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How To Get Loads Of Twitter Traffic To Your Website
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
How To Get Loads Of Twitter Traffic To Your Website
Twitter is a brilliant way to drive targeted visitors to your Web site. You should not forget about other traffic sources but using Twitter is totally free and will definitely acquire a few more targeted visitors to your site. You got me right, I said free targeted visitors in the last sentence.
Nothing is better than a never endless stream of visitors. There are lots of ways for you getting free traffic to your Web site. But there is a huge difference between free traffic and targeted traffic. You could have heard about traffic generating websites sending out tons of people to your homepage. These offers are good to give your traffic stats a push but you will not actually generate a sale or find a prospect for your product. Visitors delivered to you by free traffic Websites will usually leave your Internet site within a few moments.
Targeted visitors instead are interested in the items or information you are offering on your Web site, prepared to break out their credit card! With my Twitter strategy I show you how to get targeted visitors ready to take action. It takes very little while and is simple to do.
What you will need in first place is a twitter account, naturally. I recommend avoid using your own twitter account. If you are having different niche sites create a single twitter account for each niche Web site you have. Please don’t leave the default twitter background and avatar, choose an avatar and background image that fits your product or info best, as it will show your followers that you care about your account.
The next step to do is to deliver content – business relevant good content. The majority of the content you will provide is created by others and will never include references to your own stuff. This may sound strange to you, but here I explain why we will do it.
Make sure to provide best content to your followers and unless you write loads of crappy content or outsource your article writing you just don’t have the cash and time to write all that quality content yourself in a short period of time. When you tweet your own stuff only on every occasion you will seem to be a spammer. Individuals will stop following you when you behave like a spammer. Incidentally, tweets are the short communications called that you send out with your Twitter account.
Second thing of the process is to build a landing page or helpful blog post about your business. This part will be the most significant and you really must ensure to supply good articles. But where will you find all the business relevant content ? Go and google for RSS feeds for your business content, copy the link of the feed and paste the link of the RSS feed to your landing page or blog post. Ensure to pick out high quality RSS feed content. That will make your followers trust you. When they trust whatever you tell them it will encourage them to click your links sooner or later. The links you place in your landing page or blog post is the origin to monetize the traffic you are receiving from Twitter. The Most Important idea behind is that you place links to your products or service you would like to share or sell. The writing in the displayed link should contain a strong anchor text that will call to action and make them click the link that will lead them to your cash site. Here you offer your product or information you want to sell or share.
So, the most important thing is to place a link to your money site at the end of your landing page or blog post. Ensure the link incorporates a strong call to action. The final section of this action will be to build up an email address from your visitors or to get in touch through a contact form or to even make the sale. Because now you are having a targeted visitor on your Web site seeking information. To catch their email address offer a free of charge business relevant ebook or report through an optin form. Once you have your visitors email address you can add it to your email list and feed them with any information or products of your choosing any time you like. Only imagination will make you stop. To automate your information or product emails simply employ an autoresponder of your choosing. Your email list will be growing and growing.
Every tweet you are posting will be of very high quality and will make your followers to believe in you. When people trust you enough they will make your tweets go viral and at this moment in time magic happens.
So, the most significant thing is to place a link to your income site at the end of your landing page or web log post. Make certain the link contains a powerful call to action.
That just about is it. The great thing about this is you will not have to spend tons of dollars to get rolling. As soon as you come to terms with the process this shouldn’t take more than about 20 minutes per day. Give it a try, it’s a superb way to drive targeted traffic to your Website.
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The Painful Truth About Getting Your Website To The Top Of The Search Engines
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
The Painful Truth About Getting Your Website To The Top Of The Search Engines
“How do I get my website to come up on top of the search engines?” – That is one of the most frequently asked questions I get asked by clients.
The truth is, it’s not easy. With millions of websites on the internet right now and thousands being added each month, everyone is striving to do the same – to come up in the first spot (or on the first page).
In reality there are only 2 ways you can come up on top:
Set up a pay per click advertising campaign, such as Google Adwords
Optimise your website for keywords (also know as Search Engine Optimisation)
Keywords
Before you embark on either of these marketing methods, you need to understand about keywords.
Keywords or key phrases are the words that visitors type into a search engine to find a service or product. The best keywords are those that are commonly typed in by your potential customers, but which aren’t used much on your competitor’s websites. In other words, if you optimize your pages for keywords your potential customers use a lot, but your competitors haven’t thought of, you win. But here’s the catch…you’ll never get to know which are the best keywords for your website simply by guessing.
There are many tools you can use to find what keywords people are using, including Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool.
If you are serious about finding the perfect keywords, I would recommend using a tool called Wordtracker – www.wordtracker.com. Through a series of simple steps, Wordtracker identifies the best keywords to use on each page of your website. Wordtracker’s suggestions are based on over 300 million keywords and phrases that people have used over the previous 90 days. (In other words, there is no “guessing” when you use Wordtracker. Everything is based on the keywords millions of people have actually typed into search engines.)
Best of all, their competitive analysis tool enables you to find those “best keywords” – the ones your potential customers use, but which your competitors don’t know about.
Once you have identified the best keywords, you can either run a pay per click marketing campaign or optimize your website for search engines.
Pay per click
Pay per click advertising is when an advertiser (you) pays for each qualified click that sends a search engine user to your web page. PPC requires you to bid on keywords or phrases that relate to your business. The best known pay per click services are Google AdWords and Overture. Generally you can bid from as little as a few cents per visitor. However, the more you bid the higher up in the search engine your advertisement will appear. Pay per click is a great way to deliver targeted and qualified visitors to your website at a very reasonable price.
It is a good idea to experiment with different PPC search engines to find the one that works best for you. In addition, you will need to spend time testing your keywords and ads.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engines prefer to list sites that contain good content. In order to rank high you need to create a website that has maximum content and which uses lots of relevant keywords to your service and products.
Once you decide on the keywords, use them in
Your website’s domain name
The title of your page – This is displayed in the top bar of your browser window
The heading of your home page
The first paragraph of your home page
Meta tags – Keywords, page title, description
Titles of your graphics
Alternative (Alt) tags – These appear in place of images when the browser preferences are set for text only.
Whilst it is important to use keywords as much as possible, it is also important you use them only if they are relevant and do not sound awkward. If you spam your keywords you may be penalized or even banned by some search engines.
Another important thing to consider when trying to optimize your website for search engines is to have as many relevant links pointing back to your website from other complementary sites. This can be done through link exchanges or by writing articles/posts and submitting them to article directories or forums. Ensure you include your domain name at the end of each article/post.
If this all seems too overwhelming, you can employ the services of a Search engine optimization company, who will make your website’s content more search engine friendly.
Please remember, having your website listed at the top of the search engines is not the only way to promote your website. There are lots of other ways you can get visitors to your site for little or no money.
How to Create a Search Engine Friendly Website
posted by Web_University @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, September 23, 2010
How to Create a Search Engine Friendly Website
Many webmasters complain about their website not ranking well in the SERPs. What they fail to realize is that their website is not search engine friendly. An SEO friendly website contains more than keyword filled Meta tags and content.
A website must be created and designed keeping the visitors in mind. Search engines can get your website in the top ranking; but a well crafted website ensures that the visitor gets converted into a customer. You need to ensure that your website is both search engine and visitor friendly.
Tips for Creating a Search Engine Friendly Website:
Fill the Meta tags: Search engines come across the Meta tags well before the content. A major part of the search result is picked up from the Meta tags. The title tag helps the search engines and visitors in understanding what the webpage is about. The Meta description gets listed as the snippet in the search result. Well formatted Meta tags play a major role in making the website SEO friendly.
Include Breadcrumbs in the website: Breadcrumbs are navigational links present in the inner pages of the website. They link a web page to its respective category and sub category. Breadcrumbs help in the even distribution of the page rank to the connected web pages. You must include keywords as the anchor text of the breadcrumbs. Remember to place the breadcrumbs before the main heading of the web page.
Perform the On Page Optimization Activities: SEO of a website mainly consists of on page optimization activities. Implement these tips:
- Add a heading tag to the web page.
- As search engines cannot read images, add an alt tag to the images.
- Name the image according to the selected keywords. Use hyphens to separate long keywords.
- Place a keyword as the anchor text of a link.
- Optimize the content of your web page. Make sure that the keyword density doesn’t exceed 2%.
Interlink all the important web pages: Interlinking web pages helps the search spiders to navigate the website. Web pages can be linked based on their category. E.g. an online book store can link their web pages based on the authors. It has been observed that a well linked website will always rank better than the non-linked websites. You can link to the important pages of your website from the homepage by using appropriate anchor text.
Use SEO Friendly URL Structure: Search engines do not understand the URL’s which contain the PHP / ASP code in them. A SEO friendly URL structure contains words separated by hyphens. You can rewrite your URL’s manually via the.htaccess file. WordPress gives you an option to change your URL structure with one click.
Generate XML Sitemaps: Sitemaps help the engines discover all the pages in your website. There are a lot of free XML sitemap generator tools available online. You can include the “priority” and “change frequency” tags in your sitemap. The priority tag indicates the importance of the web page to the search engines. The Change frequency tag tells the search engines how frequently the page is likely to change.
A fully optimized site increases your chances of ranking well in the SERPs. Once in the top SERPs, your website has a good chance of converting its visitors into customers.
Web Design FAQ – 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Designing a Website
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Friday, July 30, 2010
Web Design FAQ – 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Designing a Website
Many site owners make the mistake of building a website
without laying out a clear plan for their online business.
This is a sure set-up for failure. There are 1000s of
abandoned sites on the web due to lack of careful planning.
Before designing your website you should ask yourself some
questions to avoid making mistakes down the road.
10 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Designing a
Website
1. What Are Your Business Goals?
It’s easy to say, “I want to make money,” however, this is
not a great motivator. Think of a deeper motivation that you
feel passionate about e.g. “I want to have the financial
freedom to spend more time with my kids as they are growing
up.”
2. What’s the Purpose of Your Website?
This is the question most visitors will ask when accessing
your website. Your home page must clearly explain the
purpose and benefits of the products and/or services you are
offering.
3. What Type of Products or Services Will You Sell?
Research the marketability of your products or services by
doing keyword research. Use the free Google Keyword Tool to
find out how many searches your main keywords receive every
month. If there are no searches, it means there is not much
demand and therefore not worth marketing.
If it is a very competitive market (millions of searches per
month), it may be difficult to stand out from your
competitors and create a profitable online business.
4. How Many Products Will You Sell From Your Website?
This will determine how many pages your website will have.
If you’re only selling one product or service, you may only
need 4 web pages e.g. Home, Product (or Services), About,
Contact. If you’re selling 100s of items, you will need a
database driven site to store and manage all of them.
5. How Many Variables Does Your Product Have?
Variables may include size, color, type, sku#, shipping,
tax? Make sure your shopping cart allows you to include
these variables.
6. How Will You Accept Online Payments?
To accept credit card payments online, you will need a
shopping cart, merchant account, payment gateway and SSL
certificate for secure transactions. This means you will
have monthly fees and processing fees every time a customer
purchases something from your website.
A less expensive option for accepting payments online is the
Paypal shopping cart. You don’t need to purchase a separate
merchant account, shopping cart, payment gateway and secure
certificate. For a small processing fee it takes care of all
this in one place.
7. Do You Have a Web Hosting Plan?
Your website needs to be hosted on a server for it to be
available online. Select a hosting plan that has sufficient
space for all your files and bandwidth to receive 1000s of
visitors each month. Make sure you have the flexibility to
upgrade your plan should you need more space and bandwidth.
8. Will You Need to Maintain the Website Yourself?
Asking this question before the design will determine what
software your designer will use to build your website. If it
only consists of a few web pages which don’t need regular
updating, then use software such as Dreamweaver to build it.
It creates clean code and you will have only a few files.
If your website has 100s of pages, consider a content
management system such as WordPress, Joomla or Zen Cart.
They all enable 100s of items to be stored in a database.
The website can be managed (add, edit, or delete items or
pages) by logging into an administration area.
9. Do You Have a Marketing Plan?
To create a profitable online business you must create a
plan to promote it. Some methods may include, search engine
marketing, pay-per-click, article marketing, press releases,
social media, video marketing, etc. Website promotion needs
to be done frequently and consistently to be effective.
10. How Will You Monitor Your Website Statistics?
Check if your web hosting plan includes site statistics
(e.g. AW Stats). If not, create a Google Analytics account
and insert the code on your web pages. It will track how
many daily, weekly, monthly, yearly visitors you receive,
where they are coming from and what keywords are being used
to find your site in the search engines.
If you answer these 10 questions first, you’ll avoid the
pitfalls of designing and building a website and increase
your potential of creating a profitable online business.
What to Expect from Web 3.0
Video: Google to provide Fastest Internet in US
The buzz is growing about Web 3.0, but as usual you have to filter out all the hype, self-serving PR, old-fashioned nonsense, newfangled marketing verbiage and other noise. You will then find a few facts that you can grab onto and try to figure out what’s going on. The first thing to remember is that, like “Web 2.0,” the term Web 3.0 is not an official term of any sort, does not represent any particular protocol or standard, belongs to no one – and is used, misused and made nearly meaningless by everybody. It is, quite simply, just an arbitrary “version number” that, at most, describes how the Internet is built and how it delivers services, at least as of the freeze-framed moment in time that represents the end of 2.0 and the start of 3.0.
Sometimes it is called the “semantic Web,” but perhaps the less-used term “everyware” is more descriptive. The new scenario is one of ubiquitous computing, the advent of cloud computing where a “thin client” (no- or low-powered PC, or even just a monitor and mouse) runs cloud-based applications using cloud-based data and services. The Apple iPhone, iPod and iPad are all examples of formerly standalone devices that were integrated into the Web, and connect people in a seamless, real-time and very simple way with – well, with everything, from libraries and department stores to other people, anywhere in the world.
From Read-Only to Interactivity
One of the Web’s true “parents” was Tim Berners-Lee, who had his own notion of how the technology and the Internet developed. The first phase of the Web had read-only capabilities. It was essentially a spectator experience until read-write functionality came along (sure, call it Web 2.0) that included services to enable contribution, collaboration, content creation and interactivity. The next step in Berners-Lee’s version vision, Web 3.0, is heralded as “new territory,” where users can assemble and run their own applications, create all sorts of cooperative and collaborative enterprises, and truly put their ideas in motion rather than simply uploading stuff to this, that or the other site.
People with money invested in other, still-useful devices – phones, PDAs, fax machines, etc. – don’t have to worry about Web 3.0 making them obsolete. In addition to letting users create their own tools, Web 3.0 is another step in the evolution of usage and interaction in which the Internet holds multiple databases and content that will be accessible to many non-browser-based devices and applications. The obvious uses will be video that streams from a PC to a TV, picture frames that receive wireless updates from an online or local photo app, and phones that display items recommended by your trusted sources – friends, review sites, experts – when you’re shopping.
From Data to Knowledge
In addition to the foregoing characteristics, Web 3.0 is also said to encompass other important advances. For one thing, all sorts of inputs are possible, which means all sorts of new combinations become possible. Content can be made even more broadly relevant when it’s related to GPS, so that social networking, for example, can be enhanced by knowing who is where and doing what.
More importantly, you will get more and better control of your data and be able to establish a number of personalization systems to “wrap” your personal information with different levels and types of protection – so that you can share it widely, narrowly or not at all. Over time, the accuracy of recommendations and trustworthiness of ranking systems will help us determine which data sources to take seriously and which to avoid.
From Business Faxes to Online Games
With the rise of “linkable web apps” you will be able to use all of your different desktop, server and mobile devices and applications – telephones, fax machines and online fax services, instant messaging, pagers – and control them from a single browser window on your desktop, smartphone or handheld device. All of it will take place in an always-on, always-everywhere environment, with functionality embedded sometimes in hardware, sometimes in software, sometimes in both – so that when you need to take care of business without downloading the capability, you’ll be able to do so.
Along with more of the visual and voice-based services that are already starting to proliferate, there will be more lifelike avatar interactions in the growing virtual social networking world. This will lead to social shopping trips and virtual reality gaming far beyond anything currently being done.
In mid-2009, the “Wall Street Journal” ran a story on the development of Web 3.0 capabilities and the promise of ever-greater interconnectedness among technologies, products, services and people. The story even gave us a yardstick by which to measure the success of Web 3.0, if in fact it does succeed. If, as the WSJ puts it, “computing could become as integrated and invisible as electricity and just as important” – and we can attribute it to the new and improved Web – we’ll know that the promise has lived up to the hype. Here’s hoping!
Which Website Visitors Are Potential Clients?
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Monday, April 5, 2010
With today’s website tracking software and services you can find out a lot about the people who visit your website. You can learn where they’re from, what kind of browser they’re using, how long they stayed on your site, and a whole lot more. But what all this high tech intelligence won’t tell you is what kind of people they are, and how likely they are to be transformed by your Web presentation from viewers to customers.
Your ability to convert website visitors into clients depends on your ability to find the soft underbelly of their subconscious desire. After all, if someone is happy with what they’ve already got, they don’t need you, but if they were truly one hundred percent happy, they wouldn’t bother coming to your website. Therefore every visitor that comes to your site is a potential client whether they know it or not.
The Setup’s The Thing
Your website presentation has to find that annoying little subconscious scab just under the surface and pick at it until it becomes a full blown irritation that fosters discontent and a desire for change. That discontent is your opening to make your value statement.
We refer to this process as The Setup. Like any good presentation you cannot, or rather should not, just blurt out how great you are, but rather you have to set the scene. Like any good story, the punch line, moral, or payoff only works if it is properly setup. Far too many website presentations suffer from premature pitch climax.
The ability to transform viewers into customers requires patience. Entrepreneurial companies tend to view the setup as a waste of time, and they fear losing viewers before they ever get to the so-called “good-stuff.” But without a proper setup, an audience is just not primed to accept what you have to say.
You can’t sell anybody anything unless they understand they’ve not been getting everything they need and deserve. That understanding creates dissatisfaction with your competition and opens the audience’s minds to what you have to provide. In short, the setup needs to touch a psychological nerve.
The Customer Is Always Right – Not Quite
We’ve all heard the expression, “the customer is always right.” The fact is the customer is not always right, and in many cases they don’t really know what they want or what they should have; and sometimes even when they do, they resist it because of a variety of misinformation, misunderstanding, self-doubt, and preconceived notions of conventional wisdom. It’s your website presentation’s job to set visitors on the right path.
Being The Expert Inspires Confidence
You’re supposed to be the expert in what you do, and if you are, you need to have the ability to dig deeper into what people really want, need, and desire. I am always reminded of friends of mine who hired an interior decorator to furnish their new home. The decorator asked them what kind of furniture they liked. They answered that they were looking for Colonial, to which the decorator answered, “No you aren’t. What you want is Country French.” And after he showed my friends what he was talking about they quickly agreed. The decorator knew his business and understood the clients. Yes the clients liked the idea of the homey Colonial look they’d seen, but not being furniture experts they didn’t understand what the options were, and what kind of furniture best suited their lifestyle and budget, while still providing the homey rustic but comfortable aesthetic they wanted. Customer satisfaction is about providing what the client really wants and not necessarily what they say they want.
Learn How To Communicate So Audiences Get It
Let’s face it; we all like to read about how the digital revolution has opened up the business world to more audience influence, but the fact is people are influenced and manipulated and desires created through marketing and advertising as much as ever. How many website owners actually benefit in any meaningful way from social networking and search optimization, or do they do it because it’s expected and promoted by proponents as the tactic du jour.
If you think a particular song you like is played on a thousand radio stations because it’s good, or even because it has a following then you are living in a fantasy world. If you thing the vast majority of viral videos produced by corporations go viral all by themselves then think again.
Audiences are being manipulated and transformed into customers all the time, not because companies responded to what the public says, but rather to how the public reacts to various communication and marketing stimuli. What’s truly incredible is how bad companies are at doing it. With all of the television industries’ research into viewers, they still fail to deliver consistent quality programming that people want to watch. Every Fall new shows are yanked faster than a Nolan Ryan fastball, but the same crappy commercials live-on for what seems an eternity. Television viewers are a captive audience and if they want to watch their favorite show they have to tolerate the commercials (PVRs aside), but the Web is different. If your website presentation stinks, no one is going to stick around to absorb the smell.
Web Television Convergence Has Arrived
If you think of your website presentation as nothing more than a digital brochure, you’re already behind the curve. Welcome to the Web on TV.
All you need is a laptop computer or one of the new gaming consoles attached to your big screen TV to access the Web on television. And as network programmers scramble to get their acts together more and more people are opting to spend their television time on the Web. Kind of makes you rethink what kind of website presentation you should be offering. It’s time to start thinking of your website as your business channel and the content on it as programming. It’s the future and it’s here, now.
Who Visits Your Website?
Before website visitors can be transformed into clients, we have to understand who they are in terms of their mental outlook or frame of mind when they first arrive at your home page.
1. Accidental Tourists
Accidental Tourists are website visitors who find their way to your website by serendipity. Your company’s link may have come up in a search for something mentioned on your website, but not something that’s a core element of your business. But just because these people didn’t really intend to visit a site like yours doesn’t mean they’re a waste of time. Perhaps they hadn’t ever thought of using your product or service, or perhaps they didn’t ever realize how much they really wanted what you have to provide. If your website presentation is exciting, meaningful, and entertaining you at least have the chance to plant the seed of desire for your product or service.
2. Brain Pickers
Brain Pickers show up at your site with little intention to buy anything, in fact they’re there to pick your brain and find out how to do what you do for themselves. But if you’re truly an expert at what you do, you at least have the chance to show these people that what you provide is special, and doing it right requires a company with your skills and resources.
“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.
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.
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.
Keyword Fundamentals Will Determine Your Website Success
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Keyword Fundamentals Will Determine Your Website Success
Successful sports teams have engrained in their heads the fundamentals of their sports. Business leaders and coaches alike who dwell on the fundamentals usually have the most successful outcomes. Failure is almost always rooted in a deviation from the fundamentals. So if your website is not delivering clients, perhaps you’re missing the fundamentals.
Part of the answer is no one actually taught you the fundamentals of website success. Most businesses understand the need for a website, few understand the fundamentals. Getting your website to deliver clients is an exercise in fundamentals. First and foremost is a back to basics, grass roots understandng of your market, website style.
Keyword research is the first thing every website owner should have done but most didn’t. With respect to your online business, keyword research equals market research. The coolest thing about being online is that you can absolutely KNOW your market, understand their interests and create an online business and marketing plan relative to your market and their needs.
There are probably hundreds of keyword research tools online that can help you do research. Our advice is to seek out an expert. Getting the data is one thing. Knowing what to do with it is quite a different thing.
Relative to keyword research, here’s what we can find via search engine tools: keywords and keyword phrases, search volumes, total web pages using those keywords, web pages optimized for those keywords, keywords in hypertext (called anchor text) linking to other sites and pages. We can even look at any specific website and determine what keywords they are at least trying to rank for. And of course, type the keyword phrase into a search box will list the top ten sites ranking for that term. The result of such a search is referred to as the SERPS or the Search Engine Results Pages.
The best keywords to use are ones that will generate reasonable traffic AND have very little competition. One of the parameters we seek in our keyword research is to determine the competitiveness of the keyword phrases. Google will tell us how many web pages are indexed for the search term. Just run a search and notice in the upper right of the results that Google will tell you how many pages are indexed with your search keywords. Without getting too technical here, Google and the other major search engines will also tell you how many web pages use those keywords in the page title, an indication that those pages specifically cover the topic of your search. Having keywords in the page title is one of the key ways to optimize a webpage for the keyword. Knowing how many pages are doing this gives you a better idea of how many pages are intentionally using the keywords you’re researching.
KEYWORD STRATEGY
The first thing that has to go is the ego of the site and/or business owner. Unless you show up in the first page of the search engine results, you’re NOBODY! Worse, you can’t push your way through the crowd to get to the top of the SERPS. You can get there by Google sponsored ads – Adwords guarantee your visibility on the SERPS. But still the point is, you’ll pay.
Let’s consider three strategies for beating your competition relative to the search engine results.
DIRECT STRATEGY
Choose the same keywords that your competition is ranking for and go head to head. If they are doing pay-per-click, you do it too. In this scenario, you’ll end up spending a lot of money to achieve and maintain top SERPS positions. If your competition is ranking on good, high traffic terms, plan on spending time, money and resources to get to the same position it may have taken them years to achieve. A direct strategy can get bloody. Ultimately, it is the most obvious choice, the least creative and the stupidest!
INDIRECT STRATEGY
Choose keywords that your competitors didn’t even think of! An indirect strategy is often associated with cross marketing and selling through an indirect channel. If you sell a service or product that your competitors don’t have, you channel your efforts through that market knowing there’s some pull-through relative to your other products and services. Very often you could be sucking business right out from under your competition’ s nose and they don’t even see it!
DIVISIONAL STRATEGY
Find out what keywords your competition is NOT ranking for in the same keyword set and go after them. The divisional strategy is the primary marketing method of niche marketers. Most business owners will equate the word “niche” with the word “small”. On the web, niche site owners are millionaires! Get rid of your pre-conceptions. The web is huge.
We use a two step process for choosing keywords. First, you have to take your direct competition into account. The second part is to look specifically at the search engine optimization parameters to determine which keywords make sense for you to specifically go after.
The leverage a website carries is in part determined by its page rank. Page rank is in large part determined by how many other sites on the web link to yours. Your exposure in the SERPS is in turn affected by your page rank. The reason you need to know this is if the top ten websites all out rank you in terms of page rank, you’re better off choosing another keyword.
Fundamental lesson: Small Fish eat smaller fish to grow bigger.
Do You Really Want Your Site on Page One of Google?
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:00 AM
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Do You Really Want Your Site on Page One of Google?
Do you really want your website on page one of Google for your
chosen keyword phrase(s)? What do you want your online marketing
campaign to accomplish for you?
I asked a potential new SEO Coaching client last week this first
question. From my end of the phone call, it sounded as if he
almost fell out of his chair!
I followed up by asking him if he could ever think of ANY reason
for his website pages NOT to be found on page 1 in the Google
SERPs (search engine results pages).
How ’bout you? Can you think of any reasons you’d NOT want
your pages to be found for your targeted keyword phrases on page
1?
Keep in mind, I’m talking about your chosen keyword search
phrases.
I can think of at least 3 reasons. Maybe you can come up with
some of your own.
Is there Commercial Intent?
Let’s say you have not just a page 1 Google result, but you’re
actually the first result. Here is an important question for you
to ask yourself.
What is the commercial intent of this keyword phrase? Do the
words contained in the keyword phrase give any indication of
someone getting ready to spend money on a product or service
like you offer?
For instance, compare these keyword phrases: Keyword Research,
Keyword Research Specialist and Keyword Research Consultant. The
latter 2 phrases give an indication of someone who is getting
ready to spend money.
You can also Google the Microsoft Commercial Intent Tool
(http://adlab.microsoft.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/) and
consider its results when evaluating your keyword search
phrase choices.
If you are targeting a keyword phrase that has questionable
commercial intention at best, is there any reason to really
be found on page 1? Wouldn’t it be better to target more
appropriate phrases instead?
If there’s no commercial intent, how does that help your online
marketing?
Can you see where I’m going?
How Much Traffic Really Matters
Now, I’m giving you a choice: you can have a first page result
(with commercial intent) and your position number is 4.
Your other choice is a different keyword search phrase with a
second page result, position number 12, also with commercial
intent.
So, the choice is obvious?
Well, I forgot to give you the rest of the details.
The first page choice has monthly search queries for its
phrase of 3,240.
The second page result choice has monthly search queries for
its phrase of 22,167.
Do you still believe that the best choice in this example is the
first page result?
According to numbers from Aaron Wall’s site, approximately 6%
of search users will click on that number 4 result in Google.
That’s 194 visitors in a month.
This is figuring average title and description tags of typical
online marketing ability to convert to a click. “Your mileage
may vary.”
And for that second choice, the second page result? Over 1%
should click on the search result, but let’s use just 1%.
That’s 222 visitors per month.
Last time I checked, 222 is more than 194, so the second page
result trumps the first page result, because the second page
result has much more traffic than can convert to a transaction.
How Many Google AdWords Ads Show for your Chosen Keyword?
If you don’t see many AdWords ads, this should be a warning!
One of 2 problems exist (or both):
1. There isn’t enough traffic for AdWords advertisers to target
the phrase.
2. There isn’t commercial viability for the phrase.
Either way, is a first page result going to help you? Probably
not.
The Value of a Committed Searcher
Want a recipe to waste your time (or your employees’)?
Get a first page result in Google for your keyword search phrase
and place your toll-free phone number in big numbers on the top
right of each of your Web pages.
People clicking the first result in the SERPs are often less
serious than those who go through the first few results or who
continue searching onto the second page.
There may be something to be said for avoiding people who almost
randomly click the first result and who may have impulse control
“issues”.
Now, if you have a large staff to answer your incoming phone
calls AND if your conversion rate from those calls is strong,
then the potential problem I described probably isn’t a problem
for your business.
On the other hand, if you are a solo professional, this strategy
can be hazardous!
How are you going to perform your paid work when you get
“Internet lookiloos” asking you questions they could get
answered, if they would simply read a few words on your
website?
Are these the best potential clients for your services or
products and the best use of your time?
A second page result could bring you more serious potential
customers, people who might be more likely to actually READ your
website content, understand your products or services better and
who might be more likely to convert to a transaction.
It’s sure something to think about. 
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against first page rankings for
your online marketing. I’m just for thinking a little further
down the road than JUST first page rankings.
Sitemaps and SEO
Creating an HTML sitemap and a XML sitemap for your website
could be the easiest thing you do to improve your exposure on
the web. For those of you who pay close attention to the search
engine optimization (SEO) of your site, this could be the one
thing that gets you onto the first page of Google’s results. For
those who don’t devote too much time on the SEO of their site -
this is a good place to start. By submitting a sitemap to
various search engines, you are telling them that you exist and
what pages your site has to offer the World Wide Web.
There are two types of sitemaps, HTML and XML. An HTML sitemap
provides a useful directory of all the pages that are in your
site. While XML sitemaps play an important role in helping the
search engine “crawl” the various pages of your site. This
Roadmap discusses the benefit of creating both an HTML sitemap
and XML sitemap, and how you can go about creating them using a
sitemap generator.
HTML Sitemaps
An HTML sitemap is a single HTML page that contains links to all
the pages of your website. Normally, this is accessible via a
link in your site footer, where it will be displayed on every
page. With large sites, it is easy to get lost and struggle to
find the page you are looking for. With a well organized HTML
sitemap, your site visitors will be able to use this to easily
find the page they are looking for.
From an SEO perspective, as the search engine’s robot (or
spider) crawls your site indexing pages, it may find some pages
on your site easier using this sitemap, rather than through the
general navigation. Therefore, sitemaps can benefit your site
visitors and even play a role in enhancing your exposure on the
web.
Take a look at WebAssist’s sitemap (http://www.webassist.com/
sitemap.php) to get an idea of what an HTML sitemap looks like.
Notice that each page on the WebAssist website contains a link
to this page in the footer.
XML Sitemaps
HTML sitemaps are designed to benefit your human site visitors,
whereas XML sitemaps are created specifically for the search
engines. All of the most popular search engines including
Google, Yahoo and Ask.com utilize XML sitemaps
(http://www.webassist.com/dreamweaver-extensions/surveyor/?WAAID=898)
as part of their process for indexing the pages of a website. A
good XML sitemap will tell the search engine what pages are in
your site, how often those pages are updated, and when they were
last modified. This way, the search engines know which pages to
revisit more regularly, and are likely to do a better job of
indexing them. Here’s an example of the XML you might include
in your XML sitemap:
Notice that for the index.htm page of this website, we have
provided details regarding the last modified date (
the frequency that this page is updated (
priority of this page in relation to the other pages of our site
(
possible to the search engine, they will be better equipped to
index your site, and give the correct pages the appropriate
attention.
TIP: Be honest about the information you provide in your
sitemap. If a search engine finds that you are not updating your
site as often as your sitemap suggests, they may come back less
often.
Creating both HTML and XML Sitemaps
Creating HTML sitemaps is as easy as creating a basic HTML page
that contains links to all the pages in your site. However, you
need to keep in mind that whenever you create new pages in your
site, you will want to add those links on the sitemap as
well.
Creating XML sitemaps manually can be quite a time consuming
process. However, there are many great sitemap generators out
there to help you automate this. If you Google “sitemap
generator” (http://www.webassist.com/dreamweaver-extensions/
surveyor/?WAAID=898) you will find that there are a number of
free and paid sitemap tools that you can use.
Here at WebAssist, we have developed Surveyor to help you create
both HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps. Surveyor is a Dreamweaver
extension that you can use as part of your website development.
For Dreamweaver users, this is the easiest and most efficient
way to create sitemaps. Surveyor includes multiple step-by-step
interfaces that guide you through creating your sitemap with all
the necessary details, and then submits your sitemap to the five
most popular search engines on the web. Surveyor even includes a
reminder tool that you can schedule to alert you when it is time
to submit an updated sitemap.
How Often Should I Submit My Sitemap?
You should be in the habit of submitting a sitemap to search
engines a number of times a year. This allows you to update the
search engine on any new pages in your site. If you create new
pages on a regular basis, you may want to submit your sitemap
more frequently.
Conclusion
Both HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps are a good step in the right
direction to improve your website’s exposure. You will most
likely find your search engine rankings climb after submitting a
sitemap for the first time. However, keep in mind that this is
only one part of search engine optimization, and there is a lot
more you can do to improve how search engines rank the pages on
your site and your website’s discoverability.
Website Traffic Generation Planning and Methodologies
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:23 AM
Friday, January 29, 2010
Website Traffic Generation Planning and Methodologies
Real Estate internet marketing is like any other kind of
marketing, you’re trying to reach a niche market and must
plan accordingly. You have to start by identifying your
target market in order to develop your message conveying
exactly the kind of high value business proposition which
your niche will respond to.
The first steps are to:
1) Identify your target market; start with geo targeting
and work with the demographics from there.
2) Decide how you want to be perceived by this target
market and decide how you’ll foster this perception.
3) Identify and refine your value proposition.
Once you’ve done this, the next step is to develop and
distribute your value proposition, making sure that your
value proposition is perceived by your target market
exactly as intended. In marketing, shaping consumer
perception isn’t just the most important thing: it’s
everything.
You have to start by positioning yourself to be perceived
in a specific way; from here, you’ll need to maintain,
develop, grow or alter this market position as you deem
necessary.
The real challenge is putting these principles into action:
Driving Traffic
There are some important principles of traffic generation
you need to understand in order to be successful at
bringing visitors into your website.
There are both principles and rules of traffic generation;
principles have to do with your approach to the task and
the rules are the practical nuts and bolts of driving
traffic. You need to have an understanding of the larger
picture before you can successfully put the practical
techniques into action.
What you’ll usually see a lot of is the techniques alone.
While this is still valuable information, you probably
won’t get far with these techniques if you aren’t versed in
the underlying principles of traffic generation.
These are the most important principles of traffic
generation:
* Traffic generation isn’t a black art – it’s something
which largely relies on common sense and methods which
can be replicated with consistent results.
* The reason people usually fail in their traffic
generation efforts is that they don’t truly commit to
making traffic generation techniques a fully integrated
part of their business strategy.
* You need to create a plan for driving traffic. Think of
it as a road map; follow it, but remember that it’s not
carved in stone. Your plan can and should evolve to
reflect your real life experience and results.
* Continually test and track the results of your traffic
generation efforts – and adjust your plan accordingly.
* Set goals for yourself and as you meet them, raise the
bar; traffic generation is a process, not a single
objective.
* Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see results
immediately.
* Remember that driving traffic begins with building your
site – Why is this? Because your site should be built
from the ground up with visitors in mind. Look at other
sites in your industry to gain an understanding of
patterns of visitor behavior.
See what these other sites are doing; don’t hesitate to
take a page from your competition’s playbook if you see
something which is working for them.
This is where things can become challenging; it’s something
like standing in Grand Central Station at rush hour with a
megaphone, trying to be heard above the noise of the crowd.
The goal here is to get the attention of your target
market and get them to come to your site.
All business is arbitrage. You’re taking something which is
cheap (to you, at least) and exchanging it for something of
higher value – buy low, sell high.
For example, SEO and other free traffic generation
strategies essentially trade your time for traffic which is
of higher value to you; this value may be measured directly
in monetary terms or in other means (for instance, as
signups to a list). The same is true of paid methods of
driving traffic like PPC advertising; you’re paying what
you deem to be a small amount for something else which you
see as more valuable.
If you’ve been reading carefully so far, you may have
noticed that I haven’t said a word about being indexed by
the search engines; that’s because this falls under the
heading of techniques, not the principles of traffic
generation. While you do of course want to be indexed, this
isn’t your primary objective – and it’s something which
will happen naturally as you work to drive traffic using
other strategies.
Don’t lose sleep over the search engine crawlers; they will
come sooner or later. Remember that even once your site is
indexed, it’s no guarantee that visitors will follow.
Focusing on being indexed is losing sight of the forest for
the trees. This will happen anyway as a side effect of
using other traffic generation methods. What you should be
focused on is getting targeted traffic to your site. For
instance, if you exchange links with another site (or even
a directory) relevant to your industry, the search engine
crawlers will follow these links when indexing this other
site and voila! Your site will be indexed.
What you need to do is to let the web know that your site
is there while simultaneously driving targeted traffic. The
best way to do so is to create links to your site from
other sites; not only do these result in your site being
indexed, but back links are great SEO and of course, they
can generate traffic directly through visitor clicks.
Here are a few things you can do to start driving traffic
almost immediately:
* Whenever you add new content to your site or blog,
submit this content to the social bookmarking sites
(Digg, Technorati, etc.). Make an effort to give your
posts attention-getting titles so that people will be
interested in reading your content.
* Post comments on blogs which have a similar audience to
the one you’re trying to reach. Don’t post comment spam;
write real, thoughtful comments and include a link back
to your own site.
* Start contributing to forums and message boards relevant
to your industry.
* Create an RSS feed for your site or blog and submit this
feed to directories.
* Write articles on your niche topic and submit them to
article directories.
* Join link exchanges
* Build a linkwheel; create blogs and pages on platforms
like HubPages, Squidoo, Facebook, etc. and link them to
each other in a web ring-style structure. This helps
the search engines identify the topic of your site and
will improve your page rank as well.
These techniques can start driving traffic to your site
very quickly; if you implement all of these methods and
follow the basic principles of traffic generation, you
really can’t fail at bringing in targeted traffic.
So why do so many people fail at traffic generation?
Because they don’t stick with it and follow through; far
too many website owners give up after a few days or a few
weeks, saying that it’s just too much work for too little
result – instead of analyzing their efforts and figuring
out what is and isn’t working for them.
So how about search engine optimization (SEO)? Here’s what
you really need to know about:
1) Focusing on search engines rather than your potential
customers is always a losing bet. If you’re putting all of
your energy towards keeping up with the search engines and
their constantly evolving algorithms, you’re losing sight
of your visitors.
2) Optimizing your site for very competitive (i.e. popular)
keywords means fighting an uphill battle with no guarantee
of success.
3) Generally speaking, you’ll do best with long tail
keywords; these require far less work in terms of
optimizing your content. Long tail keywords are also very
effective at attracting targeted traffic. The effort you
put into optimizing your content for long tail keywords
will bring you much better results than the same amount of
time and effort spent optimizing your site for popular
keywords.
4) Offsite optimization is just as important (if not more
so) than on site SEO. Back links can do wonders for your
traffic; but remember to keep all of your efforts focused
on visitors, not search engines whether you’re working on
on-site or offsite SEO.
5) Base your traffic generation strategy on visitors and
the search engines will follow.
6) As you develop and implement SEO techniques, always keep
in mind how people actually look for information online -
that’s why long tail keywords are so important. It’s a lot
easier to rank high in the search results for long tail
keywords. Being in the top 10 on Google for several long
tail keywords will bring you a lot more traffic than being
on the 10th page of results for a highly competitive
keyword (which is where you’ll start out if you’re very
lucky if you choose to go this route).
Remember that it’s a long way to the top; be patient and
enjoy the view on your way up. Stick with it and you’ll
eventually have more traffic than you know what to do with!
Website Traffic Generation Planning and Methodologies
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 1:51 PM
Friday, January 15, 2010
Website Traffic Generation Planning and Methodologies
By Duncan Wierman (c) 2009
Real Estate internet marketing is like any other kind of
marketing, you’re trying to reach a niche market and must
plan accordingly. You have to start by identifying your
target market in order to develop your message conveying
exactly the kind of high value business proposition which
your niche will respond to.
The first steps are to:
1) Identify your target market; start with geo targeting
and work with the demographics from there.
2) Decide how you want to be perceived by this target
market and decide how you’ll foster this perception.
3) Identify and refine your value proposition.
Once you’ve done this, the next step is to develop and
distribute your value proposition, making sure that your
value proposition is perceived by your target market
exactly as intended. In marketing, shaping consumer
perception isn’t just the most important thing: it’s
everything.
You have to start by positioning yourself to be perceived
in a specific way; from here, you’ll need to maintain,
develop, grow or alter this market position as you deem
necessary.
The real challenge is putting these principles into action:
Driving Traffic
There are some important principles of traffic generation
you need to understand in order to be successful at
bringing visitors into your website.
There are both principles and rules of traffic generation;
principles have to do with your approach to the task and
the rules are the practical nuts and bolts of driving
traffic. You need to have an understanding of the larger
picture before you can successfully put the practical
techniques into action.
What you’ll usually see a lot of is the techniques alone.
While this is still valuable information, you probably
won’t get far with these techniques if you aren’t versed in
the underlying principles of traffic generation.
These are the most important principles of traffic
generation:
* Traffic generation isn’t a black art – it’s something
which largely relies on common sense and methods which
can be replicated with consistent results.
* The reason people usually fail in their traffic
generation efforts is that they don’t truly commit to
making traffic generation techniques a fully integrated
part of their business strategy.
* You need to create a plan for driving traffic. Think of
it as a road map; follow it, but remember that it’s not
carved in stone. Your plan can and should evolve to
reflect your real life experience and results.
* Continually test and track the results of your traffic
generation efforts – and adjust your plan accordingly.
* Set goals for yourself and as you meet them, raise the
bar; traffic generation is a process, not a single
objective.
* Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see results
immediately.
* Remember that driving traffic begins with building your
site – Why is this? Because your site should be built
from the ground up with visitors in mind. Look at other
sites in your industry to gain an understanding of
patterns of visitor behavior.
See what these other sites are doing; don’t hesitate to
take a page from your competition’s playbook if you see
something which is working for them.
This is where things can become challenging; it’s something
like standing in Grand Central Station at rush hour with a
megaphone, trying to be heard above the noise of the crowd.
The goal here is to get the attention of your target
market and get them to come to your site.
All business is arbitrage. You’re taking something which is
cheap (to you, at least) and exchanging it for something of
higher value – buy low, sell high.
For example, SEO and other free traffic generation
strategies essentially trade your time for traffic which is
of higher value to you; this value may be measured directly
in monetary terms or in other means (for instance, as
signups to a list). The same is true of paid methods of
driving traffic like PPC advertising; you’re paying what
you deem to be a small amount for something else which you
see as more valuable.
If you’ve been reading carefully so far, you may have
noticed that I haven’t said a word about being indexed by
the search engines; that’s because this falls under the
heading of techniques, not the principles of traffic
generation. While you do of course want to be indexed, this
isn’t your primary objective – and it’s something which
will happen naturally as you work to drive traffic using
other strategies.
Don’t lose sleep over the search engine crawlers; they will
come sooner or later. Remember that even once your site is
indexed, it’s no guarantee that visitors will follow.
Focusing on being indexed is losing sight of the forest for
the trees. This will happen anyway as a side effect of
using other traffic generation methods. What you should be
focused on is getting targeted traffic to your site. For
instance, if you exchange links with another site (or even
a directory) relevant to your industry, the search engine
crawlers will follow these links when indexing this other
site and voila! Your site will be indexed.
What you need to do is to let the web know that your site
is there while simultaneously driving targeted traffic. The
best way to do so is to create links to your site from
other sites; not only do these result in your site being
indexed, but back links are great SEO and of course, they
can generate traffic directly through visitor clicks.
Here are a few things you can do to start driving traffic
almost immediately:
* Whenever you add new content to your site or blog,
submit this content to the social bookmarking sites
(Digg, Technorati, etc.). Make an effort to give your
posts attention-getting titles so that people will be
interested in reading your content.
* Post comments on blogs which have a similar audience to
the one you’re trying to reach. Don’t post comment spam;
write real, thoughtful comments and include a link back
to your own site.
* Start contributing to forums and message boards relevant
to your industry.
* Create an RSS feed for your site or blog and submit this
feed to directories.
* Write articles on your niche topic and submit them to
article directories.
* Join link exchanges
* Build a linkwheel; create blogs and pages on platforms
like HubPages, Squidoo, Facebook, etc. and link them to
each other in a web ring-style structure. This helps
the search engines identify the topic of your site and
will improve your page rank as well.
These techniques can start driving traffic to your site
very quickly; if you implement all of these methods and
follow the basic principles of traffic generation, you
really can’t fail at bringing in targeted traffic.
So why do so many people fail at traffic generation?
Because they don’t stick with it and follow through; far
too many website owners give up after a few days or a few
weeks, saying that it’s just too much work for too little
result – instead of analyzing their efforts and figuring
out what is and isn’t working for them.
So how about search engine optimization (SEO)? Here’s what
you really need to know about:
1) Focusing on search engines rather than your potential
customers is always a losing bet. If you’re putting all of
your energy towards keeping up with the search engines and
their constantly evolving algorithms, you’re losing sight
of your visitors.
2) Optimizing your site for very competitive (i.e. popular)
keywords means fighting an uphill battle with no guarantee
of success.
3) Generally speaking, you’ll do best with long tail
keywords; these require far less work in terms of
optimizing your content. Long tail keywords are also very
effective at attracting targeted traffic. The effort you
put into optimizing your content for long tail keywords
will bring you much better results than the same amount of
time and effort spent optimizing your site for popular
keywords.
4) Offsite optimization is just as important (if not more
so) than on site SEO. Back links can do wonders for your
traffic; but remember to keep all of your efforts focused
on visitors, not search engines whether you’re working on
on-site or offsite SEO.
5) Base your traffic generation strategy on visitors and
the search engines will follow.
6) As you develop and implement SEO techniques, always keep
in mind how people actually look for information online -
that’s why long tail keywords are so important. It’s a lot
easier to rank high in the search results for long tail
keywords. Being in the top 10 on Google for several long
tail keywords will bring you a lot more traffic than being
on the 10th page of results for a highly competitive
keyword (which is where you’ll start out if you’re very
lucky if you choose to go this route).
Remember that it’s a long way to the top; be patient and
enjoy the view on your way up. Stick with it and you’ll
eventually have more traffic than you know what to do with!
10 Steps to Testing the Viability of Your Online Business
The economic recession is pushing more and more people to consider self-employment. Starting an online business is a very low-risk way to put your toe in the entrepreneurial pond because the start up costs are minimal, the overhead is low, and the returns can be high. Despite these benefits, however, an online business is just like any other and needs to be thoroughly researched before starting to determine if there’s a need in the marketplace and how viable the business idea is.
The Internet is rife with exorbitant claims of how much money can be made as an online entrepreneur and that you can be rolling in the dough by next week. Remember, most “overnight” successes are 1, 2, or more years in the making, and online businesses are no exception to this rule.
How do you determine if your online business idea will sink or swim? Here are 10 steps you can take to test your idea without breaking the bank:
1. Research:
Comprehensive research is always the first step for any business idea. Brainstorm a list of keywords someone might use to find the product/service that you’re offering, and then use a keyword tool finder to see how many searches have been done on these keywords. The keyword tool will also make suggestions of related keywords to try. Once you have a list of keywords, conduct searches (use quotation marks around your search term for stronger results) in Google, Yahoo, and MSN to see who else is out there. Evaluate the popularity of the sites you discover by checking out their Google Page Rank and Alexa ranking. Use the same keywords to see if articles have been written about your topic in the major article banks. You’ll uncover your competition in this research, as well as potential strategic alliances. Employ a powerful bookmark program to help you track your research results.
2. Monetize the idea:
After completing your research, have you discovered enough competitors in the marketplace who are making money from doing something similar? If so, how are they making money — is it from the sale of info products, consulting services, subscription to their site, advertising, etc? If you don’t see much competition, that usually means one of two things:
a. There’s not enough demand for the product/idea or
b. You’re ahead of the curve in seeing the profit potential.
Unfortunately, in most cases, that result means that there’s not enough demand for your idea in the way that it’s been presented.
3. The “so what” factor:
From your research you should be able to clarify what it is that you’re offering and what group of people need what you’re offering. In order to be successful, your offer must pass the “so what” factor in light of your competition. To take this test, you must successfully be able to answer the following question after telling someone what you do, “So what? How is that different from what x, y and z are offering?” You can answer these questions best if you review the benefits of what you’re offering (the What’s In It For Me) rather than just a listing of the features, and if you can speak from the heart about your idea. An online business will take time to manage and develop, so you want to settle on something that you love. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, you quickly become a prisoner in a prison of your own making.
4. Industry information:
Set up Google Alerts for your industry keywords and track them from info posted on websites, blogs, and newsgroups. Reviewing the alerts you receive over the next few weeks should help you expand your view of the problems/issues with your subject, help you see the “movers and shakers” in the industry, and help you discover other places (blogs, discussion forums, social networks) where your target market hangs out online.
5. Test the waters:
The easiest way to test your idea is by creating a blog. Buy a keyword-rich domain name for the blog and map your blog to that domain. Then begin to blog about your insights on your topic, or reprint articles others have written on your subject. The idea here is to begin to establish your online presence and your online brand.
6. Build a list:
Once you’ve got a blog set up, you need to begin to build your marketing list. The easiest way to do this is to create a free giveaway on your site (eBook, video, report, audio recording) and a form for the visitor to input his name and email address to receive your giveaway. Your privacy policy should be readily available to them and outline how you’ll use their info and what they can expect to receive from you. You’ll also need an email marketing service or shopping cart service to manage your list.
7. Crown yourself the expert:
The only way to become an expert in an area is to believe that you are one. By virtue of the research you’ve already conducted, you know more than a large percentage of your target market. Therefore, don’t hesitate to begin to refer to yourself as an expert in your industry
8. Drive traffic:
Once you build your blog, they (visitors) won’t come without some encouragement. Create profiles on prominent social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Start writing articles about your topic and submitting those to article directories. Discover if your target market hangs out on niche-specific social networking sites and start networking there. Interview experts in your industry and release the interviews as a podcast. Create a weekly email ewsletter to stay in touch with the prospects on your email list. Create powerful inbound links by getting your blog listed on various blog and website directories.
9. Implementation time:
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a successful online business. Allow at least three months to give your idea a test run and evaluate it after that time. Have you been able to build a list? Are you getting traffic to your site? Are you attracting the attention of others in your industry? If so, you’re ready to move to the next step.
10. Move forward:
If you determine that your idea is viable, what’s next? Creating info products or a membership site? What are your longer term goals to develop this idea into a business? The best way to harness all the info that you’ve collected thus far is to create a business plan. It doesn’t have to be complicated — it can be only one page, in fact. What you need to commit to paper is your offer, your target market, your ongoing goals for how to monetize the idea, and an outline of how you plan to grow the business over time.
It’s not too late to get your start in an online business. Don’t be distracted by the false promises of quick wealth overnight. Success takes time and planning, so invest some planning and research time into your business idea. That’s the strongest foundation you can create for yourself to become a successful online entrepreneur.
Link Web Services: http://www.LinkWebServices.com
Web University: http://WebUniversity.LinkWebServices.com
The Web Store: http://www.LinkWebServices.com/mm5/merchant.mvc
Need to increase website revenues this month? Affiliate programs have been a boon for the Web and a salvation for many Web-prenuers since the beginning of the commercial Internet. There are an endless number of ways to generate revenue from affiliate programs — and just as many sites and solutions to choose from. So finding a reputable and quality program that works within the scope of your business model is a serious challenge. Choose wisely and ’Net riches are yours. Choose poorly and you may be wasting your time, energy and resources. There are more fly-by-nights in this industry than anywhere else.
Website Services Magazine has put together the following list of 50 of the most popular affiliate industry sites on the ’Net — from directories to wildly popular individual programs. Research for this report is provided courtesy of Ranking.com — the Web’s largest provider of website popularity metrics
and detailed website information on over one million online destinations.
Link Web Services: http://www.LinkWebServices.com
Web University: http://WebUniversity.LinkWebServices.com
The Web Store: http://www.LinkWebServices.com/mm5/merchant.mvc
Your Website’s Missing Ingredient
“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 mo t 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 traffic 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 will never 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 opportunity, 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 never ran 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 offer 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 never 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 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 offer in a way that relates to the human elements that make your brand relevant.
By Michel Fortin
article writingThroughout my research, I’m always surprised when I stumble onto websites that are professionally designed and seem to offer great products and services, but lack or fail in certain important elements.
Elements that, with just a few short changes, can help multiply the results almost instantaneously.
Why You Should Use Article Directories to Promote Your Website
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 12:35 PM
Sunday, May 10, 2009
By Jay Gaulard
If you are online and are not already using article directories to promote your website, you are missing out on a free and highly effective marketing option. Article directories are great ways to draw traffic to your site without paying for advertising. However, to get real traffic to your site using an article directory, you must know how to use them correctly.
What Article Directories Are
By Nancy Fraser
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
Edward Lear must have had some precognition about what was in store for us all with the development of the internet when he wrote this nonsensical poem.
How Much Face-Time Does Your Website Need?
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 9:31 AM
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
By Jerry Bader
How much time does it take your website to deliver your marketing message? Assuming the site traffic you generate is the least bit interested in what you have to say, how much of what you’re saying do they remember, or more to the point, how much do they need to remember?
Have you ever thought about, or even considered, how much face-time your website needs to be effective? It is probably the last thing many business
Blog Flipping: 10 Important Factors When Selling Your Weblog Or Website
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:59 AM
Thursday, April 23, 2009
By Chuck Crawford
blog flippingThe market for blogs has exploded. Many companies do not want to invest the time in developing a blog in their respective niche, which has given rise to a whole new cottage industry, blog flipping.
Blog flipping is done in a few different ways. Some flippers buy an existing blog that has potential, but is not currently producing. They take that blog
6 Things You Can Do Today to Drive More Traffic to Your Website for Free
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:41 AM
Monday, April 6, 2009
By Ivana Katz (c) 2009
Website (and business) marketing is not a one off exercise. Whether you have a brand new website or one that you’ve had for a while, you need to continue promoting it in order to bring you more visitors.
You need to constantly work on it, fine-tune it, discard methods that are not working and implement new ones.
The following 6 methods are simple to implement and can be done for free
How to Get Massive Free Websíte Traffic
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 11:00 AM
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
By Willie Crawford (c) 2009
There is only one real secret to getting a lot of visitors to your website. That is merely figuring out where lots of your ideal visitors are, and standing in front of them.
When you think of it in those terms, it’s really simple.
There are also only three real ways to get in front of the traffic flow. You can
Do you have a plan? Most companies spend a considerable amount of time, energy, and money planning what to do and how to do it.
Let’s say you need a website, so you develop a plan, present it to a bunch of website designers, and get quotes or proposals. You’re not going to get caught with your pants down like the last time by some nerdy geek, you know the skinny kid with the scraggly beard, whose techno-babble gave you a headache, or the bizarre young lady dressed in gothic chic with the black lipstick and tattoo to match – yikes, no thanks, not this time, this time you got a plan.
Human Motivational Optimization
You read all the blogs on website design, you know all the ins-and-outs of
2009 Resolution — Give Your Site a 10-Point Legal Check-Up
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:27 AM
Monday, March 9, 2009
By Chip Cooper (c) 2009
It’s early in the year, and it’s time to fulfill your resolution to give your site a quick legal check-up.
Online businesses are now highly regulated, and there’s substantial liability if your site’s not legally compliant. In addition, your customers are becoming more Internet savvy, and a site that’s not legally compliant is not going to be trusted.
So, let’s get started.
Before Your Web Site Makeover Goes Live: A Checklist
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:16 AM
Sunday, March 8, 2009
By Marcia Yudkin (c) 2009
The web designer shows you her final version of your long-in-the- making revamped site. You clíck around and can hardly believe how gorgeous and rich it is.
“Love it! Launch it!”
Oops, not so fast. Too many times I’ve seen that sentiment lead to frantic scrambling, even to disaster. Before making your revamped site live, use
(When It Comes to Your Website)
By Ivana Katz (c) 2009
Imagine meeting someone new … they have a beautiful face, lovely hair, stunning smile, drop dead gorgeous body and are dressed in designer clothes. Naturally you are attracted to their striking appearance, so you start talking to them. After a few minutes you realize this person has no personality, only talks about himself/herself and has no interest in finding out about you. Any attempt on your part to speak gets shut down and if you do manage to ask a question their answer is usually “Yes, but … let’s get back to me”.
How long do you think you would stay and chat to this person? Do you think
How to Create a Bad Website and Frustrate Your Visitors
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 9:25 AM
Monday, March 2, 2009
By Jason OConnor (c) 2009
If you’re a sadistic kind of webmaster or website owner and have a burning desire to royally frustrate and anger your site visitors each and every time they visit your site, these three lists are just for you. If you want to have a terrible website that looks bad, works horribly and breaks fundamental marketing rules, read on.
First let me explain why there are three lists. One way to look at any website
Seven Words That Will Make Your Website Worth Viewing
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 2:46 PM
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
By Jerry Bader (c) 2009
Seven. It’s just a number like any other, but it does seem to come up on a fairly regular basis. There’s the Seven Wonders of the World, The Seven Deadly Sins, and the Seven Dwarfs: Happy, Sneezy, Sleepy, Bashful, Doc, Dopey, and my personal favorite, Grumpy.
Phone numbers are seven digits, and they say the optimum brand name should be no more than seven letters long. Seven it seems is a magical
The Three Key Ways to Make Your Website a Success
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 2:36 PM
Monday, February 23, 2009
Your company website can stand out and attract visitors in three simple ways. It must draw visitors in, keep visitors on the website long enough to understand what you can offer and keep visitors coming back for more.
If you feel that your current website is under-performing and the subject of online marketing brings you out in a cold sweat then check out our simple
24 Essential Pages to include on Your Website
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 2:25 PM
Sunday, February 22, 2009
By Ivana Katz (c) 2009
Wondering what pages to include on your website and why? Here is a list of important information that should be included on your site.
Before you start thinking about what to write, it is important that you create a plan, which outlines what each page will contain. That way you won’t repeat yourself or forget vital information. The most common pages on successful websites include:
1. Home Page (First Page)
How To Use Web Analytics To Grow Your Business
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:03 AM
Sunday, February 15, 2009
How To Use Web Analytics To Grow Your Business
By Mike Tekula (c) 2009
Got a website?
If you own a business, chances are you do. But don’t pat
yourself on the back too quickly.
By now it’s widely-accepted that if you have a business
card you should probably have a website. It doesn’t matter
what your company is selling – a website, however modest,
has become a standard.
Many companies make the mistake of spending money in areas where it’s not necessary. Take, for example, companies pumping marketing dollars into increasing traffic on the website. It’s great to get more traffíc, but that is just the first step. Now you need that traffic to do something.
Website Conversion Defined
The percentage of total visitors who come to the website, follow through after clicking on the company’s desired point of action (POA) and submit
You could run a web site on any topic at all, so how can you choose an appropriate niche?
Not all topics will be of interest to you; conversely, you’ll have certain skills, talents, or natural abilities in particular realms, or market spaces. I’d advise you, when you’re choosing a niche for your site, to choose one that you’re good at, or in which you have an interest. You’d be surprised by how many people decide to start an online career and set up a site in a sector in which they have no previous experience. In most cases, people see other sites that are obviously successful and want a piece of that success for themselves, but if you don’t have any experience in a given niche market, chances are you won’t make any money. You’ll have to endure a steep learning curve, and the
The Curse of the Abandoned Website and Ten Things You Can Do To Avoid It
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 9:08 AM
Friday, February 6, 2009
Ideas are one thing, putting them into action is another thing entirely.
You find out that many people come up with ideas for websites that they never get round to executing. Some never get as far as ordering a website hosting service, while others do substantially better by getting a website up but fall victim to one factor or the other and later abandon the same website that they have invested their money and efforts in. This is a very bad habit
How Link Pop Affects Your Website’s Page Rank
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 8:36 AM
Saturday, January 3, 2009
What is Link Pop?
Link popularity, sometimes referred to as “Link Pop,” plays a very important role in determining a website’s visibility among the top returned search results. Your site’s link pop will be determined by the quality, quantity, and relevance of the other websites that link to your page.
What is Page Rank?
“Page Rank,” sometimes abbreviated PR, was developed by Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Here is how Google describes the “Page Rank”
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