your chair as I’m about to tell you how to have a lot more fun with Ma Bell.
Google is giving you the ability to manage all your phones with one centralized number. At the time of this writing, it’s only available to those in the U.S., and by invitation only. Upon registration, you’ll be given your phone number that you connect to any existing phone number. When someone calls the Google Voice number, it rings the phone number that you specified. The option of selecting a word for your personalized number is also given.
Now, if all Google Voice did was send phone calls to your cell phone, that would be great all by itself, but the amount of extra tools and features are truly amazíng.
When a call is received you can answer it, send it directly to voice mail, listen in on the incoming call to decide what to do with it, or start recording the call upon answering. How’s that for a few options?
After receiving a call you’d like to record, hit 4 on your phone to start recording. Different states have different laws when it comes to recording calls, so check your current federal and state laws before using this feature. Currently outbound calls cannot be recorded. Google does provide an automated verbal announcement when the recording starts and stops so the person you’re speaking with knows they are being recorded. So much for incriminating yourself (LOL).
Say goodbye to voicemail as you know it. When a voicemail is recorded, you can check it by going to the Google Voice website and logging in, or calling your Google number. You can even be notified by email, or text message of new messages needing your attention. The ability to listen in on voice mails as they are being left is a very handy feature.
Voicemail messages can be shared with others via Email, even downloaded as MP3 files and embedded on a website or blog. Messages are also transcribed as text and housed on Google’s site for later reading, or sent to you by email. When it comes to voice mail greetings, custom messages can be set for groups or certain individuals.
Google Voice is free for use within the U.S., but does give the ability to make low cost international calls to over 200 countries from your phone or Google’s site. You’ll first need to purchase credits through Google Checkout before making these calls. Rates vary per country.
Here are some other handy features:
• Phone spam filters which block calls and mark them as spam
• Conference Calling
• Temporary forwarding of calls to another number
• Access Google Voice from mobile browsers at http://google.com/voice/m
• Call Widgets – Easily add a “call me” widget to your blog or site with copy and paste code located under setup.
• Do not disturb option which sends all incoming calls directly to voicemail when you don’t want to be bothered.
So what about when you call someone and want it to appear you are calling from your Google Voice phone number? No problem. The ability to make calls that will display your G.V. number on caller ID can be done in three different ways.
1) Hit call from within Google Voice website
2) From G.V. mobile site on your cell
3) By calling your G.V. number and logging into the system.
Google will call you at the number you specify and connect your outbound call. It doesn’t get much better than that.
The technical requirements to use this service are a computer with Win XP, Vista, Mac or Linux, Internet Explorer 6.0 or above, Firefox 3.0 or higher, Safari, Google Chrome and Flash 8.9. To request your invitation go to – https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/ .
So, if you thought using the phone was outdated, sign up with Google Voice and put some “FUN” back into an old relationship. This just might be the best thing old Ma Bell has seen in years.
“My mechanic told me, ‘He couldn’t repair my brakes, so he made my horn louder.’” – Comedian, Steven Wright
We all want our websites to be more effective, and if you’re like most business people you are constantly searching the Web for anything that will help. What you find is a cabal of experts armed with statistics, analysis, charts and graphs all pointing to how they can get you high-up on the search engines and drive more traffíc to your site. The problem is that like Steven Wright’s mechanic these guys are adjusting your horn when it’s your brakes that need fixing.
There is little point in attracting more visitors to your site if your site has little of interest to say. Even if your site is jammed packed with useful products, services and solutions if it doesn’t connect with your audience, they won’t ever invest the time necessary for you to make your case.
When websites fail it’s most often because they do not function effectively as your primary communication tool. The Web is overcrowded with options and unless you’re prepared to deliver a compelling differentiating presentation you will be quickly dismissed as irrelevant. Let’s face it; business is tough, probably tougher than it’s ever been before.
Something is Missing
You’ve done all the technical tweaks and responded to all the research and analytics. You’re blogging, micro-blogging, social networking, and search optimizing, but still something is not quite right, something is missing. What’s the missing ingredient? You know it’s out there, but you can’t for the life of you figure out what it is.
You know the Web offers the potential to access new markets, find new customers, and reach new heights, but with all that potential, the results always seem just out of reach. If research and analytics were the answer you’d already be rich. Of course it was an over-reliance on research that brought us the Edsel, New Coke, and that wonderful Wall Street goody called Derivatives, one of the greatest investment boondoggles of our time.
There is something artificially comforting about putting your faith in seemingly logical yet unfathomable solutions based on indecipherable scientific modeling and over-hyped research analysis, all brought to you by computer scientists and mathematicians who haven’t ever run a marketing department or launched a new product or business.
Business leaders have adopted the attitude that, “It must be right, because I sure as heck don’t understand it.” And when it all goes wrong, or results are anemic, well, “What are you going to do? It’s not my fault, it all looked good on paper.” Ad agencies and Wall Street have been getting away with this kind of bunkum for decades, and look at the mess they’ve made of things.
What’s It All About, Alfie?
Business success is all about your ability to engage your audience with a message that compels them to action. Simply put, your business relies on your ability to communicate. Eureka!
And your website is the best communication vehicle you have. The question is how do you use your website to communicate your marketing message in the most engaging, compelling, and memorable manner? What is the missing ingredient that will turn your scientifically sterile online cookie-cutter presentation into something that cuts through the massive sameness of Internet clutter, and makes a statement that your audience will respond to?
Finding Your Emotional and Psychological Value Proposition
One of the hardest things for tough-minded business people to accept is that sales and marketing success is based on the subconscious emotional and psychological appeal of a brand. That’s the reason, reliance on feature selling rarely works, and only tends to commoditize a product or service – the guy with the most bells and whistles for the least amount of money wins, and why would you want to play that game?
Even the most casual market observer must recognize that all leading brands have one thing in common, no matter what they sell: the promise of their brand is based on a concept that is established through an emotional or psychological appeal. Apple is about thinking and acting creatively without the worry of technical issues; Starbucks is about reconnecting to the original coffee break ideal of a relaxing oasis away from the hustle bustle of everyday life; and Ikea is about stylish living on a budget. Each concept appeals to the deep-seated desires of the targeted audience. It is this singular concept that makes each of these companies special and different from their competition; it is the message that all their marketing, advertising, and promotion is based upon, and it is the true value they provide their audience that attracts interest, holds attention, and delivers promise.
Implementing Your Emotional and Psychological Value Proposition
In order to implement a company’s emotional and psychological value proposition, we use a process called the ConceptCreator. It starts with various sales’ points that need to be covered. Based on the supplied information, we develop a focused marketing concept using the Law of Dissatisfaction that enables us to discover the experiential human subtext of why people will want what you sell. The presentation concept is boiled-down to a movie-style logline that states the brand story to be presented in the Web Video campaign.
How Much Is A Concept Worth?
“Wait a minute – did he say a movie-style logline? That sure doesn’t sound business-like, and I haven’t heard any corporate CEO or MBA talk about movie loglines.” Maybe so, but think about it. Hollywood studios spend enormous sums of money to produce a movie with the potential of making hundreds of millions of dollars, and each financial investment starts with someone coming up with a clever logline that captures the imagination. Television commercials can cost ten thousand dollars a second to produce and without a guiding conceptual premise they become DOA when implemented. So why wouldn’t you start your Web Video campaign using the same proven formula.
The logline, mission statement, or elevator pitch if you prefer needs to state the characters, goals, obstacles, differentiating factors, and resolution within the context of a story scenario.
For Instance…
If it works for the movie industry will it work for the advertising and marketing industry? Let’s take a look at one of the most successful, popular, iconic marketing campaigns of the last number of years, The MAC versus PC campaign.
Example Logline Concept: A stylish, pleasant, mild-mannered young man verbally spars with his geeky competitive opposite (characters) in a series of humorous, relatable incidents (story scenario) that illustrate the people-friendly advantages (resolution) of the brand compared to its rigid, unbending competitor (differentiating factor) whose sheer size dominates the market (obstacle) in an effort to win the hearts and minds of the computer buying audience (goal). – The MAC Versus PC Ad Campaign.
“The Time Has Come The Walrus Said…”
- Lewis Carroll from ‘Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There,’ 1892
The time has come to realize that Web Video is the best communication tactic available to deliver your marketing message to a worldwide audience; an audience that craves answers and resolution to their every need, concern and desire. It is not good enough to list a bunch of features and hackneyed bulleted points or even to dump pages and pages of search engine optimized hard-to-read text, especially when it’s aimed at an audience raised on television, movies, music and video games. We must learn to speak the language of the audience, and use the appropriate communication tools they can understand in a way that connects on a human level.
It all starts with finding the emotional and psychological value proposition your product or service promises. In a world of frustrated, cranky, attention deficit consumers, the onus is on you to present what you provide in a way that relates to the human elements that make your brand relevant.
We believe you don’t start the design of a new or revised website by sitting down with the designer and coder of the website. Rather, we recommend you review the approaches, ideas, processes and other methods listed below to determine if they apply to your situation.
Think about your audience. Are they looking for immediate answers and solutions? We bet they are. Most likely these visitors to your website are very much like you. Chances are you use the Internet more than other types of media to search for information. If a web page doesn’t “grab your interest” within 8 – 10 seconds after landing on it… you move on!
As a “first step” we suggest that you start by reviewing the questions listed below. We are convinced that once you get to the last question… you will have a list of action items identified that will greatly improve the productivity of your current website. The success or failure of the site and/or business may very well depend upon the decisions you make after reading these questions.
What Do You Know About Your Clients and Prospects State of Mind?
When visitors land on your website, they have very little time to read what you say. They have a need for information or a product and don’t want to listen or read verbose descriptions and comments. You have about 8 seconds to engage them and get them to take action. Do most visitors land on your website wanting:
1) information,
2) a “quick fix”,
3) a bargain,
4) a large selection,
5) or a telephone call, etc.?
It is imperative to know the answers to these and many other questions BEFORE you design the pages within your website.
Do You Make Website Visitors Feel You Can Satisfy Their Wants and Needs?
Landing on any page within your website [especially the Homepage] must make the visitor know that you understand their needs, business, wants, and desires. The more you put yourself into the “mindset” of the website visitor, the better chance you have of converting their visit into something you want to happen i.e. buy, complete a contact us form, bookmark the page, pick up the phone and call you or any other method of measurable conversion.
What Approach Do You Take When Developing Pages Within Your Website?
What do you think you would want from your website if you were the prospective visitor or client? Assume you don’t know as much information as you want in order to make an informed decision. Talk to these visitors in a language they will understand. If visitors want more insight or information, tell them to click on the more info link or give you a call. They will follow your direction ONLY if you have built some level of trust or understanding.
What are You “Selling” to the Website Visitor?
Are you focused on telling them about your product or service or are you making them understand that choosing your firm will deliver that special feeling they are seeking by making the purchase? Are you sure that you made the visitor know that you understand their needs, wants, problems, etc.? What techniques did you implement to get your points across?
How are You Going to Get the Visitor to Stop and Think About Your Service or Product?
Remember… they are ready to pass by your website in a blink of an eye. What are you going to do to engage them? The answer you come up with will be critical to the success you have in gaining their confidence enough to buy or call you. Make sure what you say is NOT the same old thing they are used to seeing or reading on other websites. Be boring and you lose! Address the issues that appeal to the visitor and they WILL STOP! This is hard work… but worth the effort.
What Kind of “Call to Action” Statements are You Placing on Your Website?
Turning a visitor into a prospect or client is one of the most critical actions of your website. How will you engage them? Once they know that you understand their needs and wants, they are more inclined to follow your CTA direction. Call to Action statements are critical to the success of any website’s conversion. Guide them in a manner that is more telling, rather than selling. Don’t be afraid to be assertive.
How Does Your Website Address the “Who Are We” Issue?
Again, it is about making the website visitor feel confident that they are choosing a reputable firm or organization with which to do business. They need to read about your success. This can be done by exhibiting your affiliation with associations, awards won, satisfied client statements, client success stories, examples of your work, etc. Show them you are a “player” in your industry.
Are You Prepared to Answer: “What Makes You Different”?
What have clients and prospects said about you and your company? Have they applauded you for your approach to doing business? Did they say you made them feel like you understood their needs and wants? Think back to the reasons clients buy from you. How did you meet their needs and wants? Give your prospective clients reasons to do business with your firm.
A final thought…
Make it your primary goal to understand the potential client. Look at your website through that client’s perspective. Who are they? What makes them different? What do they individually want and need? Be informative… do more telling than selling. They will “get it” and appreciate that you have made them an educated buyer. Finally, tell them what you want them to do next. Get them to take the first step and be ready to deliver on the expectations you have set throughout your website!
Finally, be sure to hire Internet marketing professionals to do the job if you don’t have the capabilities in-house. Too much is at stake to leave this part of your business to chance! We are pleased to provide you the insightful comments contained herein.
There is always a big discussion when it comes to comparing two of the best ways to advertise online: PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising and article marketing, otherwise known as “organic” or “natural” search engine optimization. There is no denying that both methods can be effective. However, which method is better? Which gives you a bigger bang for your buck?
You may get varying statistics on this issue, depending on which website you visit for information. Oh yes, this matters, because you have to consider the source of the statistics and who is sponsoring the article. For example, two sources of information (respectively, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and ComScore) recently produced studies indicating that PPC advertising was more cost-effective on average. However, did the fact that Yahoo/Overture and Google were sponsoring this major study play any role in determining the final outcome? Of course it did – those are the two biggest PPC companies on the net!
In figuring out which of the two is better, you have to consider cost-effectiveness as well as click-through-rates and direct conversion from visiting user to paying customer. We are going to review some statistics a little bit later on. For now, let’s consider some logical points that illustrate how PPC and article marketing differ.
Search engine result pages display more listings than PPC results, which does have a psychological effect on the user. For some users seeing ten search results (each one relevant to the search) is enough to convince them that there is enough web information on the subject and that “fishing” PPC ads might not be necessary.
The catch is that in order to actually rank in the Top 10 SEO results for your keyword, you have to have relevant website content, not to mention technical prowess in HTML coding. Search engines will be focusing on their proprietary algorithms, or the most relevant websites based on the search term queried. There is no “bribery” here, whereas in PPC, it is quite the opposite: whoever bids highest for each word usually gets the top listing. A quality algorithm definitely plays a part in PPC, but in the end money talks. In article marketing, we haven’t quite come to the point where “money talks”. The best websites still win the search engine contest and that is an important factor to consider in your marketing campaign.
Even PPC proponents will admit that PPC is largely style over substance. With PPC advertising you are trying to grab attention in just a few loud and occasionally obnoxious words. You direct the user to a carefully crafted page that “sells” the idea. This operation contrasts with article marketing, which doesn’t necessarily sell an idea on a single page, nor does it grab attention with a few words. With article marketing, there is an entire article waiting for the visitor, which uses a methodical and “indirect” approach. Assuming you are listed in the Top #10, your listing means that the search engine agrees that your website is the best authority on the keyword subject – for the time being. People in a hurry or on a whim will probably click on PPC. People on a mission will be looking for relevant content on their chosen keyword.
Therefore, the question now becomes which methodology works better for your business? Are you appealing to the fast clicker or the thoughtful user? Let’s now consider two sources of statistics for a clearer view of the issue. First, one in favor of article marketing, the next in favor of PPC.
In Favor of Article Marketing
Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D. and principal founder of the Nielsen Norman Group researched the behavior of users who found search engine results pages and noticed some trends. Forty-two percent of users selected the #1 search listing for their result, leaving 58% that selected another Top 10 Result. The #1 site listed held the majority of clicks. This indicates that almost two thirds of Internet users were not content to choose even the #1 listing on a natural SEO search. That means that these users (and the majority of all users) are actually using independent judgment in deciding what links are most relevant to their needs.
Other related statistics (with sources from ComScore, Webxico, iProspect, SEOResearcher and Hotchkiss, Garrison, and Jensen) concluded that 77% of search users choose organic listings over PPC ads. There were also studies that suggested organic click-through generated 25% higher conversion rates than equivalent PPC click-through.
In Favor of PPC Advertising
Now to be fair, we have to consider some advantages that PPC advertising has. The best feature PPC has is that it gets instantaneous results. SEO advertising takes time, especially if you have a new website just submítted to the all of the major search engines. Yes, this can be frustrating. PPC brings you immediate traffic and sometimes brings in thousands of users. Seeing your Alexa ranking take a drastic jump certainly pumps up your adrenaline!
ComScore recently published statistics in favor of PPC, stating that their studied users had an 18.3% click-through-rate on “paid” search results versus a 4.3% click-through rate for organic search results. The conversion rate was also higher according to ComScore, stating that PPC had a 1.4% versus SEO’s 0.6%.
The Real Issue: Longevity
However, the downside here (even if you didn’t contest these suspicious results) is that instant and high volume traffic is, frankly, cheap and not as exciting as it first appears to be. Remember that when you use PPC ads you are making a pitch and capitalizing on your audience’s curiosity. When that curiosity fades, they forget your website – especially if it’s just a glorified advertisement. PPC campaigns can also be costly and time consuming when you consider your duties as a manager.
Another problematic scenario with PPC is that they have no staying power – unless of course you have thousands of dollars a month to blow in this recession. With article marketing you get more quality traffic, and perhaps more importantly to you, you earn customer trust over time. Internet users aren’t stupid, the popularity of Yahoo Answers notwithstanding. Most users know that PPC ads usually aren’t relevant to their search – they’re just there because someone is consistently paying to get noticed.
You can consider article marketing as an investment that continually pays all through the life of your company (or until you shut the website down) since it generates traffic forever. You can easily spend thousands a month on a brilliant PPC campaign and soon run out of money, meaning your ads go extinct. Therefore, we can conclude that article marketing does have specific advantages over PPC, which are intrinsic because of the differences in operation.
• Article marketing generates traffic forever
• Article marketing improves your natural SEO ranking and backlinks
• Article marketing establishes trust – you appear as a professional in your industry
• Article marketing doesn’t cost you extra on top of fees spent on websites, landing pages and superfluous domains
How About Return-On-Investment?
ROI is another key issue, as short-term and long-term profit must equal out. Article marketing, by some authorities appears to have a slower ROI -(especially if you make revenue on CTRs). However, studies suggest that organic ROI is more consistent than PPC. Consider some independent research conducted by popular blogger Gord Hotchkiss who explained the situation in crystal clear terms. Let’s say you have 50 high traffic search terms. Now for these 50 terms, there are 2.8 million searches being launched in a month. If statistics like ComScore’s are correct and unbiased, that translates to 456,000 visitors thanks to PPC and 153,000 visitors thanks to article marketing.
The total cost of those 456,000 PPC visitors would amount to over $500,000 with an average CPC of $1.18. Even if you work with an SEO company that charges top dollar ($10,000 a month, let’s say) you’re still paying $10,000 compared to half a million. That means article marketing’s virtual CPC amounts to $0.07. Even if you apply PPC’s higher conversion rate, 3,647 converted visitors, you are paying $147.08 for each individual person. Compare that to 611 visitors you earned through article marketing – you are paying $16.37 for each visitor. And in doing so, you are also earning a higher quality of customer and generating traffic until the end of days.
Does your final ROI number take into account your total expenses? Absolutely! While both methods of advertising have their place online, when it comes to earning quality traffic, article marketing gets the last word.
7 Tricks to Get a Goooooooooooogle of Links
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
SEO is a race. And in any race learning from your competitors makes you a better runner. Even when you’re running first it’s sometimes good to look back and check the runner-ups. And if you’re not the yellow jersey guy, you absolutely should examine the leaders: their gear, their training, their strategy. In SEO the most interesting thing about your competition are their links.
Whether you like it or not SEO is still pretty much about links. Good link profile can make up for almost any lack of optimized content and other onpage flaws. Love or hate, the best thing you can do about it is embrace the fact and run with it.
So let’s go through some tricks that will enable you to look deeper into your competition’s link profile granting you access to the restricted areas: their locker room, dirty laundry and even the briefing hall where they plan their link building strategies.
Let’s Talk Competitive Link Research
Finding out where your competitors’ links come from is not all that hard. You just go to Yahoo! or Google and type in link:www.your-competitor.com to get a list of inbound links to the site.
Yahoo’s much better in that respect as it tends to give more extensive and accurate data. The problem here is that there’s a limit of 1,000 links per website which is often not enough as the fattest link sources get left behind the limit fence. Here’re some tips to break through to the other side.
Note: If you’re lazy like me skip to the end of the article where I’ll share a tool that does it all much quicker.
Trick 1: Search for Links to Particular Web Pages of a Competing Site
Alongside with link:www.your-competitor.com search for
link:www.your-competitor.com/products.html or
link:www.your-competitor.com/services.html
and so on.
Trick 2: Exclude Internal Links
You may examine the internal linking structure of your competition if you want to gain some insight on their navigation and marketing steps. But as we want to find more external links, let’s exclude the internal ones.
You can do this by adding -site:site.com operator to your search query. Type in:
link:http://www.your-competitor.com -site:your-competitor.com or
linkdomain:www.your-competitor.com -site:your-competitor.com
and you’ll get a list of external backlinks only.
There’s a dropdown option in Yahoo! site explorer that does the same.
Trick 3: Exclude Links Coming from Certain Domains
The -site: modifier lets you exclude links coming from specific sites. So, whenever you see a large chunk of links coming from the same domain add -site:thisdomain.com modifier to your query and the links from this site will get replaced with new ones.
You can add -site: multiple times in one query so that you have something like this:
link:http://www.cnn.com -site:cnn.com -site:en.wikipedia.org
Trick 4: Check Links Coming from Certain TLDs
This is a little known trick. The site: modifier actually lets you get a list of links coming from domains with certain TLDs: .com, .org, .edu, .co.uk and so on. Just type in
link:http://www.your-competitor.com site:.gov or
linkdomain:www.your-competitor.com site:.gov
and you’ll get a list of .gov sites linking to your rival.
Note: Do this in Yahoo! regular search, not site explorer
Trick 5: Exclude Links Coming from Certain TLDs
This is an even lesser known trick. You can exclude certain TLDs from the results with the -site:.tld modifier. Usually the biggest chunk of links comes from .com’s so add a -site.com modifier and you’ll get lots of new link data.
Trick 6: Use Different Combinations of the First 5 Tricks
Try link:http://www.your-competitor.com/page.html -site:your-competitor.com -site:.com
Or link:http://www.your-competitor.com site:.org -site:wikipedia.org
Give it a thought and I’m sure you’ll come up with lots of ideas. Feel free to share your findings in the comments.
Trick 7: Use the Above 6 Tricks in Different Search Engines
Don’t limit your searches to Yahoo! and Google, go to AltaVista, Alexa, (Bing doesn’t give you link data, so forget about it) but then there’re Exalead, Excite and tons of regional search engines. Search them, get rid of the the duplicates and you’ll have a goooooooooooooooogol of competitor’s links to study.
Note: Some search engines have a different set of operators so you’ll need to type domain: instead of link:.
Getting It All Done Fast
This sure seems like a lot of work and it is. Moreover, getting the links list is only the beginning and the easy part of competitive link research. Once you get the list you need to analyze each link, weed out poor quality sites and only leave the ones you can get a link from. Now THAT’s a lot of work.
I’m too lazy to do this all by hand, besides I value my time too much to waste it on such kind of work. That’s why I use SEO SpyGlass an advanced link analysis tool that employs all the tricks described in this article (plus some more advanced ones I don’t even know) to get up to 25,000 links per domain, which is much, much more than any other tool can get.
SEO SpyGlass also finds all the data I need to analyze the links:
• Google PR of the domain and linking page
• The URL and title of the linking page
• The anchor text and description
• Whether the link is still on the page (sometimes the link gets removed but search engines will
think it’s there till they reindex the page).
• Whether the link is no-follow or dofollow
• How many other links are on the page
• How much link value the link passes
• And some other data like TLDs, domain age, country, etc.
If you want to do competitive link research seriously, I’d strongly recommend trying SEO SpyGlass out. And of course you can always use my tricks whenever you want to run a quick background check on that new guy on your block.
When doing business on the Internet, there are many ways in which you can make a website successful. Although the look of your website is important, fancy websites don’t make sales. There is much more to creating a quality website. To make a website successful, you must create a website that will be of interest to your target market and make them want to visit your website over and over again. In addition, your website should lead your visitors to take the action you desire, such as joining your mailing list, or making a purchase.
Selecting a Website’s Niche
The first step toward how to make a website successful, will be to target your website for one specific niche. For example, if you are designing a website about wine, everything within your website should relate to wine.
Selecting a Website’s Keyword Phrase
You must also select the most relevant keyword phrase for each webpage. A keyword phrase is two or more words that best describe your webpage. For example, if your webpage is about ‘making wine,’ your best keyword phrase would be ‘wine making.’ You should use your keyword phrase a few times within your webpage, as this will enable the search engines to determine what the website is about. This is a very important step to make a website successful.
Using HTML Heading Tags
When you begin writing your content, it is very important that you use the HTML H1 heading tag with your main title at the top of your webpage. In addition, use the HTML H2 tags for your sub-titles. This is very important, as some search engines place relevance on the text displayed with heading tags.
As the default text for the H1 heading tag is very large, you may want to use CSS style sheets to display the heading tags in the font style and size you prefer.
Using META Tags Within a Webpage
Another step to help make a website successful is to include META tags between the HEAD tags of your webpage. META tags help the search engines to know what keywords are relevant to the webpage. They are also used to tell the search engines what the webpage is about. Many search engines will display this description within the search results.
Backgrounds and Text
It is always best to display a webpage with a white background and black text, as this will make the text easy to read. Distracting backgrounds will make the text hard to read. A good rule of thumb is to just use common sense and keep your website simple. This alone is a great way to help make a website successful.
Animated Graphics
If you’re using animated graphics, it is important that you use them sparingly. Graphics that continually flash are VERY annoying and may prevent your visitors from returning to your website in the future.
Navigational Links
It is very important to include good navigational links on every page. They should be displayed at the top, bottom, left or right side of your webpage. In addition, your visitors should be able to get to any webpage within your website within four clicks.
Webpage Layout
Always be consistent with your webpage design. This is a very important step to help make a website successful. The layout for your website should be the same on each page. If you make it different, your visitors will become confused. In addition, it will make your website appear to be unprofessional. Your website design should include the same layout, logo, and navigation setup on each page.
Spelling and Grammar
Always make sure you proof read and spell check your webpages for errors. It is also very important that your webpage doesn’t have any broken images or links.
Important Webpages
When you launch your website, it is very important that you include the following webpages:
About – The ‘About’ page is used to tell your visitors about you and/or your company.
Privacy – The ‘Privacy’ page is used to let your visitors know what you do with their personal information, such as their email address.
Terms and Conditions – The ‘Terms and Conditions’ page should be displayed on your website for your protection.
Site Map – A ‘Site Map’ is used to help the search engines index your website more easily.
You can learn more about all of these pages by doing a search through your favorite search engine. They are very important and will help make a website successful.
Website Interactivity
Another way to make a website successful is to make the website interactive. This can be done by including a targeted forum that complements your website, a form in which they can subscribe to an ezine, a feedback form to enable them to give their opinion, or an informative blog in which visitors can comment.
Web Browsers and Screen Resolutions
When you begin designing your webpage, it is HIGHLY recommended that you install the most popular web browsers on your computer. This will enable you to see how your website will display in different browsers. You will find that your website may look great in one browser and terrible in another. It would be wise to design your website to display properly in Firefox and then it should display properly in Internet Explorer, Opera, etc.
It is also important that you view your website through different screen resolutions. You can either open your webpage in your browser and then change your computer’s screen resolution, or there are website’s online that you can visit, such as Any Browser, to test your website.
If you follow these simple guidelines, you can begin to make a website successful in no time.
10 Best Strategies to Massively Increase Your Visibility Online
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Monday, March 22, 2010
Increasing online visibility is the goal of most online business owners. After all, without visibility, you have no traffic and thus no business. However, when you start to research how to improve your online visibility, you discover many options, but find that there is little time for research and implementation. Where does an online entrepreneur turn first to get the visibility (and traffic) to promote an online venture?
New tricks and gimmicks come out every day, but unfortunately, most of them are like so many recording artists and become one-hit wonders. In my business, I’ve discovered that there are a handful that are able to stand the test of time. Some have been around for as long as websites have been around, while others are newer kids on the block. Here are my 10 most effective strategies to massively boost your visibility online:
1. Press releases. Press releases are a well-known marketing strategy that have worked for years with print and broadcast media. In recent years they have found new life as an online visibility tool. Just like in the old days, your release should carry some newsworthy angle that has been optimized with a select few keywords by which you want your business to be found. Don’t waste your time submitting your release to the free press release sites — the release simply sits on the site and goes no where else. Instead, invest in a fee-based service (I prefer PRWeb.com), which will ensure your release gets the recognition it deserves.
2. Social Networking. A “johnny come lately” to the online visibility scene, social networking now ranks near the top in terms of attracting visibility to your business for a very low cost. If you don’t yet have accounts on the two most popular social networking platforms, Facebook and Twitter, today is the day to hop on board and begin to network. Choose 1-2 social networking platforms where your target market hangs out, and then begin to work it by making connections, joining groups or networks, sharing resources, and asking questions. Dedicate 15-30 minutes each day to your effort to begin to see results.
3. Article Marketing. Writing and submittíng articles to major article directories has definitely stood the test of time for online visibility. Article marketing will drive traffic to your site, establish you as an expert in your target market’s eyes, and give you valuable content to repurpose into information products. For maximum effectiveness, your article needs to contain a strong resource box (author’s bio) that drives traffic back to your site, needs to contain useful content that solves a problem of your target market, and be written in a tips-based fashion, like this one, since it is the easiest format for a website visitor to read and digest.
4. Blogging. Business blogs (a web log or journal), have gained popularity over the last few years as an online visibility tool. Blogs use RSS feed technology to immediately get new posts and updates out to your blog subscribers through a feed reader. Unlike ezines or traditional websites, search engines index blog posts almost immediately, which help you generate traffic to your website. To use effectively as an online visibility tool, you need to post 2-3 times per week to keep your readers interested and coming back.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Optimizing your site or your blog for organic (naturally-occurring) searches has been around from the beginning of Internet marketing. Use a keyword research tool and create a listing of keywords applicable to your business. Don’t forget to add things like “how to”, “tips”, or short descriptions of your target market’s problems to your research. Then, take a look at your page titles, page descriptions, page headlines, and formatted text on a page (bolding, italicizing, underlining) and include your keywords in those areas, as well as sprinkling 1-2 keywords throughout the content of your page. Make the SEO appear to be natural, not forced, and the search engines as well as your visitors will love you.
6. Email Newsletter (Ezine). Regular publication of an email newsletter (weekly is most effective) will enable your prospects to get to know, like and trust you and have you be top of mind when they are ready to solve the pressing problems that fall within your line of expertise. If you make opting into your ezine the primary call to action on your website, you continually build your list with prospective customers. Best of all, if they like what you write, they are more likely to pass along the issue to their contacts, thus increasing your visibility yet again.
7. Signature Teleseminar/Speech. Have you created your signature speech or teleseminar that you can present whenever you’re asked to speak to any type of group (face-to-face or virtual)? If not, design a signature speech or teleseminar that demonstrates your knowledge and expertise without giving away the store (focus on the what and the why but not the how) that compels your listeners to visit your website or request your client attraction device and get on your líst.
Then, begin to research groups that contain your target market both in your geographic area and online. Once you’ve landed a speaking gig, strategize your best call to action for the group — do you want participants to sign up for your ezine, purchase a product, or book a consultation? Add that call to action to your presentation.
8. Videos. With the popularity of broadband Internet connections, it’s much easier for almost anyone to view online video these days. And, with high-quality yet low-cost web cams, video cameras, and screen capture software readily available, anyone can make a video today. You might record a live Q&A session on UStream.com and post it on your site. Or, perhaps you want to record a “how to” tutorial using screenshots from your computer and upload that to your YouTube.com channel. Remember to include your call to action in your video so that you drive traffic back to your site. Just think — your video may cause you to become the next YouTube star!
9. Expert question sites. Most people conduct online searches to find free information that answers their questions. Many online entrepreneurs are registering as experts on an expert or answers site, like Yahoo Answers or AllExperts.com, in an effort to get visibility online. To be an effective expert on these sites, you need to seek out questions that you can knowledgeably answer as an expert. Your answer needs to be very detailed and as specific as possible. The more thorough your answer, the better chance you’ll have of getting chosen as the “favorite” answer, which is the one rated highest on the site and in the search engines.
10. Viral marketing. Viral marketing involves creating a marketing piece (ebook, video, software) that gets passed along free of charge from person to person. Publicity Hound Joan Stewart does this quite effectively each year when she compiles the best tips she’s written about in the previous year in a “best of” ebook compilation that she gives away free of charge on her site. She also encourages her líst and website visitors to “regift” it.
You’ve got two options when you try to get online visibility: the “steady and effective over time” method or the “quick and short and probably get banned” method. I prefer to use methods that have stood the test of time and won’t result in my site being removed from the search engines. Use one or more of these time-honored strategies to get you the visibility you deserve online.
How Many Links to Get to the Middle of Google Page One?
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Everyday it seems, people are asking me about the optimum number of inbound links they need to acquire for their website in order to rank well in Google.
My answer is going to seem a little flip, but it is the honest, best answer.
Answer: You need more inbound links – of equal or higher quality – than what your competitors have.
Albert Einstein argued that any mathematical formula that required pages of calculations did not contain within it “the mind of God”.
So when Albert Einstein developed E=mc2, then Einstein had fulfilled the promise of a simple formula that could encompass the brilliance of God.
When people wonder how many inbound links they need to acquire to rank in the Top 4 of Google’s search results or even the Top 10 of Google’s SERPs, they are generally hoping that someone will be able to give them a numeric answer, so that they know whether they can afford to undertake the process or not.
I understand the WHY of the question, but there is no canned answer that will work for everyone. Remember, your competitor may be asking the same question and undertaking the same processes as you are, trying to accomplish the same goal.
You can’t truly begin to understand the answer to this question, until you have taken the time to do an Inbound Link Comparison Analysis of all of your competitors in the Top 10 spots of Google’s SERPs.
• You need to look at the Top 10 listings in Google for a particular keyword.
• You need to do backlink checks for all ten URLs in Google’s search listings, and you need to check those numbers across a variety of sources, including Google, Yahoo and any other tool you can find to do a check. (Google and Yahoo both tend to understate the actual link counts. While Yahoo will show you more than what Google does, they also show a number of “no consequence” links in their results.)
• You need to look at the quality of a few of the pages that provide links to the URLs in the search results.
This is not an easy process to undertake. I have done it before, but the best you can hope for is a “snapshot” of what is out there, and therefore, what you need to accomplish.
Note: If Wikipedia turns up in your search query, few people with small budgets will ever be able to dislodge Wikipedia in the search results. What they make up for in a small number of inbound links, they more than make up for with links from dozens or hundreds of PR4, PR5 and PR6 pages. Wikipedia is the king of Internal Linking, and they use that to a great degree to rank extraordinarily high in Google’s search listings.
Your analysis should seek to uncover how many links a page has to it.
As a general rule of thumb, Google will show you less than 1% of the existing number of links for a web page. Yahoo will sometimes show closer to 5% of the existing number of links for a web page, but they will not show you the highest quality of those links.
So, as you strive to gain a “snapshot” picture of the playing field, you want to take Google’s Inbound Links number and multiply that by at least 100. Then you want to take Yahoo’s Inbound Links number and multiply that by at least 20, then cut the number in half to acknowledge the number of worthless crap links they have in their database. Once you have achieved these two numbers, then I tend to call the truth “somewhere in the middle”.
With your “somewhere in the middle” number in hand, you then need to look at the quality of links to a few of those search listings, to get an idea of whether those links exist on higher quality pages or simply junk pages.
If those links are on junk pages, then the goal could be achieved by just working the numbers. But if there are a lot of high PageRank pages in the mix, then whatever number is in your hand, should be multiplied, perhaps 100-fold, to overcome the quality of pages that link to your competitors.
If you get the idea that my simple formula leads to a complicated answer, then you are right.
All of the numbers that I have included in my sample formula are based on rough speculation, as the “snapshot” offers you your best hope of understanding the challenge in front of you.
While the number of inbound links may be relatively easy to determine, the link quality is a factor that is really hard to pin down.
• If you determine that you only need 300 inbound links to rank with the big boys, you may be right.
• Your 300 inbound links number should also be quantified against the number of links that Google will count worthy, so you may need 1200 links to get 300 links that Google will deem worthy. This calculation depends more on the “quality of your content”, rather than the “quantity of your content”.
• When all is said and done and your 300 Google-worthy links have not yet put you on page one, then you know that the quality of the links pointing at your competitors is greater than the quality of the links pointing to you.
If you were hoping for an easy answer, I am sorry that I could not help you with that.
But with this explanation of the challenge, you may be better prepared to answer the big question, the question that is really on your mind:
Are my hopes of achieving good rankings in Google within my reach?
I tend to throw “worry” to the wind and just start working. I don’t worry if I can afford to do it or not. I simply start doing, and I know that in one month, one year or five, I will have built enough value in my website that my competitors are going to be the ones who are trying to figure out if they can unseat me!
For many online marketers, conversions rates are a mere fraction of what they use to be. At the same time, there are a few marketers that I’ve chatted with who have experienced no significant drop in conversions. These are all marketers who have built incredible subscriber loyalty over the years.
For many online marketers, the biggest problem is email deliverability. Their email is simply not getting through. Email is being filtered so heavily today that often less than 20% of a large ezine mailing gets delivered.
There are things you can do to improve your email deliverability, such as run it through a spam checker prior to sending it out. Top mailing list management systems, such as ProfitAutomation.com, have built in systems that allow you to grade an email against the Spam Assassin database prior to sending it. If your email scores higher than a 2, I personally would revise it to lower the score.
I’ve talked to friends over a year ago, who often confided in me that they sometimes sent out emails and got absolutely NO response. They wondered if anyone even got the emails or read them.
Many savvy marketers also realized that a business totally dependent upon email was not a very solid business. They realized that what they really needed was a database that contained not only names and email addresses, but physical mailing addresses. That way, if something dramatic ever did happen in the world of email, they could just shift their marketing to direct maíl, and still be in business. This is one of the reasons that you started seeing some online marketers offering loss leaders on CD or DVD. It gave them the perfect tool (excuse) to build out their databases. They knew that email could someday go the way of fax broadcasts.
Some of my in-the-know friends have also shared with me that many ISP’s now monitor things such as email delivery rates, bounce rates, and open rates. They use readily available data, and if a given ISP or third party list host had a dismal record, they may block ALL email from that source.
That’s pretty scary. I was also told that a few well-known list management providers were having emails coming off their servers BLOCKED, or “black holed.”
If ISPs are tapping into databases that reveal which mail servers send out a lot of mail that has very low open rates, for example, and blocking email from those servers, that does very well spell the slow death of some email marketers… unless they move their list to other platforms.
Ok, so I just painted a pretty dismal picture for some marketers.
When I was in the military, my bosses always told me that they wanted the truth from me. They insisted that I not “sugar-coat” the facts. However, they also told me not to bring them problems, without also bringing them viable solutions.
Solutions to the email deliverability issue are out there. For example, paid “sender verification” is one that is often suggested.
One that I’ve looked at many times over the years is some type of direct-to-desktop solution. That’s one where your subscribers install tools that allow your communications to tap into technologies not even dependent upon email.
The objection always brought up when discussing direct-to- desktop applications, is that there’s only so much desktop real-estate, so a person can only subscribe to so many of these independent channels.
Another solution that I like very much is building your list on a hosted platform, so that communications take place within the system.
A good example of this can be seen on the social networking site Sokule, pronounced “so cool.” The Sokule community is built on a platform that looks and feels a lot like Twitter, except that it’s built for marketers, so you are encouraged to market on the platform. In fact, there are several built-in features that allow members to monetize their community membership.
While members of many social networking communities tend to de-emphasize getting lots of followers, Sokule is different. Sokule seems to encourage you to get as many followers (called “trackers”) as you can in two ways:
1) They have a quasi-currency, called “sokens” that you can provide to other members to reward them for following you. You earn these sokens, and then you provide them to community members as a reward for following you. In a way, you can buy followers.
2) They allow upgraded members to direct message ALL of their followers a maximum of once every three days. That means that in a very real way, when you build a following on Sokule, you ARE building a list.
When you set up your Sokule account, you enter three of your areas of interest. This allows others to search the database for members with like interests, whom they can then track (follow). In theory, this means that when you send out a direct message, your message should be going to people interested in the same topic.
Just as with an email list, you need to respect your trackers on Sokule, and provide genuine value to the relationship.
To check out Sokule, visit my profile page at: Sokule.com/postit/williec There you can see how you can personalize your profile and monetize it. The links that you’ll notice on the left side of the page are to five of my pet websites. There are also links on the left side of the page that promote Clickbank products. Those links are coded with MY Clickbank ID.
My old military bosses would be proud of me today. Yes, I came bearing bad news. Email marketíng as it once was is dying an agonizing death. However, I also did as my old bosses taught me and presented you with a viable, proven solution.
In future articles, I’ll share with you some more solutions to “the email problem.” For now, check out Sokule. Sign up for a free account and take it for a test drive. It’s quicker to do that at:” Sokule.com/williec . The key to survival in business, just as it was for me in the military is to be aware of, and adapt to, changing circumstances. That’s something you’re now ready to do.
Cutting Rank: Improper Domain Name Redirects
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:53 PM
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Can my site rank better with a keyword-rich domain name? Sure.
Can my site rank better without a keyword in the domain name at all? Absolutely.
I get questions (or assumptions) like this regularly. Actually, there are many other things going on behind the scenes that impact rank, and the domain name is rarely a significant factor.
Let’s say your website has been out there for 6 months or more and you assume, for whatever reason, that you can get a higher search engine ranking if you were using a keyword in your domain name instead of the one you have. In addition to your company web domain, maindomain.com, you rush to purchase keyword1.com, keyword2.com and keyword3.com.
From Google’s perspective, there is both a good way and a detrimental way to assign these additional domain names to your site. This can cause a much greater problem in terms of organic ranking if you get it wrong in terms of duplicate content and trust. Have you ever heard of duplicate content? Which domain name does Google have more history and trust with, your current domain name or one you just bought?
Common methods webmasters use to point multiple domain names to your web server include:
• Domain Mirroring/Masking
• Domain Cloaking
• Domain Alias/URL Alias
• Domain Redirecting
Domain mirroring/masking is sometimes called a pointer domain. It looks like it is the domain name when it is used in a browser, but it is simply a mask overlaying the real domain name and its content. When someone types in www.domain.com, it’s really forwarding to domain.blogspot.com without the address changing in the address bar. The user continues to see www.domain.com in the address bar, although the site and its contents are really from domain.blogspot.com.
Domain cloaking uses an iframe or embedded frameset to display the content of another site.
Domain redirecting (also called URL redirecting) requires all traffic that is sent through the new domain name to be redirected to the main domain name. This can also be a domain redirected to a subdirectory of the main domain, or multiple domains redirected to a complex URL. This is different from domain mirroring/masking and domain cloaking because, when a user types in www.domain.com, they end up on www.maindomain.com and the address changes appropriately in the address bar.
But, let’s back up a second and look at the issues you must consider before making this decision.
1. To limit confusion, it’s better to change the brand (or company) name to better reflect the keyword-rich domain name. This could be as simple as recreating the company logo, but you might consult your customer base first.
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2. The technical procedure of redirecting domain names must be done so that the search engines do not get confused about what you are trying to do. Otherwise, you risk tripping a duplicate content filter, which would force Google to accept only one domain with that content (explained below). But the biggest risk is setting off an alarm at Google that you are trying to trick them to get a better rank.
Just for fun, let’s say you’ve gone through the trouble of changing the company name to reflect your new keyword-rich domain. Now it’s time to get technical.
If you use any method other than domain redirecting, you are going to be disappointed with your search rank. Domain mirroring, masking, cloaking and aliases confuse search engines because they see the same content under a different domain name. Google then selects one of the domain names to display that content and leaves the others out of the search results. Google chooses for you – since you are not aware of how to manage your duplicate content issues – and no one knows which domain name Google will choose. You could be saying “bye-bye” to all the hard-earned link juice pointed at your main domain name.
The more serious issue with domain mirroring/masking is the probability that Google suspects you are trying to manipulate search rank by suddenly using keywords in additional domain names. The result is either loss of whatever good ranking you did have or your site is banned from Google altogether. Ouch!
This is precisely what happened with a client. Despite my warnings, but thinking they might change the company name eventually, they bought additional keyword-rich domain names and had the webmaster point them at their server (using domain masking). Within a couple weeks Google dropped their domain ranking across the board, but did not ban them.
Of course they came to me with their issue. I gently reminded them about how this should have been done, redirected the domain names properly (using a 301 redirect) and asked them to consult me next time they’re considering a marketing or technical decision regarding the website. It took about 6 weeks – a long and painful 6 weeks – for Google to restore their good rank again.
When a company acquires additional domain names, they should be permanently redirected to the main domain name – the one, central location on the web for all of the company’s or brand’s content.
Redirecting a domain name should be handled differently depending on the type of server hosting your site (Apache or Windows), how much control you have over that server (hosted on a shared or dedicated server) and the purpose of the redirected domain name.
This morning I woke up to someone having submitted a pile of SEO questions using our newsletter question form. At first I thought, “Yikes, that’s kind of pushy to think I have time to answer all those questions!” But then I remembered that this was a newsletter week and I still had no idea what I was going to write about. A second look at the questions made me think that you guys would probably be interested in the answers to many of them, so it worked out perfectly.
Most of these questions have been answered in greater detail in various articles that I’ve written, so if you’d like more info on any of them, I’ve linked to the relevant ones for your convenience.
Thanks to Umair R., who submitted these questions.
1. Is there any fixed rule for Google as far as SEO is concerned? If so, what are the steps?
If only! There are no fixed rules because every website is different and has different needs. There are basic things that all websites need to do in order to improve their chances of showing up in Google search results for relevant phrases, but no magic formula.
See “The Art of SEO” article for more on this.
2. Do the following play important roles in website page ranking and positioning?
• PR
Yes, real PageRank (PR), the kind that only Google knows about plays a very large part in websites showing up (or not) for search queries that are relevant to it. But toolbar PageRank is another matter entirely. What you see there doesn’t correlate very well to where your page will show up in the search results.
See: “Getting Into Google” (Scroll down to the “Google Still Loves Its PageRank” part.)
• The number of incoming links
Not so much in and of itself. Real PR, as mentioned above, is calculated not only on the number of links, but also on the quality of those links. A handful of links from authoritative, trustworthy, relevant pages should far outweigh hundreds of links from so-so sites.
See the High Rankings Link Building Forum.
• Keyword density
Not in that there’s some special percentage that you need to aim for. Certainly it’s helpful to have the keyword phrases that you’d like to show up being used within the content of your page. But that’s just common sense, if you ask me. Surely, if your page is about a certain something (your keyword phrase), how could that phrase NOT be on the page?
See the various threads on keyword density on the High Rankings Forum.
• Page response time
This is important only because if it takes too long to load, it might not be properly (or completely) indexed.
• Bounce rate
It’s doubtful that this matters, because there’s no way for Google to know the bounce rate of every site. And it wouldn’t be fair for them to only count the bounce rates of those sites that have Google Analytics installed, so my guess is that this is not a factor.
See various High Rankings forum threads.
• Time on site
Like the above answer, they don’t know this number unless the site has Google Analytics installed. That said, they may sometimes incorporate the old trick of seeing if a searcher clicks to another site in the search results after clicking one result, and how long it took them to click another. In other words, if they find that lots of people who clicked to one site in the search engine results pages (SERPs) always end up back at Google to try another site, then perhaps that first site wasn’t a great answer to the search query after all.
• Domain page / Page age
From what I can tell, this can often be a factor. But it doesn’t seem to be as prominent a factor as it was a few years ago.
3. Is there any special technique for content writing?
There’s no special technique, but I highly suggest hiring a professional marketing copywriter. You will see a positive return on your investment very quickly if you do. In addition, the tried and true SEO copyediting techniques in my “Nitty-gritty of Writing for Search Engines” may come in handy if you’re not sure how to integrate your keyword phrases into your professionally written content.
4. Should we cater to code-to-text ratio while developing websites?
There’s not one shred of evidence that this would have an effect on where a page would show up in the search results for a relevant search query.
5. If active scripting is a must for webpage development, how harmful can it be for PageRank and positions?
It’s typically not harmful at all because it’s usually done before a browser (or search engine spider) sees a page. To users and search engines, your dynamically generated pages are just static HTML by the time they get to them. Still, not all dynamically generated pages are created equal. There are some ways of developing your site that are less search friendly than others. For example, some JavaScript menus, some AJAX, etc.
See “Diagnosing the SEO Health of Your Website”.
6. If a webpage is ranking top for a specific keyword, if we make textual changes in that webpage, is there any chance that we lose the rankings?
Any changes you make to a page’s content can affect how relevant the search engines believe it to be for any particular search query. That doesn’t mean it definitely will change the search results, but it could. The only way to know is to try it and see. Usually, if you’re rewriting your page to be more useful to your site visitors and you don’t remove all the instances of the keyword phrase, you should be fine. Because nothing is permanent with SEO, if you don’t like what you see you can tweak it until you do.
Sincerity: The ‘Secret Sauce’ for Effective Marketing
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, March 11, 2010
A couple years ago, I was talking with someone who was, for me, a very challenging client. I’m all about cultivating relationships that result in opportunities to sell.
This particular client seemed allergic to cultivating relationships for reasons I didn’t ever really understand.
I remember one such meeting, I was trying to explain to my client the wisdom of first creating trust and credibility before trying to get a sale. And my client was blocking me at every turn with reasons why relationship development would not work for their business.
It was maddening.
Finally, I cried with exasperation, “Well, why the heck do you want to keep working with me since my approach doesn’t work for you?”
“Because you’re sincere,” the client replied.
“Who cares” I thought to myself since it didn’t seem to be to helping my client grow their business.
Since that time I’ve changed my mind about the quality of sincerity. I think it’s impossible to have sustainably effective marketing without sincerity.
The Importance of Being Sincere
The word, “sincere” is derived from the Latin word, “sincerus,” meaning whole, pure, genuine.
When you think about today’s business climate, sincerity isn’t a quality that comes to mind. But it’s a quality human beings need to perceive to be willing and able to buy.
The Place of Sincerity in Your Marketing
First, it’s important to remember the real role of marketing in your business.
Marketing is NOT about making a sale. Marketing is about creating a relationship based in trust and safety so that a sale can occur.
Regardless of public sentiment towards business, people and companies still have problems that need to be solved and stuff that has to get done. Your prospective customers still need to buy stuff.
They want to be able to trust you because they need to buy what you sell.
The marketing you do is all about establishing visibility and credibility so that there’s enough trust for the purchase to happen.
For example, if you regularly keep in touch with prospects via an ezine, you’re not doing it to “bug” your customers. You’re sending out that ezine because:
• You can remind them that “Hey, I help people just like you solve these kinds of problems.”
• You can provide examples and helpful information about the kind of problems you solve (“Here’s an example of how I helped a customer”)
• Or you provide helpful information for your prospects to better understand what they need to do to improve their situation.
Once prospective customers feel accepted for where they’re at and trust you can actually help, they can then take the next step.
It’s About Sustainable, Effective Marketing
Now there are also some relatively good-hearted entrepreneurs out there who use hard-sell tactics in their marketing. You subscribe to their ezine and get barraged with multiple emails every day telling you about some incredible program you “just gotta check out.”
Here’s what’s important: there is no rest with this kind of marketing. You must work very, very hard to generate this level of noise.
And if you’re spending so much time and energy with your marketing, it’s tough to put much time or effort into where–in my opinion–we should be making the difference: helping clients and customers get results.
That, to me, is why hype-centered marketing with or without a good heart fails. If you want to market your business in a way that brings in a steady stream of ideal customers without burning yourself into a crispy critter, sincere, heart-centered marketing is the way to go.
Keys to Developing Sincere, Effective, Sustainable Marketing
#1. Ask yourself, “what’s my highest intention for my business?”
What’s the best possible outcome for you, for your business, and for your customer?
Example: the highest intention for Highly Contagious Marketing is when we help clients create marketing that grows their client base and their bottom line.
When that happens, satisfied clients send us referrals which helps Highly Contagious Marketing succeed financially and there are more successful businesses in the world making a positive difference.
#2. Look at how your intention is reflected in your marketing?
Thinking of the many different ways you market your business, how is your intention showing up?
Example: In all the activities to promote Highly Contagious Marketing, I want to:
(1.) Provide information, a how-to, or a resource that gives the person who gets the marketing a little added value.
(2.) Provide an offer and a clear call to action for anyone wanting to take the next step and get more help from us.
#3. Ask what one change can you make to your marketing to express your sincere desire to serve customers and make a difference?
Some specific actions you can take to show more sincerity in your marketing include:
(1.) Make your marketing message truly focused on your customer and their current problem. The first half of your message should be about your customer and their situation. If you’re talking about yourself–your solutions and qualifications, your marketing is not focused on the customer.
(2.) Look for ways to leave anyone who encounters your marketing a little better off than they were before the encounter. Marketing that informs, coaches, inspires, even entertains all leave recipients a little better off.
(3.) Make sure your marketing reflects your values and if not, make changes. If you loathe hype in other marketing but use hype because “that’s what everybody says I have to do,” stop using hype. Create marketing that gets results without making you feel like you sold your soul.
Bottom Line
Remember, marketing is all about cultivating trust-based relationships so prospects can buy. And sincerity is a critical factor which enables trust to grow.
Can you market your products and services without sincerity? Sure. But you will have to work a lot harder to sustain sales because you won’t be creating the quality relationships that give your marketing real momentum.
To create marketing in which sincerity shines through, take some time to remember what your business is in service for and take action so that your marketing better reflects what matters to you.
How To Think About Webmedia
We’ve all seen Web video campaigns and television commercials that we actually enjoyed watching, not once, but over and over again. Whether it’s the Mac Versus PC ads or the thoroughly entertaining Visa Pizza Twirling Commercial, great campaigns are as memorable as great movies or television shows. When commercial presentations meet that standard, they transcend mere commercial status, and reach the level of Experiences.
Killer Campaigns is all about marketing campaigns that are memorable experiences, but why is that important; why should you care? Well if you want to grow your business, create, establish, or enhance a brand, or just plain sell more stuff on the Web, then you have to learn how to turn “advertising into content and content into an experience.”
What We’ll Show You
Each segment will feature an example of what we consider a great campaign that achieves memorable experience status. It may be a television commercial, a YouTube video, or even a video microsite, but whatever form it takes it will be worth watching, or more to the point, worth experiencing.
But just watching excellent advertising is not enough to understand why and how it works. You have to understand the technique used, and why it is effective. In some cases we may even show you failed examples of the same technique used, and explain why one campaign worked and one didn’t.
Our Perspective
We start with a particular point-of-view. You may agree with it or you may not, but by the time you’ve been through several segments of The Killer Campaign series you will at least understand how to think about great marketing concepts, and you will watch webmedia from a whole new frame-of-reference, and with a more critical eye.
Our perspective is deceivingly simple: we create marketing communication, that’s video campaigns, websites, and video microsites based on the notion that Web traffic is an audience, not prospects, clients, or potential suckers, but an audience.
The Technique and Why It Worked
The analysis we use to evaluate the effectiveness of these techniques is based on the preceding perspective of treating website traffic like an audience. Why you may ask don’t we do what everybody else does, and look at the numbers? And the answer is simple: numbers lie. Numbers themselves don’t tell you the whole story.
An effective campaign may fail because of poor implementation or faulty targeting, or any number of other reasons that don’t speak to the creation and effectiveness of the media itself. After all, one of the greatest commercials ever made, the introduction of the Macintosh computer, hardly ever got shown because certain members of the board of directors got cold feet.
Killer Campaigns: Words & Music
As powerful and important as visual communication is, without finely crafted, supportive words and music, the visuals will fall flat; they will lack the emotional impact that connects you the advertiser, with them, the audience.
The Visa Pizza Twirler Commercial with the Morgan Freeman voice-over is a tour-de-force of commercial communication. Take a look and listen:
Visa Pizza Twirler Video with Sound
But what would this presentation be like without words and music? Here’s a video of the filming of the pizza-tossing scene without any voice-over or music. The pizza-chef is brilliant but without the words and music it’s merely a pleasant distraction without emotional or commercial relevance.
Visa Pizza Twirler Video – No Words and Music
The Web and television are both multimedia communication venues that rely on visual impact and sound design combined with the element of performance, but at least one major difference makes commercial presentation on the Web a more difficult challenge: television watching is a passive exercise, while Web surfing is a proactive activity. You’ll suffer through bad television commercials to watch your favorite program but on the Web, people won’t tolerate it. That said, there are some great commercials that do get it right.
HTC You Campaign
The HTC You Campaign hits the proverbial marketing nail right on the head. This is a company that communicates the right message in the right way, because the message is not about the phone, it’s about what you need in a phone. Just listen to the tag line: “you don’t need to get a phone, you need a phone that gets you, and you, and you, and we are HTC.”
This is a presentation that transcends commercial status. At the heart of the video are words and music that form a hypnotizing poetic social commentary on our over-stimulated hectic lives, and it provides a human solution, not a technical one. The concept is brilliant: this is not a product, it’s a life enabler, and who couldn’t use one of those. There is no discussion of features or price. It’s not even about the phone; it’s about making life easier for you, and it does it with a brilliant script and a hypnotic musical score.
HTC You Campaign Video
Conclusion
In order for a commercial, a website, or a webmedia campaign to attain the level of an effective content experience, it must connect with an audience on an emotional level, the level at which decisions are made, and actions approved.
The HTC You Campaign illustrates how poetic words, delivered in an inspiring voice-over, supported by a hypnotic musical score, with associated images, turn advertising into content and content into an experience.
Does your website presentation or webmedia marketing strike this kind of cord with your audience, or are you still trying to win the hearts and minds of your audience with just another feature or price adjustment?
The Web is a different kind of communication venue. The old broadcast scenario of repeat, repeat, repeat, until they say your brand name in their sleep, just won’t work on the Web. You may only get one shot at any individual audience member, don’t screw it up.
Top 10 Issues in Website Design and Usability
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
You’ve tested your website, you’ve visited it a few times, you’ve gotten some feedback on it, and you have a bit of data about your visitors.
You might want to make some changes. Here are the top ten issues in website design and usability.
Think about these things in relation to your website and consider what you might want to do to perfect your site.
1. The First Glance
In general, people look at the top left corner of your website first. You should have your essential information there: what your offerings are and how your potential customers can get it. Some visitors are at your site only long enough to confirm that you sell what they want, and some are ready to buy. All visitors need to be able to tell what you do right away. Don’t hide behind a splash page or make people wait while something loads – many won’t take the time.
2. Navigation
When your customers want and need more information, they’ll stay and look for it. Make sure they can find it easily. Put your navigation in the usual places, and make it very obvious what your visitors need to click in order to find each section. Don’t have more than 5-7 choices in your main navigation and keep it consistent on every page. Let your creativity and uniqueness show in some other way – follow the rules when it comes to navigation.
3. Contact Information
Can customers (and search engines) find you when they need you? Your contact information must be clear and accurate. It must also be easy to find. Visitors will visit your website several times before they choose to go for your services or purchase. Don’t make it hard for them to contact you when they’re ready.
4. Call To Action
What do you want your visitors to do? It should be easy to find out how to complete an order through your website or get more information. Regardless of the content of the page make sure that you include a clear call to action. Make it easy for visitors to purchase or request information from you. Just be sure to make it very clear.
5. Above the Fold Focus
Many visitors won’t scroll; most won’t scroll unless you have already convinced them that it’s worth their while to do so. Make sure important aspects are above fold. The unimportant things – why are they on your page? This is especially important on the home page. Visitors who’ve reached your FAQs page or your blog are probably interested enough to spend some time reading.
6. Inviting Content
To develop relationships with your clients, you need to have them visit more than once. In fact, most people won’t commit themselves the first time they come to your website. You need to offer them something of value so they’ll return. Do you have a blog, or frequently-updated featured products? Have you got any useful information that you could offer your customers?
7. Well-Organized Pages
Don’t make your visitors search. Always ensure that your page layout is clear, concise and gives the visitor exactly what they want without having to search for it. Try to put yourself in your customer’s position and use what you learn from testing. Decide what you want to say and plan its organization before you write, so you can be sure to have coherent paragraphs.
8. Visual Appeal
While the content on your page is the most important thing, an attractive page will be more enjoyable and appealing for visitors. Choose colours that work well together, leave some open space so it’s not too busy, and make sure you have everything lined up nicely. Even if you have not got artistic skills you can make a good impression – and you should.
9. Sincerity and Trustworthiness
The internet is all about trust. If you can ensure that your website is trustworthy, people will be more likely to complete an order. What’s more, the search engines also base your rankings on how trustworthy they think your page is. Don’t undermine your future success by trying to trick the search engines or mislead your visitors.
10. A Polished Finish
Do your links work? Make sure you check your grammar, spelling and layout are correct? Is all the information up to date and accurate? Your visitors would prefer to shop in a well kept and clean shop in the high street. They would prefer to purchase in a clean and well kept website too. They’ll have less faith in you if you have errors on your website.
Is your website perfect? Maybe not. We’ll be providing more information on all of these points as we go along, and your site will become better and better as you follow our suggestions and learn more.
Link Building Best Practices – A Guide to Effective Link Building Methods
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Just to cover the ground, lets go over what link building is quickly. Link building is the process of building backlinks to your site. The more backlinks (links from other sites to your site) a site has, the higher it ranks on the search engines. Link building therefore is a mission of all money makíng webmasters.
Link building methods have changed from time to time and a specific method that worked yesterday may not work today. This is due to changes in the industry over time and in some cases extreme abuse. If a specific link building method has been abused too much, then that method will not work anymore.
It is therefore very important to know which link building method works today so that you can spend your time in a most productive way.
There are many link building methods out there today that work with some working better than others. Below are some of the today’s popular links building methods:
Article Submission
If you are reading this article, then you know that you can publish your article in article directories. Not only do you gain backlinks to your site from your published articles (see bottom of this article), you will get some traffic as a bonus. Think of you reading this article. There might be many reading your published articles as well.
Article submission is a great way of building backlinks as it provides you with 100% relevant contextual backlinks that Google loves.
Directory submission used to work lot better before, but it is still a popular link building method that still works if done properly. How many directories are out there as of this date is anyone’s guess but one thing is certain: that most of the directories aren’t worth submitting to.
Google considers a Yahoo Directory link as a quality backlink so if you can afford and justify the cost, it is worth submítting to Yahoo Directory. Yahoo charges $300 for a yearly submission and there is no assurance that your site will be approved!
Directory Submission
DMOZ is another directory that is worth submitting to and can provide great benefit in your SEO campaign. It may take months to get the approval from DMOZ and the chance of getting approved is pretty slim. A lot of small directories use the DMOZ directory categories so getting listed with DMOZ would mean getting bonus listings on many other web directories.
Another good directory to submit to is the BOTW dírectory that costs $99 for a yearly submission and $299 for a permanent listing.
Other than the above, you should look for quality directories where you can submit your site. You can judge the quality of the directories by analyzing the number of sites listed, number of backlinks the directory has, PR, age of the directory, etc.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking worked like charm only a few months ago. If bookmarked on authority and quality bookmarking sites like Digg, Mixx, Propeller, etc, then you can still make good use of social bookmarking. Other than backlinks, social bookmarking also offers you some bonus traffic depending on where you submit to. If you can manage to put together or collect a good bookmarking site líst, then social bookmarking can still be a useful link building method.
Blog Commenting
This is a link building method where lots of spamming has already been done so to make the best of it, you need to work a little harder here. It is best to find quality blogs related to your category and make on-topic relevant comments. Not only do your comments add value to the blogpost, you now have a greater chance of getting your comment approved and your comments have greater chance of staying on those blogposts.
Press Releases
Submitting to press release sites can get you some backlinks as well. It is however hard to put together a líst of good press release sites that are worth submitting to. If a good líst can be managed, then this method can give some quality relevant backlinks as well.
Social Media and Web 2.0 Pages
There are a lot of quality social media and Web 2.0 sites where you can publish your articles for backlinks. You should write articles that are relevant to your site and publish them on these social media and Web 2.0 sites with your keywords hyperlinked to your site. Some of the authority sites are Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger, WordPress.com, etc.
Social media and Web 2.0 links are very popular these days because they work great. They give quality, relevant contextual backlinks that Google and other major search engines love. There are lots of other link building methods out there, but if you can utilize the above ones to their fullest potential, there is no need for any other methods.
Ten Top Tips for Video Marketing Your Online Business
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Nearly all internet marketing professionals use video as one of the core methods for marketing their business. These ten tips aim to help you get started creating short, attractive, effective videos based on solid keywords that convert and that stand the test of time.
Video grabs people’s attention far more quickly and effectively than text, audio or photographs. Making a short video can capture a thousand words and pictures and helps to get across your personal brand and lifestyle.
It’s important to stand out in the crowd on video channels and search engines. Aim your headlines at capturing the imagination regarding your topic. So don’t be dull – test out curiosity, shock or fun tactics for getting those download clícks.
First of all, get set up.
When you’re starting out, it’s ok to just use your webcam. It will give you the chance to practice while you’re honing your presentation skills before you fork out for a camcorder. When you’re ready, you can purchase an inexpensive digital video recorder, like say the Flip and a tripod.
Make sure you take your videos in well-lit conditions. Inside your office you’ll need decent lighting, or you can whip out your camera when you’re out and about. It makes for a much more interesting back drop.
OK. So now let’s go through each of my TOP 10 TIPS for creating and using videos to market your business.
#1: Keep Your Videos Short
Whether you’re loading videos on YouTube or just putting them up on your website or blog, it’s really important to keep to just 5 or 6 minutes.
If needed, you can of course break longer topics up into a series of smaller videos, which you could market as a series (see tip 10).
#2: Post Videos on Your Sales PagesM
You can use video on your sales page to introduce the main benefits of your product or business opportuníty. How about placing a video on your sales page or sign up pages.
This helps to orientate visitors and to highlight the main points of your regular, written sales letter.
#3: Choose Your Keywords Carefully
This is really an important tip, because it will affect how your video gets picked up by the search engines and other internet ‘bots’ that seek out content.
Research your top keyword phrases. Pick keywords that will attract the right kind of traffic and leads – research like crazy to find out what your prospects are looking for – and be sure to include your keywords in headings and tags and description boxes.
Doing this research and tracking clíck thrus (CTR) and conversions will help you secure your most cost-effective keywords and keyword phrases.
#4: Have a Clear Purpose & Structure
Your keywords will help make sure you target your video on the right purpose before you start. Does your video answer the questions your visitors have in their heads when they’re searching for solutions. Make things crystal clear.
Stay on topic and give added value – unique value if possible – and your videos will convert much better for you. Write down a structure – a set of headings – for what you’re going to cover. Have a script if necessary.
You can mention any links that you have to another video specifically on that related topic.
#5: Look at the Camera
The aim here is to connect with your audience, both in the topic you choose and the content as well as in your communication style. Remember you are talking to people – real live people. What are their needs and wants, hopes and fears.
With regards to presentation, stick your líst of headings right next to the camera so you stay looking in the camera at all times, rather than looking away at a screen or down at your notes.
An authentic and honest video is far more valuable than a glossy TV like broadcast. So don’t worry if you’re not up to TV presenter standards. Just be yourself and enjoy the opportuníty to reach out to people in a different way than using text copy.
#6: Create a Clear Call to Action
You should create one very clear service and call to action. It’s very important that people know exactly what to do as a result of watching your video.
What is your most wanted response (MWR)? Don’t confuse visitors with lots of options and different offers. Focus on the single most wanted response.
Alternatively, you can put your video up next to a sign up box – linked to your emaíl marketing – and clearly ask them to opt ín, more than once. Provide an incentive, such as a free report or further video coaching resources.
#7: Encourage Comments on Your Video
One of the best things about video is that it’s a very personal, social medium. The more people that are talking about your video and passing it on, the more buzz you’ll create.
Visitors may return to your page to see who has commented since their last comment. There may accumulate a whole líst of tips that have been created by your niche community, prompted by your initial video post.
39 Tools for Marketing Your Small Busíness Online
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, March 5, 2010
Thousands of free online marketíng tools clamor for attention, with new ones popping up every week it seems. You know you should be doing more to reach out to your customers, but just researching which tools to use can be a vast time investment, even if they don’t require a big financial outlay.
Below is a compiled líst of the most popular (or most useful) low-cost or free small business marketing tools. You might be using some of them already, but you’re sure to find a couple that will round out your small business marketing toolkit nicely. And, if you’re just starting out marketing a new busíness online, this líst may help point you in the right direction.
Directories
The Open Directory – A staple of the SEO crowd, this directory can be tricky to get into but well worth it for the link juice it passes along to your site.
Yahoo! Directory – It’s not free – this directory will set you back a couple hundred bucks a year – but it’s well worth it for inclusion.
Best of the Web Directory – This directory has been around a while and can pass along some good PageRank to your site.
Niche Directories
Find the directories in your industry that pass along good link building opportunities. Some examples to get you started: SBDGraphics.com for ad agencies, web developers, printers and other graphics professionals; sbdpro.com for small businesses and businesses that serve them; Cpapro.com for the accounting industry; SEOAlpaca.org for alpaca breeders, and so on.
Press Release Distribution Services
Marketwire – The most bang for your buck from an actual wire service, Marketwire’s prices are lower than PR Newswire and Businesswire. This newer service is built for powerful online exposure, and you’ll enjoy the full online distribution with any geographical AP wire distribution. (Sometimes you can get statewide wire distribution for nearly the same cost as only your local metropolitan area.) It’s great for building inbound links – just choose the SEO Enhanced option.
PRLog – A good-performing free press release distribution outlet, PRLog press releases rank really well and for a really long time if they are written with SEO copywriting best practices. Press releases include three links, though they are URL based (starting with http) rather than text anchor. PRLog also lets you create your newsroom where all your press releases reside, as well as an “about us” page and product showcase area.
PitchEngine – A relatively new PR-for-social-media site that promises to let you create and share press releases easily and for free and syndicate content to Google News. Lets you include HTML in your press release, so you can use keyword text anchor links. The site is marketing itself quite aggressively and will likely build a big presence quickly. The only catch is your release will disappear off the site after 30 days if you aren’t a paid member ($50/month for your press room).
Emaíl Marketing
AWeber – AWeber makes it easy to start building your emaíl marketing líst, if you haven’t already. For less than $20/month, you can build unlímited newsletter lists, send unlímited email blasts, and email unlímited autorespond messages to up to 500 subscribers/líst. (Then it’s $29/month up to 2500 subscribers.) Also offers a recurring 30% commission – a pretty good affiliate program for a service you’ll appreciate enough to recommend to others. (Disclosure note: the link above is our affiliate link. We’ve been using the service for 3 years now, after trying out Constant Contact and researching about 20 other providers! Most either do autoresponders or email blasts/newsletters – not both.)
Content Sharing Websites
Squidoo – Create a lens around your business area. A good one with lots of information will even rank in the search engines and can bring traffic to your web site.
Scribd – Share your expert content like white papers and articles. You can make them available for free or sell them. You can submit documents in PowerPoint, Word, PDF and many other file formats.
SlideShare – Post your presentations and documents online for others to view and share. This is a great way to get exponential exposure for your sales or marketing materials – or share documents privately. See some tips for getting more visibility with SlideShare: http://bit.ly/aNXmS2
Flikr – Does your product or service translate well visually? Use this popular photo sharing site to get more eyeballs.
Blip.tv – A video-sharing alternative to YouTube, blip.tv lets you embed links in your descriptions and create a TV station showing all your videos in one spot.
Social Networks
Facebook – Create a page for your business. Feed your blog in. Start a group. Get fans. Advertise to targeted users if your products appeal to the Facebook crowd (which is basically everybody nowadays). See using the new Facebook business page layout to learn more. Stop by our page and become a fan, too!
MySpace – Take a second look at this medium for social networking. According to MarketingProfs, more than half of MySpace.com users are 35 or older. Explore using MySpace for your business.
LinkedIn – Like a virtual Rolodex. Build your professional profile, link up with other professionals, join groups or even start a group. Participating in Q&A’s related to your profession is a great way to build credibility and visibility.
Ning – Build your social network around your business. You may even get your network into the search engine results pages. Learn more about using Ning for business. (http://bit.ly/amLKcE)
Read “Utlize Social Media to Gain Additional Exposure for Your Site” (http://bit.ly/bcoWEQ) for more information about social networks and how they can drive targeted traffíc to your site.
Social Bookmarking
Digg – Getting your content on the home page of Digg is one way to bump up your web site’s traffic by thousands within minutes. This can result in valuable links to your site. Start with this beginner’s guide to Digg.
StumbleUpon – Build friends and send them your articles to rate. More thumbs up will get your article shown to more people outside your network and can result in thousands of visitors every day. Tips for using StumbleUpon.
Reddit – Even if your content gets buried on Digg, it can flourish on Reddit – which can be a catalyst for jumping to the home page of other social bookmarking sites. Learn more about the types of topics that do well on Reddit.
Google’s SEO Report Card… Information Nuggets or Fool’s Gold?
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Google’s SEO Report Card… Information Nuggets or Fool’s Gold?
While ostensibly aimed at helping Google target potential weaknesses in its own product pages, and of no direct use to SEOs, there is nonetheless more than a little gold to be found here, if one just examines the document in a little more depth. So while the post at Google’s Webmaster Central Blog is already beginning to bristle with comments lamenting the fact that this isn’t a clear treasure map to the search-ranking mother lode, it’s worth sifting through the Report Card to see what informational nuggets are hidden inside.
Subject I: Search Result Presentation
It’s easy to see why some readers simply dismissed this document out of hand, as the first section starts off being little more than a rehash of the standard “Use Page Titles, Use Meta Descriptions” advice found in any SEO-101 manual. Only by persevering to the part talking about Google Sitelink Triggering, does one begin to suspect that there may be a little more to the report card than meets the eye. Here the authors throw out a couple of crumbs about categorizing website and link-structure, and consolidating a site’s URLs to maximize its informational focus with the aim of increasing the chances of Google generating Sitelinks.
Even so, it’s nothing most professionals haven’t heard before, and I suspect that by this time a lot of readers had given up, thinking that nothing interesting was in store.
Subject II: URLs and Redirects
This is where we see a little glitter among the rubble, as the section starts off with the statement that: “Google products’ URLs take many different forms. Most larger products use a subdomain, while smaller ones usually use a directory form…”
In itself this is not an exceptional statement, and the chapter continues to give handy, but hardly unique, information about canonicalization, URL structure, and redirects until Page 10, where we find the following declaration:
“Subdomains require an extra DNS lookup, slightly affecting latency, which is very important at Google.”
Page load-speeds are an important factor to Google. There’s been talk and speculation about this ever since Matt Cutts dropped the first hints last year, and these days most SEOs are busily proclaiming that slow websites are now a handicap.
Haven’t they always been?
Be that as it may, this fact is not common knowledge with the average webmaster, as demonstrated by a question I’m regularly confronted with over at the Google Webmaster Help Forum:
“Which is a better way to categorize my site, subdomains or folders?”
The standard answer to this question used to be “Whichever you prefer” before load-times became an issue. Now, however, we find a clear indicator that a folder-based approach is much-preferable unless a category actually contains enough information to merit its own site, which is effectively what a subdomain turns it into.
Subject III: On-Page Optimizations
While at first glance this chapter is more standard SEO-101 fodder, it’s where we find a sizable nugget, as the report talks about semantic markup, and how Google uses it to gauge a page’s content.
“Nothing new here; we all use H1 tags.” you might say, but you’d only be partially right, because this issue not only runs much deeper than H1 headings, it runs beyond Heading tags altogether, as I’ll explain shortly. For the moment, however, let’s stay with them.
In the past few years, a great many Optimizers have reached the conclusion that only H1, and, to a degree, H2 are of any promotional value, and that lesser headings (H3 – H6) carry practically no weight at all. But let’s take a look at the following statement, taken from Page 38 of the Report:
“Most product main pages have an opportuníty to use one
tag, like the example above, but they’re currently only using other heading tags (
in this case) or larger font styling. While styling your text so it appears larger might achieve the same visual presentation, it does not provide the same semantic meaning to the search engine that an
tag does.”
tag does.”
For starters it’s obvious that the lesser headings are alive and well, and being used by Google. We’re also told that Google does not, or cannot, judge the visual-context meaning of CSS styled text. The conclusion is to use more heading tags instead of CSS styles wherever your content calls for it. However, there’s more to it still. Let’s take another look at part of that statement:
“…but they’re currently only using other heading tags…”
It would appear that Google still places greater value on other semantic markup tags (em, strong, blockquote, etc.) than many professionals give them acknowledgment, for these days. Otherwise why would the author specifically note the fact that Google only uses headings and font styles?
I personally know quite a few professionals who have long-since abandoned most semantic markup tags in favour of CSS style, since the prevailing attitude of designers and SEOs has been that making text bold or italic no longer carries much promotional weight, following widespread abuses in the mid-2000s and Google’s consequent algorithm updates.
And although the above statement may be a tentative one, it might just point the way back to a more HTML-based approach to web design. Indeed, if it can be taken at face-value, it’s entirely possible that those SEOs and designers advocating CSS-based, table-less design as the way forward are barking up the wrong tree. Whatever the case may be, there is undoubtedly more to the SEO Report Card than first meets the eye, and at the very least, there is a little gold to be extracted from the mass of standard information. Only by reading the full document will you be able to make an assessment yourself.
What should also be remembered is that the SEO Report Card is not aimed at high-flying SEOs or E-lebrity industry pundits, but at the intermediate webmaster for whom even the report’s basic information is of immense value, if read alongside Google’s SEO Starter Guide
Pay Per Click Marketing vs Facebook Advertising
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Monday, March 1, 2010
Pay Per Click Marketing vs Facebook Advertising
Google is the Bad Egg of Internet Marketing & MLM. With so
many accounts slapped and closed down for good, Top Gurus
are turning to Facebook Advertising as a far superior
option for cheap targeted traffic.
Don’t Put your Eggs in One Marketing Basket
Savvy Pro marketers like our members aren’t panicking -
we’ve always had a back up plan on the go. Our advice has
been simple – don’t put all your eggs in one basket -
especially Google’s! If you’re using Pay Per Click
Advertising, then make sure you also have some SEO going on
- to generate organic traffic.
It takes a lot of hard work to get your site ranked
through organic traffic – writing articles, forum posts,
blogs, squidoo lenses, hub pages, video marketing – to
build up your online presence and expertise for your chosen
niche keywords.
Organic takes time. So if you don’t have the patience and
want to generate lots of traffic fast, PPC is a good to
have as part of your marketing model.
But internet marketers and PPC experts are absolutely fed
up with the arrogance of Google. So if we’re not doing
Google Adwords for our marketing, where do we get the
masses of traffic we are still able to generate on a daily
basis?
Adding Content Rich Social Marketing into the Mix
If you want free traffic, you usually have to spend masses
of your time with manually writing copy and creating
podcasts and video marketing. So really it’s not free at
all – time is money and all that. Hiring a copy writing
group to create niche content can become quite expensive.
So all this organic SEO friendly traffic takes time to
build up and requires consistent daily effort. This is good
to add to your marketing mix but won’t give you fast
traffic.
What’s super important too is that organic SEO content is
ultimately still controlled by the search engines, so
Google still has power over how you get seen by your
prospects.
How hard is it these days to do enough clever keyword
research to get your unique niche and rank on page one of
Google. Almost impossible – especially if you’re one newbie
trying to compete with the big gurus in internet marketing
or MLM network marketing arena.
What Marketing Strategies to Use that Beat Google Adwords
Fair and Square?
What company is fair and sane, loves affiliates and direct
marketers? What company attracts nearly 40 billion views a
month and the traffic is uber quality and dirt cheap? Who
is this company? Well, it’s your friendly neighbourhood….
Facebook!
Facebook is the only company that Google actually
acknowledges is a real competitor to them. Facebook is
currently showing up as having four hundred million active
members – that makes it 5 times the size of Google!!!
Yet Facebook ads represent just 5% of the advertising done
on Google.
Now don’t be thinking Facebook is just for youngsters!
Insidefacebook.com published its statistics and show that
only 11% of users are aged 13-17. While 33% are 18-25s, a
whopping 18% are aged between 35 and 44. That’s 100 million
people! And a further 9% are aged 45-54 and 4% 55-65.
Don’t spend another cent with Google till you’ve checked
out Facebook Advertising.
Why Facebook is the New Face of Paid Advertising
Facebook is pretty much untapped compared to PPC
advertising on Google, Yahoo or Bing.
It’s truly a “sleeping giant”, an ingenious source of
traffic that is…
- much bigger than PPC
- less competitive than PPC
- more targeted than PPC
- less expensive than PPC
And what’s more, Facebook’s integrated personal profiles
mean you can hone in on exactly the demographic you are
trying to target – not just on keyword phrases, you can
also target only Facebook members who are in particular age
groups, regions and/or have specifically stated certain
interest areas – it’s simply awesome how deep you can get
into Facebook – giving you massive choice and combinations.
Because of this, Facebook allows you to use the same ad in
many different ways so you can really hit the hot spots of
your users and their interests. Imagine being able to
target by age, gender, film interests, AND keywords… you
can really hit your message home.
So what this means in practice is that the clicks you get
on your Facebook ad are immensely more targeted and convert
far better and cost far less than what you’d achieve on
Google Adwords.
If all that targeting isn’t enough to convince you, here
are some more benefits of using Facebook advertising:
- Facebook is also great for newbies. It’s really easy to
use and to set up your campaigns. If you can send an
email, you can do Facebook ads.
- Facebook ads work in any market and will give a far
better ROI than PPC, even for affiliate marketing.
- Facebook advertiser competition is minimal right now,
so now is the time to tap into this massive source of
traffic.
- Your ad in Facebook can include not only titles and
descriptions but also images, which you can’t do with
PPC ads.
- Facebook ads leave little wastage because you can seek
out ultra targeted members who are likely to respond to
your offer.
Following the Facebook Rules
There is a downside.
Facebook is hugely protective of its users. So you have to
really study and follow their rules. And this will take you
some time.
The general rule of thumb stems from what is called
“permission marketing”. So make sure you check this out so
you don’t get your account cancelled.
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