|
| Internet Marketing - How to Make it Work |
| 09 April 2007 |
Here are some top business ideas for all webmasters and bloggers:
People always seem to be looking for the latest business ideas: if you have a home based business you are especially prey to mounds of email, each one claiming to have found the best way to make money online. There is nothing wrong with being innovative and trying new methods to generate online earnings. The problem comes up when people, seeking new methods, forget to pay attention to the proven methods of making money online. What has worked in the past for successful webmasters is still working today, and will likely continue to work into the foreseeable future. There are four main areas a webmaster must focus on to be successful, regardless of the type of website you run or the product or service that you sell.
Conversions are critical. You can get a million visitors to your site, but that means nothing if none of them make a purchase at your site. Conversions are calculated as the percentage of people that make a purchase at your site, compared to the number of total visitors.
The higher your conversion rate, the less traffic that you need to your site. Many webmasters struggle with getting that all-important traffic to their site. So instead of exclusively chasing traffic, also work on increasing the amount of traffic that you can convert into sales. There are a number of ways that you can do this with your online business.
Many webmasters understand that having a compelling sales letter, or sales pitch, is crucial. If you do not have the best possible sales letter, then you are losing potential customers. If you do not feel comfortable writing your own sales letter, consider hiring a copywriter to do it for you. You could also ask the copywriter to develop a few sales letters for your business, and you can do a comparitive analysis to see which ones bring the best conversion results for your business.
You can also improve your conversion ratio by paying attention to the layout of your web pages. There are a lot of different opinions on the best layouts for selling your products or services. For me there are a couple of easy ways to determine web page layouts.
The first thing that I consider is what I like and dislike about other websites. Is it hard to find the product on the page? Is the price hidden? Is a description of the product easy to find? Is the ordering information easy to find?
The other factor that I look at is what successful webmasters before me have done with their layout. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here. Instead of spending weeks trying to develop my own perfect layout, I will start with a template similar to those that are known for making high conversions.
Linking For Traffic Now that we have covered conversions, we can talk about linking for traffic. While your conversions may be very good, they will never reach 100%. So what this means is that the more of that precious traffic you get (at whatever conversion rate you are getting) will result in more sales and more money. It is known that the more links you have to your website, the more traffic that you will get. The links to your site are critical in driving traffic.
First of all, people click those links. I value a link from a high traffic website as much or more than a link from a high PageRank site, because actual humans are likely to be clicking the link to my website. I also place a very high value on having articles published in ezines and newsletters, because it always results in a nice boost in my website's traffic. The amount of traffic that comes as a result of having an article published in an ezine or newsletter will of course vary depending on the number of subscribers on the list.
A certain percentage of readers will always click the links that I have in a webpage or an ezine. And a certain percentage of those who visit my website will convert to sales. Having my link appear in some ezines or newsletters can literally translate to thousands or tens of thousands of visitors to my website in a single day!
If you utilize article distributions, you can often get your articles published on a variety of websites and ezines. These articles will have your link in the author box, and you will also have the opportunity to discuss your web site and the products or services that you offer in your author box. This being said, the more effort you put into writing a good article and author box, the more likely you are to get some traffic as a result.
Linking Popularity Building links for search engine placement purposes is just as important as linking for traffic. The more relevant back links that you have coming into your site, the higher your website will rank in the major search engines for your keywords. Back links are one of the best ways that you can get your online business to rank near the top of the search engines for your niche.
Be sure to use an anchor text on those links that is the same or similar to the keywords that you are targeting. Also, try to get those back links from relevant sites as much as possible. By this, I mean try to get those links from sites and webpages that have something in common with your site. A link from a webpage about bird watching will have little in common with your website about automobiles.
To illustrate the importance of back links, look at Digg.com. They have a whopping 131,000 back links, which is why they are one of the most popular social book marking sites on the Internet.
Link Baiting Link baiting is a great way to get those important back links, both for traffic and for link popularity. But, what is link baiting? It is when you have something so interesting / amusing / informative / useful that people will want to link to you, without you asking them to do so. Having something on your site that people will blog about, tell their friends about, or to send emails to their contacts about, is what constitutes link baiting. Your bait is so powerful that the fish will basically jump into the boat, without you ever needing to ask!
What kind of things work as link bait? This will depend a lot on the audience that you are trying to reach. In the SEO world, good link bait is placing free webmaster tools on your site. This means that people will bookmark the site; refer to it on forums, and possibly blog about what they learned by using your free webmaster tools.
If you are able to grow a reputation among your niche market as an expert, people will cite you and your website because of the quality information that you offer. If you run a humor site, people will forward the URL to their friends and tell them to check out a certain page.
Link baiting is also why social bookmarking is exploding in popularity. If you have an article that gets onto the front page of simpy via link baiting, you will have an explosion in traffic. The same can be said for all of the major social bookmarking sites.
Link baiting is all about offering something unique that people will want to tell their friends about and that they will want to talk about. Spend some serious time thinking about what you can offer to your customer base that will result in successful link baiting for your website.
In Conclusion If you spend your time focusing on these four ways to make money with your online business, you are sure to be well ahead of most of your competitors. Optimize your site for conversions, build links for traffic, create links for popularity, and dangle some link bait for others to share, and you will find your customer base beginning to grow, and you will see your sales will start to improve.
by Trey PennewellLabels: internet marketing |
posted by Flora @7:27 PM
Stumble Me!
Buzz This!
|
|
|
|
| Mailing Lists Make you Money |
| 15 March 2007 |
How could I possibly be saying that The money is NOT in the list when you and I both know that since the dawn of Internet marketing this has been handed down to us constantly? We have been instucted by all the internet gurus that the money IS in the list. You have probably known for a long time that getting your own list is one of the best ways to generate revenue online. Well let me tell you... the money is NOT simply in the list. The money is about what you do with the list! But have you struggled with figuring out HOW you actually get your own profitable list? You can finally discover the EXACT steps you need to take! Michael Cheney, whose AdSense Videos launch made $250,260 a few months ago, is giving away EIGHT free videos on list building.In fact, you can get your hands on EIGHT free list building videos and win the full set of 42 videos;
Thousands of people have already watched the videos and discovered some of Michael's most potent list-building techniques that he shows you in his usual step-by-step style. You can also join them all in discussing list building techniques on the blog right now. You need to move quickly though as these videos are being taken offline very soon! You want to know how to get your own profitable list where you can hit 'Send' and get instant sales into your Inbox? Then you need to check out these free sample list building videos;Labels: internet marketing |
| posted by Flora @7:23 PM
Stumble Me!
Buzz This!
|
|
|
|
| Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing |
| 17 February 2007 |
Search engine optimization is a massive area for Internet marketing, usually if your website can not be found on the search engines your website is likely to receive little or no website traffic at all. Search engine optimisation is an extremely competitive market, where nearly any webmaster will do anything to try and get that top ranking. This article discusses the big don'ts of search engine optimisation practices:
1. Do not submit to Free for All (FFA) websites
2. Keep keyword density low
3. Do not optimise pages for a wide number of keywords
4. Duplicate website content
5. Hidden text
6. Infamous "click here" links
7. Automated link exchange networks
*Don't submit to Free for All (FFA) websites*
Many websites promise to provide a top 10 ranking for your website, in which this will actually have a negative effective to your position on the search engine ranking pages (SERPs) on the big three - Google, Yahoo and MSN. These are websites which promise you thousands of links to your website, and may get you to install some code on your website to display links. This method of search engine Optimisation is inadvisable and is strongly suggested that you stay away from these websites, it may also ban your website from the search engines if you signup.
*Keep the keyword density low Most webmasters are aware that keyword density plays a big part in search engine optimisation and usually over optimise their website. Search engines like websites which contain natural flowing text and the correct keyword density, rather than indexing a web page that consists ofkeywords concatenated together with commas. Google prefers a lower keyword density than its competitors, usually between 3% and 5%, whereas Yahoo prefers approximately a 7% keyword density on a webpage. Use the tools at Ranks.nl to help calculate the density of keywords on your website.
*Don't optimize pages for excessive keywords. Keep the pages on your website concise with a particular keyword or keyphrase. If your website is concise with a particular keyword then this will help increase your search engine ranking position within the big search engines. This should also be the same for outgoing links on your website, try and categories links on your website into specific categories. If your website contains varied keywords throughout, then the search engines will be confused on what to optimise your website for.
*Duplicate website content. You should not use duplicate content on your website, these pages will most likely not get indexed, or they will have no value within the search engines. Your website may also be flagged up as SPAM, and in some extremely cases could even be banned from the big three. A website which is banned from the search engines is worth nothing.
*Hidden text. This will most certainly get your website banned from the search engines. Hidden text is an unethical method of search engine optimisation and is strongly frowned-upon by the big three. Just take your time and write good quality text for your website - you will be
rewarded in the long run!
*Infamous "click here" links. The internal linking structure of a website plays a big part in search engine optimisation. Keywords which are used within internal links also increase your position within the search engine ranking pages. Many webmasters use the infamous "click here" links when usually referring to something within their text, this is a poor way of optimising a website for the search engines. Instead, you should rephrase your sentence to
include a link which contains keywords related to the webpage you are linking to; this is an easy and effective way for increasing search engine ranking positions.
*Automated link exchange networks. Many of these websites promise to provide thousands of incoming reciprocal links to your website through simply signing up to their service. This method of search engine optimisation is usually frowned-upon, as the links you will be receiving may have no quality value and will usually flag up your website within the search engines. I have seen many websites which signup and have got their website banned.
Link exchange networks which provide natural link exchange methods, such as Swift Media UK, are an advantage to your website, as you will receive one way text links to your website over a period of time through no effort at all.
Andy Mac Donald Labels: internet marketing, search engine optimisation |
| posted by Flora @6:03 PM
Stumble Me!
Buzz This!
|
|
|
|
|
|
