Guide to Good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Getting your website listed in Search Engines (SE) can sometime be a monumental task in itself, here are my top ten tips to get you started.

1. Page Title

Forget using 'Welcome to my website' as your page title, if you really want to attract target media specify your keywords and list your product keywords separated by an | (hold Shift + backslash key) symbol (eg: Digital Cameras | Video Cameras) will boost the strength of your chosen keywords, in this case Digital and Video Cameras.

2. Page Filenames

Still naming your page filenames as products.htm or aboutus.php, why not add some weight to your website and help the SE distinguish from the multitude of pages with generic names and again utilise your keywords into your filenames (eg: paper_back_novels.htm) for a Book selling site with this link to the list of Paper Back Novels.

3. ALT Tags

Again keywords play a huge part in the design of your site and another area to include these words is in your image 'ALT" tags.

4. Header Tags

Getting back to your Page Title, there is no point in making the heading text "Welcome to my Website" especially if you are selling Garden Tools. Using , and tags to emphasize your Products and Services in order of importance, lets the SE's.

5. Bold Text

Got something to say?, say it in Bold Text, this tells the SE that this text is important and relates strongly to your content and keywords and should be taken notice of.

6. Keywords

Some say they aren't that important anymore to getting results in the SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages) but using them correctly can add to your sites overall effectiveness. Concentrate on 3 - 4 keyword phrases (eg: "custom website design" or "web site design" for web site designers) and make sure they are used in the first and last paragraphs of your home page content.

7. Google Toolbar

Not only a search tool the Google Toolbar displays each sites Page Rank according to Google on it popularity and web presence.

8. Alexa Toolbar

Download the Alexa Toolbar from Amazon and sign up to their affiliate program, the toolbar is an essential tool in gauging the popularity and hit results of how your website ranks in the www..

9. RSS Feeds

Want to increase traffic? well consider starting a RSS Feed on your website with important news items relating to your business and your chosen profession then link these to your articles.

10. Article Writing

Article writing is another way to cross promote your site with helpful information for others and with links back to your site.

In conclusion

There are many facets to Search Engine Optimisation of websites and these 10 tips are merely just a few and a good starting point to get your website promoted in the www

Read More

Understanding The Different Methods of Online Promotion

Popup advertising can be very useful depending on how they are used. Most of the internet marketing experts and companies use this advertising strategy for obtaining the best results. The primary purpose of this method is to pull up the web traffic to a particular promotional website. Apart from this, popup ads will also help the business to draw more email addresses, which will be important for generating good contact lists and customer data base. This will in return help the company for email advertisement campaign. Usually, this is considered as a form of online advertisement. These are some of the major reason why it used in the internet marketing. When popup advertising is used in online marketing, it will help the website to maximize the distribution of the product information to many people. The usage of this online marketing strategy can become useful, useless or even harmful to your website. Therefore, if you are planning to use this technique for your website, it is very important to understand the process thoroughly and then use it for obtaining effective results.

The main aim of the popup advertising is to attract more web traffic to a promotional website. This could be done when certain website will be viewed by the visitors. When a visitor will visit a website, a pop up window will be allowed to appear. These ads will convince the visitor for visiting certain website for getting some freebies. Moreover, they will also provide useful information for the visitors. When the visitor is bound to visit the website, he has to click on the ad. However, when you are using such popup ads, for your website, it is very important to make sure that you are using the right graphics and words. In some cases, the visitor will neglect the pop up ads if it is very bright or in striking color. Therefore, it is very important to make sure that the ad is created in the right way, which suits your business. In order to enhance the ad, you can also give it a blinking effect. The pop up ads should be simple in appearance yet attractive for the visitors. The first glace only should convenience the eye of the visitor.

Another great advantage of using popup advertising for web advertising is that, it will help the company to generate email addresses, which are very useful for list building. When you are using pop up ads, you will be able to use it either non-permissive or in opt-in way. In opt in process, the pop up window will appear when the user is about to go away the promotional website. In some times, it will also appear when the visitor is halfway by visiting it. These pop up ads will ask the user whether he or she needs to receive newsletters about the products or services they are promoting. Here the visitor has the power to either enter his email address or even to neglect it. However, this depends on the choice of the user. When you are surfing on the web, you will be able to find pop up windows that will even provide you information on wellness, health as well as the latest trends. These ads are more informational than promotional.

Non permissive is another option of generating the email addresses with the help of pop up ads. In this list building process, the pop up window will come out by offering downloadable useful applications and unbelievable freebies, as an online advertising process. This process is also some times known as banner ads

Read More

Understanding the Different Methods of Online Promotion

Did you realize there are only three types of online promotion?... This statement may seem odd and even untrue in your mind, but I am speaking in more general terms than you might be thinking.
Let me explain.
The three types of promotion are Junk, Active and Passive promotions.

JUNK PROMOTIONS ARE MONEY PITS
Junk promotions are those that seem to produce results, but by their very nature are really only illusionary promotions.

For example, let me begin with FFA (Free For All) pages. You might find yourself subscribing to a submission program that tricks you into believing you are submitting your links to tens of thousands search engines.

According to the Open Directory website, they have only approved 1705 search engines and directories for inclusion in their database (http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/).

I like using the DMOZ directory as an example because submitted links are tested by human beings with integrity, for the honesty used in site description. Search Engine Watch and other search watchers tend to show fewer than these 1705 engines, primarily because a lot of the engines provide very little value.
Yes, you can submit your URL to a FFA page, but FFA's usually only permit 100 or 1000 links on their page at any one time. So, if ten thousand people are submitting a link to an FFA page on a daily basis, then the average life of your link is between seven minutes and 144 minutes. I suspect the actual number of submitters is much higher and the results are much worse. Given that few people surf FFA pages, the chances of your submission being of any real value is practically nill!

Most of the people telling you that you can submit your site to tens of thousands of search engines are truly only submitting your site to FFA pages! Beware of the false promises.

Another junk promotion method is Safe Lists. A safe list is a mailing group that is signed up to be received by people who want to submit their own ads. Now, most safe lists have thousands of subscribers who are able to submit their ads daily or weekly. The person signed up to receive the list will receive anywhere from twenty to 140+ messages a day from the list. These messages will be received by people only interested in promoting their own thing who do not have the right motivation to open, let alone read Your Advertising. As a result, thousands of messages go out daily or weekly that will never be seen by anyone but the sender of the ad. Where is the value in that? There is none.

ACTIVE PROMOTIONS
Active promotions are the type that require you to go out on a daily basis or a weekly basis and put out your advertisements. With active promotions, you will either place your advertising or you will not sell your products or services. Your choice is simple --- work or starve.
Examples of active promotions include Pay Per Click Search Engines (PPCSE's), Direct Email, Ezine Advertising, Solo Ezine Ads, Newsletter Publishing, Ezine Ad Swaps, Classified Ads, Auctions, Site Sponsorship and Banner Ads.
Some people are able to utilize these methods very productively, while others are destined to drop their money into the bottomless pit of failed Internet promotions.

PASSIVE PROMOTIONS
Passive promotions are those promotions that can continue to provide results for you long after you have invested the work to make them available to the Internet community.
Examples of passive promotions include: Link Exchanges, Articles, Ebooks, Content Exchanges and Writing Testimonials for others.

Let's look at articles as a solid example of my point.
You are reading an article that I have written to promote my own business. This article is timeless and therefore could have been written five years ago and still have been as valuable as it is today.
Due to the fact that the article is timeless, it can and will be placed in newsletters/ezines and their accompanying online archives, on websites and in ebooks for many more years to come.
As a result, this article will continue to serve me well beyond the time in which I wrote it and submitted it to publishers and webmasters for public consumption and publication.
This is the best example I can give you of an excellent passive promotional method.

AVOID THE MONEY PITS
Many try and even fewer succeed to conquer the Internet and to produce their dreams of online wealth.
My hope is that you will be one of the people who conquer the challenges before you and to make a nice living while working online. It will take drive, determination, study plus trial and error, but you can make it work for you.
Please continue to educate yourself so that you can avoid the money pits - instead, strive to find the money barrels. It can be done. I am living proof.

Read More

How To Effective Email Marketing Campaigns

Are you interested in using email marketing to enhance the traffic and sales of your website? It can be a confusing process if you don't know where to start. You will need to establish your goals before you send the first email. What are you hoping to accomplish? Make sure these goals are clear and realistic. This will help you measure the success of the email marketing campaign. This is a great way to learn what works and what doesn't for future email marketing campaigns. While your particular goals will vary, some common ones include increasing sales, getting more traffic to the website; improve awareness of about your company and what products or services you offer, and building a solid relationship with your customers.

As you start measuring the success of your email marketing campaign, make sure you are comparing the data only against your own information not that of the industry. For example did your sales increase by 10% and traffic to your site increase by 25% after your email marketing campaign rather than discovering the rate that sales and traffic increased for the entire industry you are in.

Don't be discouraged if your first email marketing campaign doesn't do as well as you hoped, especially if you are a new business. It takes time to build trust with consumers. Make sure you use your original email address when you send out the emails. This will help it get past the spam filters.

Make sure you take the time to update your email listings. Remove any requests to opt out quickly and efficiently to respect the consumer's privacy. You will be wasting your time to email to incorrect addresses or those who don't want your materials. Never change the first part of a person's email address even if the mail is undeliverable. However it is a good idea to look for misspellings in the email service provider name such as Yahoo being Yaho or Hotmail being Hotmall.

Some businesses like to use an email marketing template. Don't get too comfortable with a successful marketing campaign though! This is because customers become bored easily with the same format. You need to keep their interest by mixing things up a bit in future email marketing campaigns. Opt in email marketing
software collects email addresses from your website. This is a great method that is simple for getting you a data base started. As your data base grows you can choose to send your future email marketing campaigns to everyone on the list or just a select target group based on their purchasing history.

You will need to design your email marketing campaign very well. It needs to be attractive to hold the attention of the consumer long enough for them to decide it is worth reading. You don't want your efforts to be mistaken for common spam or junk mail right? Make sure all the content is spelled correctly. Keep the
text short and to the point. Readers who open your email may choose to delete it or save it to read later if it looks to lengthy. You want them to open it, be captivated, and read it. The first sentences need to identify your company and what you are offering. Place the important information first. Then reader is likely to keep reading. Give them a sense of urgency for responding by clearing stating the day the promotional offers expire.

Email marketing is an effective tool if you take the time to use it properly. It is anticipated to be the most used method of advertising on the internet by 2008. While this means you will have lots of opportunity to market your business, it also means there is going to be a great deal of competition trying to get consumers to look at their business. You will have to be creative and work hard to develop effective email marketing campaigns that are attractive, informative, and encourage the consumer to take action. Len Hutton is an information publisher specialising in helping people start their own home based business.

Read More

3 Significant Ways in Which Any Online Business Can Expect To Benefit By Using This Particular Promotional Strategy

Viral marketing is a promotional strategy that has been in use for quite some time and has transitioned over onto the internet quite successfully. The strength behind this particular advertising technique is in its ability to help businesses spread their marketing message a whole lot faster and with less effort. In this way it helps to not only boost your exposure but also your ability to work much more efficiently as well!

Here are 3 significant ways in which any online business can expect to benefit by using this particular promotional strategy.

1. Time Efficient

Typically this advertising technique involves little more than sharing your marketing message with a relatively smaller crowd who then spread the word. Working online offers the advantage in many cases of automating your efforts even further resulting in greater savings of time! As any entrepreneur will tell you time is money and therefore a precious commodity that should be used wisely!

2. Cost Efficient

In most cases advertising in a viral manner online involves distributing free reports or leaving business links at social site, forums, bookmarking sites or even blogging. In every case there is little or no out of pocket expenses making this advertising technique very cost efficient!

3. Energy Efficient

By leveraging the efforts of others you are able to channel the energy you have saved into other areas of your business. As an entrepreneur this is extremely important since most functions and/or business tasks are left up to you to complete. Avoiding fatigue in this way helps you maintain a mental alertness that can be use in more constructive and creative ways. Your mistakes will be minimized and your ability to produce more and stay motivated will benefit as well!

Remember when fatigue does set in your ambition will naturally decrease and as mentioned above and you will be more prone to making mistakes. What happens here is that not only do your miscues create business inefficiencies but they also require more time and effort later on to fix!

The biggest advantage viral marketing offers a business or person is its ability to leverage the efforts of others to spread your marketing message. When this advertising technique is put to use online the benefits it offers magnify due to the automation and global audience the internet can supply! The single biggest advantage this promotional strategy offers is the increase efficiencies a business can experience as reviewed above. It therefore stands to reason that if you can increase efficiency you will also boost productivity thereby leading to greater sales and profits. With that said there seems to be little reason as to why you would not want to include this very effective promotional strategy into your online marketing mix!

Read More

Seven Ideas for the Market Strategy of Your Article Writing Business

Article writing is a great way to use writing marketing business that brings. By publishing articles on an article directory (such as articlecity.com) can expand its reputation and reach an audience much wider than you would on your own. If you intend to pursue a strategy of writing the article, there are certain things you can consider that could cause actual results to be better and more specific.

1. Rule Target directly to the market and prospects want to work.

People are seeking solutions to real problems. If you provide this information, they see you as a trusted resource. Do not make the mistake of providing information that is too general or is not the target market you want to attract. There are hundreds of thousands of items available. Make sure your target specifically, and valuable to your audience.

2. Provide valuable information.

Do not worry too much about giving away "trade secrets". Customers will still need your experience in person. If you are too secretive and protective, it is clear to readers that you are slow. What you end up with communication is that you can be generous attitudes. If you only give general information, there is no point in creating value for what they offer. Potential customers in search of more information about troubleshooting. There should be a resource for you.

3. Know and use the keywords.

Research using keywords. If your articles do not use relevant keywords in the title and the article itself, your item is not available. It is mostly a futile effort to publish it. You want to use keywords that your target audience uses to find solutions to their problems. You're better off with certain keywords rather than general.

4. Know what your goal is in your article writing strategy.

Do you attract new customers? Is it to be known as an expert? Does this mean that the commitments? Want website visits and purchases? Be clear about your goal before you start writing articles. A vague or nonexistent wrote an article aims to waste their time and energy. Use your resource box to help support its mission.

5. Write articles that your target in advance.

Keep this in mind, everything you write and every article that you are doing. You may be tempted to get off track and lose sight of goal. Stay focused. Address of the desired target market the information they need to demonstrate your expertise. If you want to be known for what you do, write about all aspects of this specialty.

6. Consider making a series of short articles in order to offer them for publication in a newspaper read by your audience.

These readers are your target market, and seek the solutions they propose. By making a series, to increase their knowledge of your target market. In fact, you become the resident expert. You are a known and trusted. After they got used to his abilities, which are likely to seek more information from you and the committee considered.

7. Look for other ways to use your items strategically.

Would it be useful to present to your local newspaper or an organization run ezine? How can you be proactive in getting your article published in your market will read what you wrote.

Do not write articles without writing an article strategy in mind. With intent, you will receive much better results from your efforts in writing. Know what you want to achieve, and write to achieve that goal. Article writing is a very effective marketing approach in writing if you do it strategically.

Seven Ideas for the Market Strategy of Your Article Writing Business

Read More

Six Part Business Marketing Poster Explained

Now, there are posters for advertising, and there are posters for specific business marketing. In this special guide, I will teach you about the parts of business marketing posters. These kinds of custom posters not only advertise things, but also have you and your firm included in its marketing message. Try to include all these details in your own business posters and you should have a great and robust poster that has all the important details.

1. The original poster title 
First we have the original poster title. Your full color custom posters should always have that original title that no one has seen. So try to avoid clich lines or derivative titles that people typically have already heard before.

For a really effective color poster, you should compose a title that you have thought of yourself that people can easily remember and understand. With that right original title, you will have a good chance of your posters easily getting more readers reading it.

2. The original attractive poster image 
Of course, business posters will also need an original and attractive poster image. All posters of course need this as this is the main element that both attracts readers and communicates the message theme properly. Keep in mind that you must use an ORIGINAL image here as well.

Do not get something that has been used by others in other color posters. It is best to compose something uniquely your own by taking your own photographs and creating your own graphics. This allows you to have fresh new look in your business posters, something people have not seen before yet. So make sure you create your own original attractive poster image for your poster printing.

3. The main advertising copy 
After the image, you should also have your main advertising content or copy. Pay particular attention to the tone and language of your posters. It must be able to engage your target readers and their specific demographics. You should fine tune it all the time so that people who read your posters will more easily relate to its contents, and hopefully more easily respond to it as well. Pay close attention to this of course, and try to test these content out before deployment.

4. The invitation to respond 
After the marketing copy, do not forget to add that invitation to respond. People need that extra encouragement before they actually buy something or actually act on something that they see. So make sure that you emphasize that invitation to respond in your color posters. Tell people to buy, visit, respond and do exactly what you need them to do. Believe me, this elicits more responses typically when compared to others that do not have that invitation.

5. Important response instructions 
Of course, do not forget those response instructions. Sometimes people fall off that wagon and do not respond to your posters simply because they do not know how to respond. By printing out response instructions easily visible in your posters, you can remedy this situation and keep people on the road to poster response.

6. Business and Contact information
 Lastly, do not forget your contact information. People will need it if they wish to respond to you and your posters directly. So add in the telephone numbers, emails website address as well as other data such as social networking handle. Of course, your logo and other business profile elements should also be here. Your posters should have a more personal face and easily accessible look when you do add these information.

Now you know all the essential parts of a business marketing poster. Use this as a guide for your own business posters. Good Luck!

Read More

Can Internet Marketing Be a Long Term Business?

Here is the basic honest truth: most of the people get into Internet Marketing because they are convinced it is an easy way to earn quick money. Their approach is to make a fast website, put up some advertising and a few affiliate links and then sit back and watch while they earn real cash. There are a large amount of individuals who do this and also earn lots of money on the internet. But what if you want more than some extra or even quick cash (quick cash, naturally being a misnomer)? Can Internet Marketing really be leveraged to produce a worthwhile and long term career?

The quick and dirty answer is that yes, you are able to make Internet Marketing your long term and sustainable career. You only need to take on the project properly. The procedures and programs you use to build something to earn fast money are not all that different than the methods and systems you will use to build long term profits. So what would you do if you need to develop a sustainable career on the internet?

It is very important that the first thing you do, in order to earn long term money online, is accept the fact that you are going to have to do real work. You will have to do actual and real work on a daily basis and you will have days when you feel fantastic about what you do and days when you wish you could find something else to take on. This causes it to be just about like every other occupation that is out there. If you want to produce lasting cash flow by working lots right now and not at all later on then you are going to be in for a rude awakening in a little while. So be ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

There are a few ventures that lend themselves much better to a long term career than others will. Affiliate marketing, to use one example, is a great task for someone who wants to earn money on a part time basis or to supplement your already existent income. Is it truly possible to earn a full time income in this manner? You could if you pick out only the right products and then work like crazy to promote them. A far better approach, nevertheless, is to create your own products or websites and then promote those. This gives you full control over the projects you take on and how you accomplish them. And you will end up more likely to stick with it in the long run. If you want to give a service on the web this works much the same way. Writers, for example, need to create websites for themselves and create portfolios that they can point to as examples of their work.

Finally, perhaps the most significant thing that you need to recognize is that, when you want to build a long term and reliable income on the internet, you need to truly dedicate yourself to your task. You might have fun and feel rewarded by your efforts but first you should tell yourself "yes, I really want to do this." Making a half hearted effort is not about to get you anywhere.

Read More