Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at
9:46 am
Some website owners are more frustrated about Google optimization than for other search engines. They feel it is harder to perform search engine optimization for Google.
Whether you are making direct sales from your website or sales lead generation (or both), optimizing for Google doesn’t need to be that hard.
In fact, in time you may find it easier to perform SEO for Google than for other search engines.
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Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at
2:00 pm
Social media optimization is a way for organizations and individuals to generate publicity through social networking tools like Twitter and LinkedIn, online communities like Facebook, and automated tools like TwitterFeed and Ping.fm. The term “social media optimization” was originally coined by SEO consultant extraordinaire, Rohit Bhargava, the senior vice president of Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence and author of the Influential Marketing Blog. (Bhargava’s work was so groundbreaking, Jeremiah Owyang, another social media optimization expert, even dovetailed a few of his own rules to the original work.)
Social media optimization is basically a way to promote your blog, website, or even your company’s brand, through social media, without being obnoxious or overtly commercial. Sure, you can blanket sites like Twitter with “Want to lose weight? Download my free report, ‘19 Ways to Lose Weight Fast’” repeatedly, or brag about your latest affiliate paycheck, but that’s not going to get you any followers. At least none worth talking to.
Bhargava terms these people”Twankers” (people who use Twitter for one-way broadcasts about their own greatness) and “Twidiots” (people who only tweet insignificant things like their latest press release or what they had for breakfast). If you’re just having one-way conversations and telling people about the minor, mundane details of your company, you’re not providing any value, and your SMO efforts will be wasted.
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Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at
8:27 am
With today’s website tracking software and services you can find out a lot about the people who visit your website. You can learn where they’re from, what kind of browser they’re using, how long they stayed on your site, and a whole lot more. But what all this high tech intelligence won’t tell you is what kind of people they are, and how likely they are to be transformed by your Web presentation from viewers to customers.
Your ability to convert website visitors into clients depends on your ability to find the soft underbelly of their subconscious desire. After all, if someone is happy with what they’ve already got, they don’t need you, but if they were truly one hundred percent happy, they wouldn’t bother coming to your website. Therefore every visitor that comes to your site is a potential client whether they know it or not.
The Setup’s The Thing
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Monday, February 1st, 2010 at
9:49 am
In this article I wanted to share with you what I have found from consulting with dozens of small business owners on Google Adwords.
During the last 6 years, we have consulted with small businesses routinely who have set up an Adwords campaign and have just about given up on this medium. Usually the complaints include things like:
- I receive lots of clicks (which costs tons of cash), with very little to show for it.
- I really have no clue what I am doing on Adwords – it is too complicated.
- I do not understand how to set up Analytics or conversion
- I have a good set of keywords in my campaigns, but I seem to get too many clicks, for no leads.
- I have set everything up, but I don’t see my ads anywhere.
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Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at
6:57 am
The concept of user experience, and the consideration of ideas that lend toward the optimization of that concept, have created a field of interest and study that is growing as a concrete and primary business model regarding the online world. The focus on user experience is defined through standards that involve multiple dynamics. A paramount is placed upon not only the user’s perception of a web site, but also the sites ability to efficiently serve the user’s needs while simultaneously reflecting the business operatives sought after by the owner of the site.
There are many standard sets, such as The Stanford Guidelines, which relate to the functional aspects of a web site, referring to credibility, updates, and other performance based ideals. However, evaluating and applying user experience principles involves a more complex and multifaceted mindset. When dealing with UX, (user experience) a web designer or programmer must incorporate concepts that exist independently, but also blend smoothly and work efficiently.
User Experience is about more than just building a website
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Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at
7:12 am
In SEO, link building is the practice of accumulating relevant links in order to build up site authority, and rank for certain keyword phrases on search engines. However, link building is often associated with questionable practices like link buying and link spamming. Too many businesses focus on buying sitewide static links, and building a specific number of links. Once they achieve that goal, they tend to forget about their link building efforts. What they have failed to discover is that a successful link building strategy is one that is natural, builds your web presence, and strengthens your brand.
In this day and age in the online world, there are a variety of effective ways to build your brand and links such as using video sharing websites, blogging, and participating in social media. The types of online brands with the most successful online strategies utilize all of these methods of brand building and link building. Sitewide links, or links that are placed on all pages of a website, have lost a lot of their value for the simple fact that they are unnatural. Sitewide links are the links in a template or sidebar under a section such as “friends,” “links,” or “resources.” Many websites get the majority of their inbound links from sitewide linking, but they must build a strong web presence first in order for those sitewide links to be credible and effective.
Tips for Building Your Web Presence
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Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at
12:30 pm
In our technologically expanding world, where the Internet is the most available form of media, Viral Marketing is an extremely effective form of advertising. Before the Web explosion, this form of advertising would have been referred to simply as “word of mouth” or getting your message out by having your customer base spread the word.
Why Use Viral Marketing?
There are several studies that state that if someone has a good experience, chances are they will tell a few close friends. However, with a bad experience people will repeat it to anyone who will listen. Since the pace of the Internet is so much faster than that of word of mouth, you will want to be careful with the messages you put out there. The message you put forth can spread, and spread quickly, whether that message is good or bad.
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Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at
8:05 am
I have to admit I’ve been slow to jump on board with the whole social marketing trend.
After so many years spent in marketing and frequently hearing about the “next big thing”, I’ve come to the decision that all these technologies are simply communication tools for building trusting relationships with prospective customers.
No one tool is going to make you a gazillion dollars.
But used with common sense and an understanding of where your customers hang out and what your customers are most wanting, I think social marketing technology is well worth learning to use.
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Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at
1:22 pm
Wake Up – Your Clients Are Looking for You!
If you’re going to use the power of the Internet to try to find clients, you have to first understand how prospective clients are going to find you. You need to drop your preconceived notions about how you see your business, and start thinking about how potential clients are going to see your business. To do that, you need to try to put yourself in their shoes.
Understanding Web Searches
Let’s suppose, for example, your business is centered around providing consulting to customers who need help with back pain in New York. When you sit down to start designing your web strategy, you might hire a copywriter to create content with the keywords, “back pain consultant,” or “pain coaching.” However, those terms won’t likely bring you much in the way of good, solid traffic from potential clients.
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Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at
3:22 am
If you want to learn how to make money online the right way, with no hype and no false promises, then you will have to make the effort to ignore all these seemingly unbelievable offers that are being made to you. If you have recently lost your job, then you are vulnerable, and prey to every shark in the internet waters – and there are lots of them.
I know what it is like because I was like you. I lost my job, and tried to make it online but found it very hard. I spent a lot of money trying to learn how to make money online: one lump sum of $6,500 to be taught what I now know was elementary stuff. I was taken for a ride, and when I eventually found out that the Corey Rudl that I paid for this was one of the most well respected internet millionaires online, I was disillusioned.
These guys have no shame. They are still at it. I have just been offered an unbelievable opportunity, only about 40 slots left, to learn how to make $300 a day that can expand to many times that. The guy selling his ideas that made him so much money is doing it because he wants to ‘give something back’. Why do I find it difficult to believe that?
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Monday, January 11th, 2010 at
4:58 am
Many people who are trying to dream up a domain name for their business discover just how common a unique idea might be. Welcome to the web! Trying to find a domain name that has not been taken is classic needle in a haystack. You can short-cut the process by doing your keyword research first.
If you know what search terms people are using to find your products and services you can back your way into a domain name that gets more credit in those searches. And that’s just the beginning of understanding how to take an idea online.
What I have also come to discover is that there is a proliferation of people out there with great ideas and many of them may even have an idea similar to yours. EXECUTION is what turns an idea into an enterprise. And that is what separates the men from the boys (and the girls from the women).
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