Ok You’ve Got Yourself a New Website, Now What?

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Ok You’ve Got Yourself a New Website, Now What?

Many businesses spend lots of money setting up a new website what with Domain Name Registration, Website Hosting and most importantly the Website Design; some customers can be out of pocket thousands of dollars.

The role of the website designer is to construct an eye catching and appealing website backed by good programming and W3C compliance. If your designer is any good, they would hopefully construct your site pages with Search Engine Optimisation in mind even in cases where it hasn’t been explicitly applied for. In other words instead of naming your Company Information page file as ‘about.htm’ being a little more creative with SEO in mind and name it ‘business_lawyers_sydney.htm’ for a Business Law Firm in Sydney, therefore capturing keywords in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS).

Anyway getting back to our topic, you have spent hours compiling information and images for your new site and your designer has pieced together the puzzle and you now have a brand new website online and raring to go…..now what!

Many businesses wrongly presume that once their website is online they can sit back and watch the dollars and clients roll in as they are now ‘online’. Well let me tell you it isn’t that simple (we all wish it was!), but the truth be told this world wide web of ours is truly that WORLD WIDE and with millions of websites all competing for your clients hard earned dollars you need to make sure your website is seen and visited by as many as possible.

Don’t panic, this task may be easier than it seems with only a few easy to apply changes to your current business practices you can make your site a popular spot for web surfers which will lead to future business prospects and customers and their all important dollar.

Domain Email

I am surprised by the number of businesses still using a hotmail, gmail or aol free email account for the main business email contact. You’ve paid for a new domain name and hosting for your business why not put it to good use and create a email address for that domain.

Plenty of my customers don’t want to part with their @free_email as ‘everyone knows my email address’. Well heres a tip, people are smart and if you tell them you have a new email address and only use that new email account to send emails etc, they will start using it to reply to your messages too. I’m not saying get rid of your @free_email account all together but to use your new domain email as the primary contact for all outgoing correspondence.

What’s the difference I hear you ask, well those people that don’t know about your website or maybe even your business, will have an easier time finding your site when your domain name appears after the @ symbol. You’ll be surprised the amount of times emails are received and the first thing someone wants to do is check out your site for more information, well here’s one way which will help.

Email Signatures

You know the ones, those easily programmed options in Email programs which add your name and phone number at the bottom of the page for every new, replied or forwarded email. Well how about adding your website URL Address to this signature as well, that way every email sent will be advertising your website address.

Email Blast

By now you would certainly have amassed a large contact list of customers and associates, so why not notify them of your new website and ask them to comment on its design and ease of use, you never know you may actually get some more business or sales just from this simple email.

Business Cards

You must hand out 100’s of these little cardboard cards every time you meet a new business associate or prospective client so why not add your website URL Address here as well. I can’t tell you the number of cards I have received which don’t feature the business website; it seems criminal that there is such an omission.

Signage

Be it moving or stationary, signage advertising your business is paramount to getting your name, brand or logo out into the public consciousness. So why not add your website to your current signage or even on the rear window of your car, truck or van and become a moving billboard.

Competitions

Think about running regular competitions on your website where visitors must find certain information contained ‘somewhere’ within your site. Using letter drops, print media or email blasts, ask your customers and associates to enter and forward the email onto their friends so they can enter as well and offer a prize worthy of peoples time while visiting your site.

For Example: Your site may be selling Ladies Fashions and the competition stipulates that visitors must find and name three brands of clothing available to enter the competition, thus ensuring those who visit will be aware of your product line and may even purchase someone if they like the range.

RSS Feeds

Are you prepared to write articles on your specialised service and products? Well if you answered yes then you should consider implementing an RSS Feed into your website. RSS or Really Simple Syndication allows you to publish relevant information to the WWW community. With dozens of News Aggregators around ready to pick up new feeds, your information and website URL will be published on numerous sites adding to its popularity with Search Engines and your customers.

News Updates

Websites can quickly become stale and tired when nothing changes, so along with your RSS Feeds why not establish a news information page with headlines on your home page to constantly update your customers with latest happenings.

Newsletters

You can create a simple HTML newsletter based on any Word Processing document which will look attractive to your customers and encourage them to click through to your website. You can easily paste this into an email editor and send to your customers and encourage them to forward or pass on the email to their contacts etc.

If you apply at least 1 of these rules you should be able to increase the popularity of your site almost immediately. Don’t forget that site promotion and popularity is an ongoing task to keep your website in your viewer’s consciousness, so if updating via a Newsletter works well, make a note to produce it monthly.

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Do It Yourself SEO: Ten Search Engine Optimization Tips (Part 1)

admin    SEO Marketing     Engine, Optimization, Part, Search, Tips, Yourself

Do It Yourself SEO: Ten Search Engine Optimization Tips (Part 1)

Using a professional search engine optimization service can sometimes be expensive. However, if your budget is tight and you have a basic understanding of web page construction it is possible to optimize your own website without hiring an SEO specialist. For those who would like to give it a try, here are ten “Do it yourself” search engine optimization tips:

1. Think about SEO right from the start

Many people plan, design and build their websites without giving any thought as to whether their site is search engine friendly or whether it will be capable of attracting traffic in organic search engine results. At the last minute, after most of the site has been built, they try to optimize their site, not realizing that this work should have done throughout the planning and building process.

It is far better to think about search engine optimization at the very beginning of the process. For example, if it is at all possible, choose a domain name that will allow you to include your most important keyword or search term in your URL. If you are selling bicycles then you would do well have to a domain name like www.xyzbicycles.com . And don’t stop with the domain name; include your keywords in your file names as well. For example, a sub-page of this hypothetical site might be www.xyzbicycles.com/road-bikes.html

2. Design your site with both search engines and users in mind

Your site should be easy for your human readers to understand, but it should also be easy for search engine robots as well. If you want to see what a search engine robot will “see” then view your site in a notepad document or use the html view of the popular web editing programs.

If you have used gif images to render your headlines or other important text, then this text will not be picked up by the search engine robots. In addition, if you have designed a site that is entirely in a flash format, you will not be providing the search engine spiders with much “food,” or searchable text.

Furthermore, if you have long strings of java script and complex style instructions in the head section of your html page it is better to put the java script in an external file and the style instructions in a separate CSS (cascading style sheet) file, in order to give prominence to the actual text of your web page.

3. Write individual title tags for each and every page of your website

From the standpoint of search engine optimization, the single most important sentence on any web page is the title tag. The title tag gives the search engine a good indication as to what your page is all about. Incorporate your main keywords or search phrases into your title tag, and keep them at the very front of the sentence. These keywords are more important than your company name (unless it is Coca Cola!). So our XYZ Bicycle Company might have a title tag that looks like this Bicycles: Racing Bikes, Mountain Bikes, Road Bikes, Bicycle Accessories from XYZ Bicycles.

The title tags of each of the sub-pages of the site should reflect the main content of those pages. Never use the same title tag for all the pages of the site.

4. Write a concise description tag for each of your web pages

Just as the title tag is the most important sentence or phrase on any page, the description tag is the most important paragraph on any page. Summarize the gist of your page in two or three pages, again incorporating the keywords and search phrases for which you think people will use when searching for your site. A description tag for the home page of the XYZ Bicycle Company could look like this: “The EXZ Bicycle Company manufactures mountain bikes, racing bicycles, road bikes and bicycle accessories. Our bicycles are distributed and sold around the world. “

5. Put your keywords into headers and headlines on your page

Your human readers and search engines alike need prominent headlines in order to understand what your page is all about. While a human reader only needs to see the headline in a large bold text, search engines distinguish the headlines, which they regard as important indicators of the page, by noting which phrases are encased in header tags such as , , , etc. H1 is considered most important and your first headline should be labeled with this tag. If the header tags make your copy look too big, then you can change the size of the headers by creating style instructions that will render the headlines into sizes that are consistent with the look and feel of your site.

In part two of this series I will give the remaining five tips for do-it-yourself search engine optimization.

Do it yourself Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Optimization With your Own Strategy

admin    SEO Marketing     Engine, Optimization, Search, Strategy, Yourself

Do it yourself Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Optimization With your Own Strategy

Do it yourself Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization and web design have become activities that are very popular and accessible to regular people. There is a lot of information available on the web for those eager to get their teeth into it. Basically, if you’ve got plenty of time on your hands and have a fairly good knowledge of how the Internet works, you could learn to do it all yourself. However, the learning process is a time consuming one and it would mean deterring yourself from day to day aspects of your business which require your attention.

There are millions of websites on the internet for different topics and it’s difficult to find one. The best way to finding desire site to using search engines, but the search engine may result more than 100000’s of websites. Websites with high ranking are listed in first few pages. Well, how would you make your website listed as high as possible in the result results?

In order to achieve this you need to work onSearch engine optimization. Search engine marketing is as complex as traditional marketing. It’s applied to a completely different medium, the online one. Even professional companies sometimes offer only some SEO services instead of the whole package.

We have gathered some important tips to make it ease and help you to understand the process involved.

Site Page Naming

Page names are important! Relevant pages should be named after their primary keyword phrase.

Like the directory structure, file names play an equally important role. All file names should contain primary keywords or keyword phrases.

The title tag of your page is the single most important factor to be considered when optimizing your web page for the search engines. It is because most engines & directories place a high level of importance on keywords that are found in your title tag.

Meta Tags

Meta elements provide information about a given webpage, most often to help search engines categorize them correctly, and are inserted into the HTML code in the format illustrated above, but are not visible to a user looking at the site.Meta tags are one of the most important elements of a web page when a search engine indexes it. This was originally created to help search engines find out important information about your page that they might have had difficulty determining otherwise. For Example, related keywords or a description of the page itself.

A search engine to display a short description of what your web page contains very often uses the description Meta tag. Some search engines look at the keywords entered into the keywords meta tag and will use this to display your page in the search results if it is one of the words used in the search criteria.

Web Page Copywriting

Like a Meta and Title tags, the content of your page is an important element in the search engine optimization process. The page copy being the actual, visible main content of the page should be presented and arranged in a logical and visually pleasing manner.

1. For the best results each page you submit should contain at least 200 words.

2. Include all keywords and arrange them in logical and readable manner.

3. More interlinking of keywords throughout the website.

Site Navigation

Is your site’s navigation search engine friendly? Search engines require simple text based navigation in order to correctly spider your website. Java Script based navigation only, results in an incomplete index of your website. Some important suggestions for site navigation:

1. Avoid using flash at main page.

2. Addition of keyword related text based navigation should be added to the bottom of all pages.

3. Using Sitemap

4. Avoid using image based navigation

Image ‘alt’ Attribute

Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.

1. Do not use more than 2-3 keywords per page

2. Describe the image and don’t just list the keywords.

Link Popularity

Link popularity is how many other websites are pointing to your website. If you have 199 Web pages pointing to your domain, then your link popularity is 199. Link popularity varies because each engine indexes the web differently. Ideally you would want a minimum of several hundred links per search engine, back to your website; but actual figures depend on the number of links held by your competition.

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How to Protect Yourself From Social Media Crimes

admin    Social Media     Crimes, From, Media, Protect, Social, Yourself

How to Protect Yourself From Social Media Crimes

Although the Internet has helped society progress in ways that were unimaginable before, it has also helped criminals find new ways to exploit innocent victims. Crimes like identity theft, online banking fraud, and cyber-blackmail put a new spin on age-old wrong-doings.

When it comes to privacy, there are tons of people online trying to take it away from you. Let’s make one fact very clear–privacy is extremely hard to protect online. If you don’t want something to be known, don’t put it online at all. Let’s say that again: DON’T PUT IT ONLINE AT ALL.

Some people think that posting photo albums, happy thoughts about their new puppy, and negative comments about their boss or neighbor are somehow private only for them to view. Wrong. As soon as it hits the Internet, humans, bots, and spiders alike will be reading and scanning your content, perhaps using it for less-than-noble intentions.

So, if it isn’t something you would say, show, or do outside your front door, it’s definitely not something you would want the entire planet to observe either.

This suggestion isn’t just to save you from mild embarrassment. People have been known to exploit what should have been your private affairs, engaging in blackmail or other types of fraud. This can occur even if you don’t post any private information.

Just having a social media account on a networking site like Facebook can lure you into a potentially harmful situation, as hackers have been known to send fake status updates to people, luring them in with fake messages that take advantage of information they post. They are enticed into clicking innocent-looking links which actually end up being malware or phishing attacks that can infiltrate users’ accounts without their consent.

You can prevent becoming a victim simply by avoiding communication with anyone other than legitimate, bonafide friends. Yes, your mother was right even before the invention of the Internet–do not talk to strangers.

If that seems to severe for you, then at least try to verify communication from new people. Avoiding scammers from Nigeria and the Ukraine is a given, but others may need a bit more investigation.

If a message looks like it is a cookie cutter, boilerplate script, delete it. Do not click on links unless you are absolutely sure of them. Check where the link goes before you open it. Do a little bit of research on the domain name to see if it is linked with any scams that have been previously reported by other would-be victims.

You may want to take this advice a step further by checking out any links even your good friends send you, as their accounts may have been compromised by an attack as well.

If, for example, your friend suddenly starts sending you emails to join some new website using a language they have never spoken before, chances are they are a victim of a social media crime. The best thing to do is delete the message immediately and warn them about their account being compromised by another means (i.e., telephone or in-person dialogue).

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10 Ways To Position Yourself As An Expert Using Social Media Marketing

admin    Social Media     Expert, Marketing, Media, Position, Social, Using, Ways, Yourself

10 Ways To Position Yourself As An Expert Using Social Media Marketing

Let’s start by answering a very simple question:

As a small businessperson, entrepreneur, or Internet marketer, why would you want to position yourself as an expert?

The answer is very simple. Everybody trusts an expert. And, as every salesperson will tell you, individuals want to do business with people they know, like, and trust.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a doctor, lawyer, accountant, auto mechanic, business owner, or consultant. Being seen as an expert in your niche will help your business and your career.

I have found that the best way to brand yourself as an expert is by using a 10-step strategy that leverages Social Media. This includes LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs.

The prerequisite to using this technique, of course, is to first become an expert in your field, like internet network marketing. This can be done through education (by getting a degree or getting certified), through experience, or by doing research.

Having a degree or certification is the most powerful approbation you can present to the world. (Just think of how many doctors sell health advice in books and newsletters.) But your personal experience and any studying you’ve done on your own is also effective in positioning you as an expert — sometimes more so. Have you gone through bankruptcy? You’re an expert in that field. Have you dedicated your off hours to learning search engine optimization? You’re an expert.

However you “become” an expert, it gives you with the necessary proof to position yourself as such to your potential customers. And once you have this proof, the fun begins. Because the quickest and easiest way to build your reputation is by using the power of the Internet and social networking. Connections can be made instantly and thousands of people can be reached at one time.

Here’s the 10-step process:

Step 1. Determine how you are going to brand yourself or your company. How do you want people to see or perceive you?

Step 2. Create a profile that will match your brand. It can include your degrees or certifications, your experience, your knowledge, and any material you’ve written or created.

Step 3. Create accounts at all of the major sites where you can brand yourself — LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, SelfGrowth, and Squidoo. Then post consistent information on each of these sites with proof of your expertise.

Step 4. Get your knowledge out there by participating online. Many social media websites — including LinkedIn and Facebook — provide a place for you to answer questions posted by other users. All you need to do is review the questions, post a detailed, informed, and succinct answer, and include a way for people to contact you.

Step 5. Get published on the Internet. The easiest and fastest way to get published is by creating a blog. There are many free tools out there for blogging, including Wordpress and Blogger. The more quality information you publish in your area of expertise, the more you are perceived as an expert.

Step 6. To increase the impact of your social media presence, interlink between the social media sites and have them all crosslink to your website or blog. For example, have LinkedIn link to your blog, have Facebook link to your blog, and have your blog link back to LinkedIn and Facebook.

Step 7. Develop a strategy for enhancing your credibility with simple, informational videos highlighting your area of expertise. They can be as short as 3-4 minutes. Record them with a flip camera or a video cam on your computer and upload them to YouTube.

Step 8. Leverage the power of these sites for search engine optimization. If you follow the steps above, you’ll find that your name will come up high in the search engines. Google loves social media websites.

Step 9. Be active on these sites. You need to become part of the community. Social media websites are not just places to post information and broadcast your ideas. They are designed to be interactive. The more you interact, the more people will get to know, like, and trust you — and respect you as an expert.

Step 10. Finally, become a voice of your industry. You can do this by researching relevant news stories and reporting on them to your followers. You will soon be recognized as a source of great information in your area of expertise.

As you go through each of the above steps, your reputation as an expert will grow exponentially, especially in your particular niche. And as I said at the beginning of this article, that will lead to trust… which will lead to more business for you.

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Find yourself in High Search Engine Ranking SEO Marketing by Learning Its Secrets

admin    SEO Marketing     Engine, Find, High, Learning, Marketing, Ranking, Search, Secrets, Yourself

Find yourself in High Search Engine Ranking SEO Marketing by Learning Its Secrets

Search engine rankings are an important factor to consider when you have a website that needs more traffic. If your website doesn’t have a good position in the rankings then no-one will find it, so you need to make sure that your website is ranked highly enough to be seen. The other important quality to getting high traffic to your site is having a nice arsenal of links. The more links that you have to your site the more traffic you will get, but also, the more links to your site the more search engines like your site. Keeping a nice supply of links pointing at your site requires similar precautions and practices as getting high search engine listings. Visit now – Picmoney dot com

Although no SEO company can guarantee a high ranking for your site, here are some tips for raising your search engine ranking. Using these tips will not get you to the top unless your site is the best out there, but they will at least put you into the positioning that you truly deserve. After all, the internet is basically a free market. You will naturally flow into the place that you deserve and many search engines try to insure that you do not rise above or fall below this position. This is why they are so strict, and this is why you must keep yourself on good terms with them.

1) Content is an important factor in high search engine rankings. Make sure that you have plenty of content throughout your site with your target keywords in the articles. It’s also worth doing a search for websites similar to yours and taking a look at their articles for ideas. The more content you have the better. It is generally a good idea to have between three hundred and five hundred words per page, but more important than a quantity of content is the quality of the content that you are providing. You cannot just put out three hundred words of jargon and expect your visitors to find it interesting and stick around for the long haul.

2) Your website’s URL can help you rank higher with the search engines if it contains your keywords. However, don’t think that naming your site after your keywords will always help your rankings – you need to do more than just that.

3) Search terms should be written out in text, instead of graphics. If you do use pictures, be sure to give them alt tags. The alt tags in your pictures are almost as important as text. It’s also a good idea to put some of your key words in links to other pages. In the eyes of a search engine it is almost as good to have a link to a page full of the content that the visitor is looking for as it is to have the content that the visitor is looking for on your page. If a visitor is looking for something that you are linking to and he or she finds your page, they may look around your site on the way through.

4) The title of your page is very important, and making sure that you choose it wisely will make a big difference. Terms such ‘free article on safe children’s toys’, or ‘contact the children’s toy expert today’ are good to use as titles, for example – they would get you a high ranking. The title area is the most important place to include your keyword phrases, so make sure that you put them all in.

5) The navigation menu that appears on each page of your website should include your page’s title.

6) Don’t just use the most popular keyword phrases – the market is so competitive that you should be sure to include some niche keywords too.

7) Make sure that you don’t have a lot of irrelevant links on your site. The more closely related to your site your links are, the better your chances of being ranked in a higher position.

You need to periodically update the content of your website, even if it’s only a slight change, as websites like sites that are kept updated.

9) You need to consider the fact most search engines don’t like automatic submissions or multiple submissions – submit once, manually.

10) Always be on the look out for SEO news – staying up to date and using the latest techniques will help you stay one step ahead of your competition.

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New York Search Engine Optimization: Create a Brand Name for yourself

admin    SEO Marketing     Brand, Create, Engine, Name, Optimization, Search, York, Yourself

New York Search Engine Optimization: Create a Brand Name for yourself

Creating traffic on the information superhighways! The super speeds of the mechanisms involved in the process of selling products to the customers are seen to be believed. SEO as premier service providers are buzzing with ideas to assist your company in pulling visitors towards the websites. The amount of traffic generated decides the revenue base of a company with the help of a umber of services like SEO consulting, social media optimization, search engine marketing pay per click), behavioral targeting, Web analytics and development. New York search engine optimization as the service providers have growth of your company at their minds and they go to lengths to provide cutting edge techniques to the systems already used. Optimization services in New York ignite the hidden sparks within the business organizations by operating under certain methodologies.

Small is ‘big’. So it makes sense to include changes which make a big difference to the sites. The key here, however, is the repeated customer visit which is achieved only by properly studying what works in the first place. New York search engine optimization finds exactly what they are looking for the first time when they visit your website. Internet marketing resources like classifieds, e-marketing, linking, source coding ensure a higher ranking of the websites. This in turn, means a wide customer base which repeatedly visits your site. New York search engine optimization based on an organization’s business model and target market choose properly targeted keywords. This ensures hitting it at the right sight with the keywords being tested and optimized repeatedly. The ad campaigns are then created accordingly by the search engine professionals for cost-per-click rates.

Web development and design is next in line. In New York, search engine optimizers utilize a number of applications like Java script, component integration, forums, blogs, online catalogs etc. to make the webpage more accessible amongst the users. The whys and hows of web designing are important processes towards a webpage designing which communicates effectively. Apart from the visual aesthetics of a website, the communication bit must be created and optimized with care. New York search engine optimization as service providers, use information plus persuasion architecture for an effective communication technique which then prompts visitors to take the desired action. It is simple. For instance, if one has to target the customers using a particular cream one can’t assume the customers form a particular age group to be contacting them. That would be absurd. An SEO exactly knows that and makes the said site achieve number one ranking having in mind the right techniques for this purpose.

New York search engine optimization puts your business back on the radar of successful growth. In the midst of chatter of various websites, your site is sure to stand out with the assistance of search engine professionals. The SEOs generate traffic with the help of above mentioned visibility techniques. Thus the revenue generated helps the business to survive and maintain a steady posture in the market. Internet is a platform that assists in the growth of a company with a shot in the arm that it badly needs by means of search engine techniques. Decide now and be ahead in the race to reach the top slot online.

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Making Yourself More Trustworthy, Knowledgeable And Likeable With Your Online Presence

admin    Twitter Marketing     Knowledgeable, Likeable, Making, More, Online, Presence, Trustworthy, Yourself

Making Yourself More Trustworthy, Knowledgeable And Likeable With Your Online Presence

Online Trust is paramount to success if your primary customer base comes from doingbusiness online. Here are some tips from Hal Wilkerson on how to shore up and reinforce that trust.

1. Enhance your Amazon.com Online profile

I’ve referenced this before, but just having this history of books that you have read, reviews you’ve placed, things you’ve liked or disliked, just serves as one more reason for people to like you. Who knows, this simple act could help you make a connection over a common interest that someone that you may have never even considered otherwise.

2. Follow up on all FaceBook posts or @mentions on Twitter

If someone takes the time to mention you or post on your status or photo- take the time to respond to them- you’ll be amazed what kind of loyalty that will build. An offline example, and much more personal as well, is to go to Office Depot or Office Max, go to their printing section, and order some high-quality card stock stationary that has your name printed across the top of it. Then go to the post office and spend bucks on 100 ‘forever’ stamps. Put these in your desk drawer and when you make a meaningful connection, take 3 minutes, hand write a nice thank you, or note of encouragement on your stationary, and put it in the mail. It’s simple, yet highly effective. People respond to a personal touch. Don’t forsake your ‘real life’ image when you are building your ‘online’ one. I know this may be odd to have this here, but think about the last time you got a personal note in the mail. Isn’t it better getting something personal, rather than a bill or some marketing flyer in the mail? The same goes with FaceBook and Twitter… in addition to the personalized stationary. Make sure you get the nice cardstock stationary… don’t scrimp on this, because this card, and its quality, as well as the personal note from you reflects who you are.. If you have a card for your business, obviously, include this in the envelope.

3. Have fun, and don’t take yourself too seriously

Need I say more? Remember, the Internet is a place filled with people… and people like to have fun. One thing I try and do every morning is post a #turnitup video to my blog and link to it on Twitter. I make it an upbeat fun song that I find on YouTube. There are tons of good, quality videos on YouTube, and remember the more links in and out of your website, the higher page rank it will receive from almighty Google. Make sure your music video is in HD at a minimum… unless it’s just a really old school one that you want to put out there, like say some good ole’ Bon Jovi or maybe some Creedence Clearwater original concert footage.

4. Use an iPhone or Flip Video Recorder to record daily thoughts or tips about your business or subject matter of interest.

Some folks are more comfortable doing this than others. If you aren’t comfortable talking on camera, practice, practice, practice. The great thing about digital video is that it is so easy just to hit the delete button if you aren’t happy with it. Another great thing about digital video is that it is so, so, SO easy to distribute it today. YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video, FaceBook Video… there are literally countless outlets to put your videos out. I’d focus on the big ones though. YouTube is pretty much the accepted standard. Spend some time developing your YouTube ‘Channel’ so that all of your videos are in one place. YouTube is another great spot to let people see what you are all about and develop a history with your posts. By the way, I learned today that the second most popular search engine is now YouTube. If you aren’t on YouTube, you are missing a tremendous amount of traffic to your site.

I try and do a video update on a daily basis, and I typically do it while I’m driving. I don’t know why, I just find I’m able to talk better when I’m doing something else. I get a lot of traction on my website though, the visit time is pretty good and bounce rate is actually fairly low. A no-brainer about video on your site is that it translates to a longer visit time because people do like to watch video. And more time on your site equals more opportunities to pick up a lead. if what you are saying is helpful and relevant, then people will watch it.

6. Be honest, forthcoming and authentic in all articles, posts or anything that is attached to your name.

You are branding YOU. People buy from people they trust. Be trustworthy. Remember that it is of utmost importance to maintain your integrity in your online presence. Remember, regardless of the medium, the message that you put out must be the same. Internet Marketing has gotten somewhat of a bad name in it’s infancy because of so many ‘enhance this body part’ or ‘buy this blue pill’ or whatever ads. Those are just spammers who are trying to capitalize on unsuspecting, unaware consumers who may fail to recognize spam when they see it. I can’t emphasize enough… be honest, for surely you will be found out. Integrity is so critical in this business, especially given that it is a relatively unregulated industry at this time. The moment your integrity comes in to question is the moment you will begin losing business. Don’t break your audiences trust.

7. Build an email list

Create an ‘opt in’ form on your website that enables readers to input their email address and continue hearing from you. There are many mass mail service providers out there that provide a template for doing just this. The more people you have on your email list, the better. Mail Chimp, iContact and aWeber are just three great examples of services that are well worth their investment. Email marketing has one of the Highest ROI’s of any other medium on the Internet. The bigger your list, the bigger your influence, the better positioned you are to capitalize on opportunities from this. However… more than just having a list is building a relationship… which leads to number 8…

8. Create an email newsletter.

People read your stuff. And people want to be communicated with. They gave you their email address for a reason… now use it! Don’t make your newsletters overly long, don’t make them overly detailed. Just pick a few topics and write succinctly and be engaging. If you aren’t good at writing, try making a recording of what you say and then transcribe it. If that doesn’t work, try making a video and then do the same… and if that still doesn’t work, go on http://elance.com and hire someone to do it for you. The most important thing though is to begin communicating in a professional, sharp manner that will draw professional, sharp individuals to you. The higher the quality of your newsletter the higher the quality of your image, which in my business translates to a higher quality of lead.

OK, I’m on a roll here, lets make it 9…

9. Publish that newsletter regularly.

Now, just because you’ve got that list, and you’ve sent out an email, doesn’t mean you just do it once and forget about it. You need to stay engaged. Create a drip, drip, drip of data coming from you. If you want to set it and forget it, you can design a handful of emails and then have services like the mail companies I mentioned above deliver them automatically over time. Isn’t the Internet wonderful?

Alright, I might as well make it a nice even 10…

10. Respect and communicate with your email list with useful, relevant Information.

Just because you have a list of emails of people that are interested in you, doesn’t mean you get to send them annoying emails every day. Have you ever gotten on a list from someone like that… and after a while you were like SHEESH! UNSUBSCRIBE!! It’s happened to me occasionally. But companies that have understood the power of drip marketing that an email campaign can provide reap huge dividends. And you can do the same. However, it’s a fine balance. If you do it too much, your unsubscribe rate will increase, if you don’t do it enough, you may not be harvesting any leads from your list. I err on the side of less is more. But not too less.

Well, that’s my 8, er 10 ways to get people to know you, trust you and like you before they do business with you on the Internet. A lot of these rules apply to offline business too, but with the Internet, technology becomes your servant, and you will find yourself being 100% more effective utilizing some of the above tips in your business.

Hal Wilkerson of http://www.halwilkerson.com

1050 Bishop Street #185 Honolulu, HI, 96813

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Website Marketing, Seo, Search Engine Optimisation – Questions To Ask Yourself Before Starting

admin    Website Marketing     Before, Engine, Marketing, Optimisation, Questions, Search, Starting, Website, Yourself

Website Marketing, Seo, Search Engine Optimisation – Questions To Ask Yourself Before Starting

Website marketing, SEO, Search Engine optimisations are terms often used to describe the various ways to get your website to the top of the search engine rankings.  This can be an expensive and time consuming project, and before starting you need to ask yourself, what do I want to achieve.  There are no answers here, just questions posed.

Why do I want a website?

This is the first question you should ask yourself.  Yes the answer might be straight forward and obvious, but put it into words.  Many people just assume that they need a website and don’t think about the reasons why.  Here are some ideas for reasons (not all are good and sensible reasons) to kick start your thoughts.

… to sell products on line?
… to advertise my business, so people can see what I do and how to find me?
… to provide information to people so they are able to make better choices?
… because everyone has a website?
… because I think a website makes my business look professional.
… to make money from my website by selling advertising?
… it’s a cost effective advertising brochure for my business?

What is my business marketing strategy?

Forget about the website for a minute, how are you marketing your business as a whole?

Are you advertising locally or nationally or not at all?

Are you planning events to publicise your business?

Or are you just intending to get your website to the top of the search engine rankings and hope for the best.

It is important to determine this so that you can direct your time, effort and budget accordingly.  If you are promoting your business in non internet areas, then you are not dependant on search engine rankings at the start.

How important is my ranking in search engine results?

You can only answer this once you have determined the previous question.

If you are an internet business with no non-internet promotion activity then the search engine rankings are most important and you need to allocate your time and financial budget appropriately.

On the other hand if you are a local business regularly advertising in the press then the search engine rankings are less important to you and they can be improved over a longer period.

It can take time to achieve good results in the search engine rankings.  A focussed effort can achieve this within 6 months.

While I did achieve first page results for a website within one month, this was for a rare set of keywords due it being a unique business in the area.  The downside of this was that same rarity meant that less people were looking for the product, and it had to be backed up by locally advertising.

What is my budget?

Obviously how much can you afford to spend?

But also how much time do you have to invest?

Search Engine optimisation does cost money because it is a labour intensive activity if it is done well.  While there are companies and programs offering the automated scatter gun approach, this may not achieve as much as is expected and may even damage rankings in specific cases.

You can cut the costs of SEO by putting in the time yourself if you have it available.  It’s not difficult if you know where to target your activity.  (And I will be writing another article in the future on where to target this activity)

What Now

As I said at the beginning, this article is more about questions you should ask yourself.  Spend a little time planning out your campaign for your website, be clear about what you want to achieve and how.

For more information visit our website to see how we can help you with your website marketing questions

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Make Things Easier For Yourself – Get Network Marketing Software

admin    Website Marketing     Easier, Marketing, Network, Software., Things, Yourself

Make Things Easier For Yourself – Get Network Marketing Software

Network marketing is fast becoming a popular choice for augmenting one’s often meager income.  The primary draw for it is the fact that it takes little effort on the daily basis, meaning that it can very easily be run in parallel with conventional work.  Simply put, you keep your day job, and have an online marketing business running more or less automatically.  As if it was not already easy enough, independent software developers have released network marketing software programs.

Saying that network marketing is easy kind of undervalues just how much work you actually need to put into it.  It takes active effort to get it started, the amount of which varies on the business model that you are building the business on.  Once set up, if you put only a modicum of work into it then you can expect only small returns.  Successful network marketers put real thought, work, and science into it – even if it is only an hour or two every day.  The most successful network marketers use the software programs written expressly for their purposes to maximum effect.

What kinds of software are there for network marketing though?  Aside from web page development tools for marketing websites, and feed skimmers for automatic blog updates, what other computer programs are available for the budding and the veteran network marketers?

Well for those who do their business on popular social networking sites, there are programs that can automatically search for people who may be interested in connecting to you, based on given criteria.  There may even be auto-inviters, taking out most of the grunt work for network expansion.  The capabilities of such programs are strongly limited by public APIs (Application Programmer Interfaces) released by the social network owners, so a general statement cannot be made about them.

What may prove most useful to network marketers are statistics compilers.  These neat little programs can monitor the traffic on your website.  Depending on the power of the program you can get anything from just basic visitor counts to visits and percentages for specific sections of your website.  When coupled with smart marketing choices and innovative positive changes, you can expect to increase your profits from network marketing.

Network marketing software can make things so much easier (and profitable) for you as a network marketer.  If you want to make some serious money from network marketing, then do consider investing in such software programs.