Web Success Secret #2) Without Traffic- What’s the Point?

Part 1 of this series really got down and dirty about content.  Content’s main focus is twofold- make your visitors happy and make search engines happy.  This article is all about making you happy!  Think of this as your starter guide to increasing traffic and building a profitable business.

Traffic can be summed up in 2 words- free and paid.  I consider all PPC (pay-per-click), ezine advertising, offline advertising, and paid directory submissions a form of paying for your traffic.  I also consider any project that takes up your time to be paid advertising.  After all in the business world time is money.  Paid advertising is not bad.  It just means that you are paying to receive traffic.

Free traffic is harder to attract, but it costs you absolutely no money.  Almost all free traffic is the result of surfers finding your site on the search engines.  We talked about using content as your ultimate search engine ranking booster in the last article.

Here are several ways to increase traffic.  Some are paid advertising options and others are totally free.

- Write articles and submit them to several niche websites.  Manually submitting articles to many websites can take a long time.  I use a submission service to do all my hard work.

- Post in forums.  Many forums will not allow you to market your product or services.  That’s totally understandable.  What I recommend doing is finding a really great forum that you can participant in.  When people have questions, provide top notch and comprehensive answers.  No selling.  Almost all forums allow you to post your website in your sig file.  Take advantage of that.

- Submit each page of your website to all major search engines.  Also submit each page to all major search engines whenever you make a change on that page.  Be careful with this one.  Each engine has very specific directions and rules about submission rules.  Be sure you do not spam!  Submit pages according to each engine’s guidelines.  I also use a submission service that does this for me at no additional cost.

- Create joint ventures with non-competing websites.  Work with a company that compliments your product or service.  Also be sure the joint venture is a win-win-win for you, the other company and your customers.  Joint ventures can be a pain to set up and complete, but well worth it if done correctly.

- Look into ezine advertising, web advertising and/or PPC.  Each method takes an initial investment and some time to learn, but can bring back traffic.  Personally I do not prefer this method to increase traffic because it’s “iffy” at best.

- Print your website name on all business correspondences.  This is a simple task, but one that is simple to do.  Add it to your email sig line, forum sig lines, letterhead and business cards.

- Create an atmosphere of amazing customer service.  This always leads to referrals from current clients.  The more referrals the more traffic!

The bottom line is without traffic your site is floating in a sea of doom.  No one is seeing your content or services.  Traffic is the lifeline of any business, and the rule of thumb is more traffic means more income.

This brings me to my last and final point about traffic.  Once you develop a nice flow of visitors you need to know specifics.  Where did those visitors come from?  How did they find you?  What pages are the most popular on your site?  What page did they enter into your site?  What page did they leave your site?  What keywords did they use to find you?  You must know your visitor inside and out!

As I mentioned earlier, it is best to work smarter and not harder.  Traffic analysis and search engine submissions can be very time consuming, but your hosting company should be providing most of these services to you free of charge. There are a small few that do this, but it is well worth the investigation.

Previous parts:
4 Secrets to Turn Any Business Into a Successful Web Business – Part 1

Click Here And Learn The Best Traffic Techniques For Your Web Site…

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 web page. A keyword phrase is two or more words that best describe your web page. For example, if your web page is about ‘making wine,’ your best keyword phrase would be ‘wine making.’ You should use your keyword phrase a few times within your web page, 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 web page. In addition, use th 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 Web page

Another step to help make a website successful is to include META tags between the HEAD tags of your web page. META tags help the search engines to know what keywords are relevant to the web page. They are also used to tell the search engines what the web page is about. Many search engines will display this description within the search results.

Backgrounds and Text

It is always best to display a web page 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 web page. In addition, your visitors should be able to get to any web page within your website within four clicks.

Web page Layout

Always be consistent with your web page 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 web pages for errors. It is also very important that your webpage doesn’t have any broken images or links.

Important Web pages

When you launch your website, it is very important that you include the following web pages:

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 favourite 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 compliments 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 web page, 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.

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Many times, when you sign up for a free giveaway or purchase an item, you are taken to an OTO (One Time Offer) page, where you’ll be given the opportunity to purchase a “never to be seen again, one time offer,” which is a product that has been discounted for one time only during this one particular transaction. In this transaction scenario, you have two choices: either buy the product now at the special discounted price, or continue on without buying the product and lose access to the special pricing opportunity. However, you can usually buy the product later, but at a higher price.

Normally, these types of offers drive me crazy because there are usually 3-4 “one time offers” bundled together. When you decline one, another one pops up. Sometimes it feels as though the one time offers will never end! However, after watching several videos recently as veteran Internet marketers touted the benefits of the OTO, I wondered if I might be able to use these in my business without being slimy.

Here’s how I decided to implement this strategy:

1. Determine the offer. One “one time offer” is quite sufficient for my needs at this point, so I looked through my inventory of products and made a decision on what to offer as a one time unique deal.
2. Name the price. Your OTO needs to offer enough of a price reduction to make it truly attractive to your prospect. In many cases, that means a savings of 40-60% off of the regular pricing.
3. Outline the order of the offer. In many cases, the OTO is attached to another purchase. You’ll need to determine if your shopping cart can be configured to handle such an offer. In my case, the most natural place for this one time offer is on my ezine subscription thank you page. I have 2 thank you pages created when someone subscribes to my ezine. The first gives instructions on how to opt into the list. The second, called a “confirmation success page,” gives the visitor access to my free giveaway, or client attraction device, once the visitor has confirmed her email address and opted into my list. For simplicity, I decided to keep my confirmation success page intact, and tie the OTO to my opt-in thank you page.
4. Craft your copy. On your ezine thank you page, give your subscriber instructions on how to get on your list, and below, create your OTO that fully describes what you have available, why it’s a great deal, and the special price that you’re offering. I also use some OTO graphics that I purchased inexpensively to help me get the message across. Be sure that you give your prospect the option of opting out of this offer.
5. Test your conversions. You can test your conversions in many ways — by changing headlines, graphics, or even at the point you are making the offer. For me, the conversion calculation was pretty simple — was it making me sales? I don’t have the figures yet, as I’ve just started this process, but I’ll keep you updated on how I do.

How much money are you leaving on the table by not using one time offers? Give it a shot, and test to see if it increases your sales.

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Online Business Coach and Internet Marketing Strategist Gabor Olah helps baby boomers create profitable online businesses that they love. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to increase your visibility and get found online by claiming your FREE gift, $1K A Day Formula, at ==> $1Kadayformula.com

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Do you ever find yourself staring at a blank screen or a blank sheet of paper when you’re supposed to be writing articles for your blog, for your ezine or newsletter and for article submission so you can promote your books, products or services?

How would you like to find ways to tap into a limitless supply of article ideas?

Yes, our imaginations run thin every now and then, and no, it isn’t easy to come up with article ideas sometimes. But, I promise you that there are ways to tap into a limitless supply of article ideas. No matter what your expertise lies in, you can always generate new and interesting ideas for articles IF you follow these guidelines…

5 Ways to Never Run Out of Article Ideas  

1) Get inspiration from magazines covers.

Find a magazine that is as close as you can get to your niche and look at the titles on the magazine cover. Look at the titles that jump out at you and make you say, “That looks like it would be a good article–I want to read that!”

Many times you can bounce an article off of a title you see on a magazine cover. Can you convert that title to apply to something in your specific niche?

Now, notice I’m saying, “find a magazine that is somewhat in your niche.” Many of us have websites that are in niches that do not have their own magazines. For example, there is no magazine that I know of about Article Marketing.

But I sashay a short distance from my specific niche and look in related niches, such as Writing, Creativity, Productivity, and possibly even SEO. These are all issues that lie at the heart of article marketing, so they work as inspiration launching pads.

2) Don’t forget about the newbies.

When we’re writing on our area of expertise, sometimes we can overlook the obvious. We want to write helpful, educational articles, and our minds quite often go to topics that are more advanced.

Have you ever considered that someone reading your article might not even understand the basics of what you’re talking about?

I have to remind myself of this all the time–not everyone knows what article marketing is, and not everyone even knows the reasons why it’s a popular online marketing tool.

Could the same thing be true in your niche?

Think about it–although our articles are not sales oriented or promotional in any way, when we educate our readers on some aspect of our niche, we are increasing the likelihood that they will one day be our customers.

So, don’t forget about the newbies who are in your target market but aren’t knowledgeable about what you do. Try to think back to questions you had when you were first starting out. Think about what confused you. Think about the very basic things that you wish someone had explained to you before you became the expert.

3) Think about: “What are the 10 questions that my customers (or potential customers) most frequently ask me?”

Write those questions down and address each one of them in a separate article.

By completing this writing exercise, you’re letting your target market tell you what to write about. This makes perfect sense since you’re trying to appeal to them anyway.

4) Use template titles and fill in the blanks.

Here are some of mine:

• 10 Great Reasons Why ____
• How To ____ in 7 Easy Steps
• 3 Secret Tricks For _____
• How To Conquer ______
• The Top 10 Mistakes People Make When ____
• Reader Question: “[insert question here]“

You may notice that these titles are all List articles (any article that has a 1,2,3 etc list in it), How-To articles, and Question articles (articles that answer a question that is stated in the title).

These are my go-to article topic stimulators. Just seeing the format for the title gets the wheels of my brain moving (which helps creativity!)

Try filling in the blanks for the template titles listed above, and I bet you can come up with a compelling title to base a new article on.

5) Use Instant Article Writing Templates

Here are some of the article-writing templates that will help you…

• Myth Buster
• Top 10…
• How-To…
• Quiz
• Failure to Success
• Timeline
• 7 Things You Need
• What’s Hot, What’s Not
• 3 Stages
• Problem/Solution
• Differentiate Yourself – this template made PR Leads more than $10,000
• Plus many, many more

By following the five strategies above, you will:

Gain the confidence to write articles whenever you want

Banish writer’s block forever

Remove all the frustration out of writing articles

Develop ALL THE CONTENT you will ever need for your website, for your blog, for your newsletter and for article submission

So, are you ready to start writing your articles faster so you can get maximum exposure for your books, products and services?