Five Fun Ideas That Increase Online Traffic

1. Using Hidden Links to increase subscribers or for a contest. Place a not so easy to find link in your copy and then ask people to find it. Give them a prize or freebie for finding it. Or you can give them the ebook after they find the link and click on it. By burring it inside the material, they will definitely need to read it carefully in order to find it.
2. Have unique information? Start a member-only web site or ezine. Tell subscribers what they will receive for joining. Offer free memberships in exchange for something you want.
3. Use viral marketing by increasing awareness about your product or service on discussion boards or blogs? Exchange your product or service with others who mentioned you on specific boards or blogs. You will need to track all these, so you will want to keep it simple.
4. Help others set up an instant article directory. Offer your articles to be posted on their web site. This works well for others who do not write. It also creates links and increases search engine status for both of you.
5. Create a book web site. You can do this in lieu of offering a free ebook. Market it as a free web book. The term is seldom used and builds curiosity. Design the web pages with a title page, table of contents, chapters, etc. Then place your ad or banner for your product or service on the top and bottom of every page.
By Catherine Franz

Success Is Simple: Five Steps to Online Success

The Internet can be a confusing place to do business. It often seems like there are a million 'gurus' on the Net, all speaking at the same time, and telling you how they have "the" road map to success.

The truth is ... there is no one map. There are many roads to the destination we call success. How long the trip will take depends a great deal on the choices you make.

They say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So here are five steps to get you started on your road to online success.

1. Sell What People Want To Buy.

For a thousand years (or more) small business has thrived on one motto. Find a need and fill it. The Internet is no different that Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart didn't sell what people want they would go out of business in short order.

The best way to find what people want is to ask them. Contact the people you know and ask them what their #1 problem is today. Then tally the results and look for a pattern. Once you find the pattern, find a product or service to meet that need and contact them again.

When you do, good things will begin to happen.

2. Follow Up With Everyone

The people who come to your website will fall into two broad groups. Those who buy and those who don't buy yet. Create a follow up system for the people who don't buy and you will make time your ally, not your enemy.

You don't have to be a great writer to do this. Just jot down the five top reasons people should buy your product and create a short message for each reason. Then put those in an autoresponder and offer people more information. Over time, many will buy your product.

It's equally important to follow up with those who do buy. Be sure to offer them products and services that compliment your own.

For example, it's only logical that someone who buys a car will eventually need their oil changed. In a like manner, people who buy your offer may want products or services that enhance your product's benefits.

3. Use A Simple Sales Site

There is a lot of discussion about how many words should be on your web site. While this debate will continue to rage on, the sites that sell the best seem to be one-page, very simple sales sites. After all, why use more words than necessary.

People are in a hurry today so give them what they want. Tell them clearly why they should buy your product, ask for the order and offer them more information if they choose not to buy now. Simple.

4. Use Automation To Your Advantage

'Automation' is simply a fancy term for letting a computer do the work you would normally do. Perhaps the best example is an autoresponder.

A sequential autoresponder is a program that sends emails out over a period of time. Rather than having to remember who should get which message when, the computer remembers and sends them for you. That is how you are going to follow up with the people are aren't quite ready to buy yet. And you'll use a separate sequence for your customers - to offer them complimentary products and services.

There are ways to process orders, send email follow ups, ask for referrals, place ads and more - all using the power of automation.

While it is important to maintain a personal touch, automating everyday tasks means you will be able to respond faster to inquires and have the time you need to follow up with clients and expand your business.

5. Give Yourself Time

Just as in any business, it takes time to succeed in an online business. Since time is going to march on anyway, why not make time your ally?

Using tools to automate your business will help you save time every day. Having clearly defined goals and objectives will help you have 'staying power' for the long haul.

Using time wisely and being committed to long term success are both vital to your online business.

Success is simple if you keep it simple. One key is to find people who are successful and learn from what they are doing.

When you are offering a popular product using a simple sales page website, are following up using automation to your advantage and are patient enough to let your business grow, you will find that the path to success is short indeed.


By Dr. Jeanette Cates

The Ultimate Search Engine Strategy

Search engine optimisation is big business. Ezines and websites litter the Internet with strategies to boost your search engine ranking. Search engine specialists charge large amounts of money to apply their strategies to your website and will go so far as to guarantee you top listings in the webs' major search engines.

And, in my opinion, they are all frauds.

Strategy is defined as a long-term plan. So, if these search engine specialists have the ideal strategy, why do the techniques and approach constantly change. Forgive me, but that isn't strategy. That is a last line of defence that is hastily patched up when the latest changes to the rules punch holes in it.

In "Alice through the Looking-Glass" the red queen said Alice had to run as fast as she could just to stay in one place. This impractical and short-sighted view is ludicrous, but is practiced by search engine optimists world-wide. These companies tweak and tweak and tweak, constantly changing their approach in a bid to keep those top spots. Google's latest dance showed that, at any point, your efforts can be reduced to nothing leaving you with no choice but to start again.

The reason for this rat race is that most, if not all, of these specialists neglect to tell us one simple fact.

Search engines are there for the searchers, not for the searched.

Google, Yahoo, MSN. These weren't set up to send you traffic. They were set up to help people find information on the terms they are searching for.

Search engines spend a fortune developing spidering techniques that will help them put the most useful and beneficial websites at the top of their listings only to forced into changing their approach when the search engine specialists hijack the listings.

Think I'm exaggerating? Are you really so arrogant that you believe your website should be in the top ten just because you spent the last twelve months building a thousand reciprocal links that no-one clicks on?

Ask yourself this question. If you do a search in Google, which website would you like to see at number one?

a) A website with genuinely useful and original information.

or

b) A website with perfectly optimised keyword density that doesn't answer your questions.

In truth, if you are a multi-million dollar company, then you need the search engine specialists, just so that you can keep up with all the other multi-million companies intent on damaging Search Engines for the rest of us. How else are you going to be able to afford that second porsche?

For the rest of you, give it up. Stop wasting your time tweaking your site EVERY time a new trick is circulated. Once the Search Engine cottons on to the trick, they will change their format and you'll be back to square one.

Reciprocal linking is a good case in point. Google ranked you high if you had plenty of sites pointing to you as this was a good indication of quality. Then it became a matter of, the more reciprocal links you had, the higher you ranked on Google. Everyone started linking with everyone. Software was released dedicated to helping you build page upon page of reciprocal links.

Somehow Google found out and started discounting reciprocal links. Months of work down the toilet? You'd better believe it.

Now people are starting from scratch.

"You link to my site A on your site B and I'll link to your site C on my site A."

How long before Google start dismissing links in their scoring process altogether?

And don't forget. Even if you were capable of following every scrap of advice perfectly, do you think you would be the only one? If a thousand people optimise their site perfectly, will they all get a top ten spot?

So here it is then. The ultimate search engine strategy that will never need to be changed, no matter how many times Google dances, Yahoo jiggles and MSN sits in the corner getting drunk.

Make sure your meta tags are properly formatted, contain ONLY the words pertinent to your content, and that your TITLE tag actually describes the page you've produced.

Ensure your homepage doesn't use frames and contains a brief description of what you do. It could just be a single line, but it needs to be on there.

Add, and keep adding, more and more original and useful content to your site. Don't plagiarise and don't copy and paste from other sites.

Only accept reciprocal links from sites you believe may be of interest to your regular users. Make sure you have at least one link to your website from a site that is already listed in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Make sure search engines can see all of your pages, by linking to them from the homepage. If you have a lot of pages, have a site map page linked to your homepage instead.

Make sure you have a homepage link on EVERY page. If your content is good and abundant, visitors will enter your site through deeper pages. If they like what they see, they will want to visit your homepage to see what else you do.

Stop trying to incorporate every search engine "strategy" you hear. Instead spend time focussing on step 3.

Google seems to reward sites that stick around, but its probably because time affords you more inbound links, more pages to spider and a greater pagerank. You might not get the top positions from following these steps, but you will get traffic from search engines. And you will have a site that people want to visit.

So, patience is needed. To build up a really good site with lots of decent content can take years.

If you don't have patience, try Pay-Per-Click instead.

By Dylan Campbell

Unlock Your Prospects Mind From The Inside

A prospect's mind is an intimate place where something I call The Inner Score Keeping System dwells.

Simply put, it's a fundamental model that you can use as a metaphor to help explain the way prospects govern their inner decision-making.

It's true that a potential buyer will profile several things in the background while evaluating an offer. Many little decisions are made along the way that lead up to the BIG yes or no final decision.

Some of these are subconscious thoughts while other times one may even notice their own mind chatter. However, in any case, a decision process is in action.

In the situation where a prospect is evaluating a sales offer, here is an overview of events going on deep inside the prospect's mind.

While responding to the offer, the prospect instinctively invokes a scoring system, which helps in evaluating the offer.

We ALL have this judgment system inside of us that we respond with.

This Inner Score Keeping System occurs mostly behind the scenes as we don't focus on the inner process. Although it is transparent to us, it's still there.

It deals with the balancing scale of acceptance and rejection. When we buy, it assists us in weighing our decisions based on emotions and logic.

When positive emotions are triggered in a sales offer, they theoretically score acceptance points, which are intended to collectively add-up over rejection. Rejection points always lean toward discouraging the buy.

Thus, in this virtual score-keeping setting, points equal positive or negative measurements of emotions (or logic) in proportion to the sales offer. This inner-judgment that we invisibly process, determines the outcome of the offers we evaluate.

We, as the prospective buyer, keep calculating this inner score in the background. The sales copy attempts to win us over by scoring maximum acceptance points, provoking the action to buy.

You know when you get a gut feeling 'to buy or not to buy', this is our inner score keeping system I am talking about. It regulates our buying behaviors and helps us make buying decisions.

Thus, when a prospect interfaces with a sales letter offer, it instinctively prompts this decision making process. It all comes down to a final response to the offer.

Ultimately, the prospect will either accept the offer to buy... or reject the offer and leave.

Hence: The Inner Score Keeping System.

The overall message I am suggesting here is to learn to think like a buyer if you want to get on the other side of the sale... the selling side.

Of course we all have plenty of buying experience. But, since we do no not usually think about the process when we buy, we miss the boat on knowing what actually makes us buy.

In other words, when we buy, we are not considering all of the elements that add up to the final buying decision. We just buy or pass on the offer.

However, there is much to be learned from this and thinking like a buyer is by far the best way to unlock your prospect's mind to make the sale!

By Michael Nicholas

Top 10 Reasons Why I Reject Article Submissions

Each week I receive dozens of article submissions to my websites from aspiring authors, website owners, and entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, I can only use a small fraction of the articles I receive because the writers are making one of the crucial mistakes listed below.

KEY POINT: When you submit articles to a newsletter/ezine publisher or a website owner, you have to remember that we aren't going to publish YOUR article for OUR customers and visitors unless it is a high quality article that gives something of value.

If you're writing articles like crazy, but getting very few of them actually published, then you might want to re-evaluate your approach. Are you making one of these crucial mistakes?

1. Poor Subject Matter:

If you're going to bother to write an article, write about something that we're interested in reading about. In other words, address a problem and provide a solution. Articles that approach an old problem in a new way or with a new twist work well too -- you don't have to necessarily discover a whole new problem that no one else has ever though of before (If you discover a whole new problem and have the solution you better be thinking of product creation not just an article!).

2. Write with personality:

No one likes to read text books. Put a little of your own personality into your writing and make it engaging and entertaining as well as informative. If you have a sense of humor, use it. You have a good chance of being published on one of my sites if you make me giggle... Belly laughs are nearly guaranteed to be published.

3. Write for your audience:

Don't send an article about the value of protein in the American diet to a Russian Political website or the publisher of a podiatry newsletter... They don't care.

4. Write a decent sized article:

I would much rather an article be a little bit too long than very short. Four hundred word articles just don't have enough meat in them. I'm not suggesting that you ramble, but you've got to give me some details if you want me to publish your piece.

5. Break up your article:

Don't write your article in three long paragraphs. Break it up into smaller paragraphs with a few single lines, bullets, etc. to make it easier and more enjoyable to read. Again -- no one likes to read text books.

6. Spell Check and Grammar:

I don't mind correcting a couple of mixed up letters now and then, but let's be reasonable -- spell check your articles. Grammar is another thing that bugs me. I know that I don't always get it perfect myself, but your grammar has to be reasonable. Some of the people sending me articles need to take a high school English class.

One last point in this category is word usage -- don't use words in your article unless you actually know what they mean. Using big words doesn't necessarily make you look smarter. Did you know that newspapers are aimed at a sixth grade reading level?

7. Stop sending sales letters:

No one will publish an article that reads like a sales letter... period.

8. Forget about affiliate links:

Use your head... why would anyone use your article if it's full of your affiliate links? Ever hear of the "Golden Rule?" This is kind of the "Golden Rule" of writing articles -- don't expect someone else to do something that you wouldn't do. Would you publish another writer's article if it were full of his affiliate links? I doubt it.

9. Create a reasonable resource box:

A resource box should tell me who you are, what you do, and how I can get in touch with you. It's not unlimited advertising space for you to describe every website you run and each product you sell. Don't bother sending an article where the resource box is half as long as the article itself. That "Golden Rule" thing applies to resource boxes too.

10. Only write about what you know.

Even if you're writing an opinion piece, get your facts straight. Don't write an article filled with advice that you have no business giving.

If you take nothing else away from this article, remember that good copy always answers "What's in it for me?" When you're writing articles to send to newsletter and website publishers, you have to answer that question on two fronts...

What's in it for the publisher? Why should they show your article to their customers and visitors? Does it give something of value?

-- AND --

What's in it for the people who will ultimately be reading your article when it's published?

After all, the idea is to provide some worthy content that compels readers to visit your site, subscribe to your newsletter, or buy your product. So next time you send an article, what's in it for me?

By Chris Yates

Ten Day Plan to Online Sales

Recently one of my students asked a great question: We have a product we want to sell online - and we need to make money fast. We already have a domain name. What should I do in the next 10 days?

Here are some ideas:

1. Take *good* photographs of your product. The picture will allow you to charge more, so get a great digital camera and take those pictures.

2. Write a good short sales letter that paints the story of the product - your reason behind creating it, benefits to the reader, vivid pictures of what it will mean to the buyer, etc.

3. Set up a paypal account and arrange to take payment.

4. Start lining up partners who will do an email for you. Find people who already send an email newsletter to your potential customer.

5. Plan to send sample products to the partners you want to work with. That will get their attention and you can seal the deal via email.

6. Set up your site on a template-driven site. It's something you can do yourself with no programming knowledge. You can choose a templates so you have no design costs. It generally includes hosting, so you have no additional hosting costs. You can upload your own photos.

7. You'll need a technical person on call in order to connect your web page and paypal - or at least someone who has a little backgroud in doing this. It's faster than doing it yourself.

8. Use this site for just this one project. Don't try to do too many things with it.

9. Look around for other sites with similiar ideas - selling the same type of product. Then handle yours approximately the same way.

10. Prepare an email for your partners to send to their lists and get it to them a few days before their newsletter goes out. That means you need to get this ready now!

That's a quick 10-day plan. Get started right away and plan to start seeing sales in a little over a week.

By Dr. Jeanette Cates

How Important are Back Links?

When setting up your website for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on Google there are several factors you need to look at in order to obtain a high rank on their search engine. Of course your content and meta tags must be inline with positive density percentages and reciprocal links. Google then takes your website and performs a mathematic equation and places a numeric value on your website depending on one of the most important features, reciprocal or back links.

A back link and reciprocal link are identical. They both say the same thing to the Google engine, that your site should be ranked higher in the order because other people find value in what your website has to offer, thus they provide a link to your site. In turn, you keep a closed loop by reciprocating the favor to the other website by extending the same courtesy of a back link. Thus creating a solid network connection. Google likes to see interconnectivity and will reward your website well for planning it this way.

There are drawbacks to the equation. As things change a website that you are affiliated with may drop a hyperlink or a page may get accidentally deleted. When the Google robot goes through your website and finds a dead link it notes that you aren't keeping good care of your website and punishes your web rank by reducing its point value. If you wish to know what your sites current point value is download The Google Toolbar and search for your website www.yourwebsitename.com in the box and perform a Google web search. Upon reading the full URL, Google will go directly to your site first thus pulling up your home page. There on the toolbar will be a page rank for your website between 1 and 10. 1 being a less visited and noted website and 10 a site that screams traffic 24/7. 

Some of the individuals you share reciprocal links with may in fact scan all their links for continuity, should they receive a bounce back for a broken link on your website you can be assured you will receive an email from them. Keeping your website in balance with other sites you share links with will keep the Google engine happy. If you go off and add a company that is not Google friendly, meaning they have no back links you may also lose points.

By Jakob Jelling

Personalized Search Versus Personal Choice

Personalized search is a hot topic especially since Yahoo! and Microsoft have announced they are aggressively developing this service. Most likely, people will be leery of personalized search if they think that this is just be another way for companies to market to them. Search engine research has shown that there are typically two types of searchers: information seekers and buyers.

Information Seekers

If personalized search is to work for the information seekers, then instead of lots of targeted marketing, the personalized search experience had better offer targeted information that the person can use. A better information search experience without having to bypass a slew of commercial sites would appeal to the information seeker.

Buyers

What if you already have the information you need or don't want any information, but just want to make an online purchase? For buyers, information-only sites are something to be by-passed in the SERP's. If personalized search can deliver the products and services the buyer wants, and not just what the marketers want to push before them, then buyers may find some value in personalized search.

Personal Choice

Personalized search must involve personal choice if it is to succeed. The Big Brother and privacy issues need to be held to a minimum. Personalized search needs to be an option that can easily be turned on and off as desired. Personalized search should not be equated with limited choices. The person needs to feel that they are in control and not the search engines. They also need to see real personal value in using this service.

What if a person is sometimes an information seeker and other times a buyer, or in the matter of seconds they switch hats? How will personalized search accommodate this person? Will the person have to toggle back and forth between a couple of different user profiles or click on and off a checkbox to switch between these two different forms of search? These are questions the SE's will have to address in personalization.

Google

Google has a beta personalized search engine at: http://labs.google.com/personalized/profile.html that is pretty interesting to test. You're told to click on Health, then the General Health checkbox and search for "stanford." When searching for the word "bob" instead of "stanford" at the Minimum Personalize setting the first three results are "Bob the Builder," "Bob Marley" and "Bob Dylan". The rest of this page has no health related information on it as well. But, when the slider is pulled to Maximum Personalize, "Dr. Bob" has the first two positions followed the other results mentioned above. Its obvious Google has a ways to go in developing this.

Personal Privacy

If personalized search is to succeed, then personal privacy issues need to be addressed and concerns held to a minimum. Will personalized search involve searching your hard drive to see what your interests are? Will your interests be stored in a cookie on your computer? What happens when multiple users share a computer - will someone else get hit with all sorts of Preparation H advertisements because of the hemorrhoid treatment searches you wanted to keep private? And will children be affected by adult personalized searches?

These are all questions that the SE's need to address so that people do not feel that their privacy is being violated or put at risk. The more control and choice the user has over personalized search the more likely it has in succeeding for the search engines.


By Kevin Kantola

Banners You Cant Ignore

Some "experts" say they don't exist. Apparently we have become so accustomed to seeing banners, we have learned to ignore them. We sub-consciously create little white blocks exactly 468x60 pixels in size that neatly fit over banners so that we no longer see them and NEVER click on them.

Of course these same experts will then tell you what, of course, you SHOULD be using. Their product.

Naturally some marketing techniques work better than others. But that doesn't mean the less effective approaches should be ignored. A balanced advertising campaign will spread itself across a variety of mediums.

But isn't it true that click-thru rates (CTR) on banners have dropped over the years?

This is difficult to ascertain and views on this are conflicting but, ultimately, CTR's on banners are irrelvant and the measure of success should not be based on this misleading statistic.

Let's say you get a 2% CTR on your banner. In other words, 2 out of every 100 views results in 2 mouse clicks.

Most would consider this to be a successful banner as most achieve considerably less than this. But how many of those "clickers" then take a genuine interest in the website they view?

Not many. Especially when you consider that the most effective banners are those that give nothing away and lure you in through sheer curiosity.

The banner has successfully achieved a good CTR, but for what purpose.

A banner with a high CTR does not automatically translate into success for your website.

The success of a banner should be judged by a different criteria. By one that cannot easily be measured.

Just for a moment, compare banners to billboard advertising.

How many times have you seen an interesting billboard and then communicated with it to learn more information.

Well, unless you're Steve Martin in LA Story, the answer is never.

How many times have you rung the phone number or written to the address printed on a billboard?

Once? Twice? Never?

In fact how many billboards do you see that actually provide you with a contact number and / or address so that you can find out more?

They exist, but are few and far between.

Does this mean that billboards are a monumental failure?

Not a bit of it. Billboard advertising is primarily about branding. About getting a product, a logo, a tv channel, a movie, absolutely anything into your brain. If you see it enough times, you will remember it.

You might not even know what it is you have seen, but you can be assured that when you see it on the supermarket shelf or in your TV guide, the billboard image will be recalled and a connection is made.

Branding isn't about CTR's, it is about visibility. It's about presence. If you're seen enough times, people will instinctively start to think that there must be something worth-while behind the advert.

At the very least, you project the image of success.

And this is important not just to draw new customers but also to keep your existing ones happy.

Think about all the billboards you see for the number one selling brand of cola. Are they looking for new business? Are they really trying to find that miniscule group of people that have yet to try their soft drink?

Not a bit of it. They are just reminding their millions of existing customers that they exist and to keep on buying their product.

So think of your banners, not as a draw to lure people to your webpage, but as an opportunity to tell the viewer that you're out there. Be sure to remember the following:

-- Colour scheme and logo. This should match your website exactly. Placed side by side, the connection between your banner and your website should be glaring.

-- Make sure the banner communicates or, at the very least, strongly hints what you are about. Luring people into clicking on your banner about traffic exchanges and then trying to sell them a car is not helpful.

-- When you create new banners, keep the style consistent. Viewers should be able to connect your banners together while still seeing something new.

Of coure if CTR's really matter to you, then this article cannot help you. Instead, you might like to try spending your hard-earned cash on one of those ebooks that teach you how to "hypnotise" your customers.

Although I can't speak for their quality. I've never brought a single one of their "mesmerising" products.

By Dylan Campbell

Whats The First Thing Your Prospects See When They Visit Your Website?

I just reviewed a new website and I'm in shock. Or, maybe, I'm just depressed about my failure to convince people to do what I tell them so they can make money.

I'm not talking about complicated marketing strategies. Most websites, marketing and the like, fail on the basic stuff.

For example, this webmaster wants to sell products. He wants to make money online. He's got a bunch of good products at great prices. I know this because he told me. No one else knows this after visiting his website. He's kept it a secret.

Let's go back to the basics and see if your website passes these simple tests ...

What is the purpose of your website? If your immediate answer is anything other than "to make sales," I hope you don't own a business website. Otherwise, let me pound this into your brain:

You are in business to make sales. That's where the money comes from.

When people visit your main page, what's the first thing they see? If all I see is a nice long message about what a great guy you are (who cares?) and how you want to run a good business (I hope so or you should not be in business) and if I have any questions, I can send you an email (I knew that anyway) and how you look forward to doing business with me (of course you do, that's why you have this website), what's the point?

I came to your website in response to an ad or a referral so I'm looking to buy something. Why are you wasting my time? I want you to sell me the product. Take my money.

Pick any large retailer that does big business on the Internet. What's on the front of their website? Pictures of stuff to buy. Links to buy more stuff. They want your money. They are relentlessly working to get it.

Go to my website for "Mining Gold" at: http://www.ipcgold.com/ad/100/CD3839 and read the first thing you see.

You can't miss it. I made it large - bold - and incredibly obvious. I make you an offer to invite you to do business with me. I lay out all the information in a carefully ordered flow.

No wasted words. No extraneous links. No stories about my family vacation. No comments on the World Cup. This is a site for business.

I'll have well over 200,000 unique visitors this month and I want to capture their attention immediately.

Recent stats show the average time spent viewing a web page was 52 seconds. But, how long do you spend viewing a web page when you either get bored or can't quickly find what you want?

You've taken your own small business idea and put it up on the web to make money. Don't be afraid to let people know you are running a business and don't be afraid to ask for their money.

If you can only remember one thing from this message, remember this:

If you're going to spend money to promote your website, you'd better make sure people know what to do when they arrive.

Yours in success,

By Shawn M. Casey

What's in a Name?

Behind every good web page are codes only the search engines read. These codes help the search engines match your page with requests from their searchers.

There are two types of codes - or "meta tags" - that you care about. One is keywords and the other is the description.

Keywords are words and phrases associated with your site. If you're selling a book on how to housebreak your dog, for example, your keywords might include "puppy, housebreaking, house break, paper train, dogs, puppies" and others.

There are several rules of thumb you want to follow when working with keywords:

1. List the words in the order of importance. Some search engines only take the first 10 words; others the first 50 words, etc. You can't have too many keywords, but it is important to list them in order.

2. Use multiple spellings of the word if searchers are likely to use different forms. For example, puppy is different from puppies in the eyes of a search engine. Likewise, housebreak and house break are different.

3. Use the plural. If someone looks for "dog" it will be found in the word "dogs." On the other hand, if they look for "dogs" it will not be found in "dog." Be safe - use plurals.

4. Use lower case letters. With only 1 or 2 exceptions search engines ignore capitalization. So if someone looks for "Dogs" they will find "dogs." On the other hand, if they look for "dogs" they may or may not find "Dogs" since the search engine might consider it a proper name.

5. Use the language of your customers. If you're a professional you might search for "canines" but most customers are more likely to look for "dog." So while you can include the more technical term, do so last in the list.

Your description is the other meta tag you want to write. Your description is what shows in the results of the search engine. It's generally 2-3 lines long.

What happens if you don't include a description? Often the search engine will make up its own description - taking the first several lines of your web page or the first few lines of code. Neither option is as attractive as the description you will write.

Remember that the purpose of the description is to make the site sound so attractive to your target audience that they want to click on your link in the search engine. So your best benefits and reasons why they want to visit your site should be in the description.

Finally, to really help the search engines find your site, use a descriptive title on each page. The title is what shows in the top bar of your browser. It's what is listed in Favorites when someone sets a favorite or bookmarks your site. So you want the title to tell people what they will find when they visit the page.

For every page in your site, you should have a unique title, keywords for that specific page, and a traffic-pulling description. Yes, it is time-consuming to do that, but it's worth the effort. You'll be more likely to lead searchers to your page when they can see what they want in your title, your keywords or your description.

By Dr. Jeanette Cates

Unique Selling Propositions - USPs

Got one? Two? Three?

If you have competitors, then you should have at least one Unique Selling Proposition (USP). The more REAL ones you have, the better - for your Branding, your business recognition, and your sales!

We all have competitors, and the more you have, the more important it is that you have a Unique Selling Proposition (at least one).

Allow me to explain. Let's use a recent example of a company that sells laser toner cartridges... Do you think they have competition online? You bet they do, another category that is swamped with resellers. Sound like yours?

The task of coming up with a USP can sometimes be tough. But every company needs this, it sets you apart from your competitors. Let me stress this again, it is one or more reasons why prospects should work with you, or buy from you, or do business with you, instead of your competitors, period.

Let me narrow this a little further, it used to be if you had the best price, - you got the business. Although still a minor USP, price alone should not be the only consideration, it's not really that unique... Yes, you still need to be competitive, but I don't want to be the cheapest guy... we're in this to make a profit, right? So don't make price your 'only' USP. Combine it with more value, something your competition doesn't do, or doesn't offer.

O.K., back to our example. This company needed more than price, their product pricing is right inline with everyone else, so now what?

First of all, you need to know what your competitors do offer.

This is not a new concept. You can't compete if you don't know what you're up against. So take a little time and check out what they have. Do some research, you'd be surprised what you might find - or not. Special offers, free shipping, a contest, great customer support?

Take a step back, imagine you are the customer and you do buy toner from someone a few times a year. If they do not get great service or it's just average, then chances are you can sway them your way. This references "customer loyalty" another chapter, but it follows first getting the customer. So, let's get the prospect as a customer first.

Now, what do we do to sway these prospects? We offer them what the competition doesn't. This can be discovered with your competitive research. Oh, and if you still haven't found a USP or a few - then Hyperformance Media can help you with this as well.

Write down every idea that you and your team come up with. Please don't worry about how silly they might seem (at the time), just brainstorm with the data you have gained. The reason I say to include the silly ones, and others is because sometimes those little ideas that you laughed at can actually be morphed to create your USP. No idea is too far fetched at this point, and usually the ideas you laughed at are, in fact, some things your competitors don't offer. That's where we go next.

On the toner company we came up with all kinds, some were already offered by competitors, some were not. The idea is to initially come up with as many as possible. Here are some of what we narrowed the field to (we started with about two dozen);

* Price (of course) * Free Shipping (varied by quantity/price) * Great Customer Service (so everyone says) * A Contest / Promotion (a what?) * Free Gifts (vary) * Referral Savings (with parameters) * Reminders? (to buy)

The next step is again to nail down our list, get creative, really think here. This alone still makes us more competitive (once implemented), even if others use the same approach. Why? Because before we did this, there was a ton of competition, and as we add these USP's we now narrow the list of our 'real' competitors. We are now more competitive within our industry, because we now offer things that (most) of our competitors do not!

We are getting more competitive immediately by implementing some simple offerings. Let's take each one in this example and see how we can use it or discard it to our advantage.

* Price - Still very important in any market, but very tied to customer value (or perceived value). If your product or service is not competing here - it does not necessarily rule you out, more on this later. However, this is usually where a shopper starts (because it's easy), and you want to be considered with this group. In this example, we agreed that (based on our research) we were in the market on price. So our price is competitive and that's great, but not unique enough to get the business.

* Free Shipping - In our research, we found that most of the company's who were offering this service were just a couple dollars higher in price (covering their "free" offer). So while it may have some perceived value, it was not enough for this company to offer that, so we discarded this one. If however, your costs are such that you can ship for free and still be competitive and profitable, this is a worthwhile USP.

* Great Customer Service - This is stated everywhere, making it tough for the consumer to know what is reality. It is hard to judge until you are a customer. It would be more valuable to offer testimonials of Great Customer Satisfaction. Not Customer Service, but Customer Satisfaction. There is a big difference here. So we DO want to take some of our really satisfied customers and put together, or request their testimonials. This is much more powerful than the words or promise of "Great Customer Service". So we will use this, but focusing on satisfaction with testimonials in our advertising pieces and website, etc.

* A Contest/Promotion - This covers a broad area, but can be extremely successful when implemented and marketed properly, so be creative and if possible, develop one for your business, product or service. After our discussions, and research, we have begun developing this idea. Example: Every time you buy from us, you get another chance at winning "Free Toner for a Year". I know you're saying... free toner for a year - what are you crazy? Bear with me on this... first of all, most of their customers use 4 to 6 toners in normal use in one year (In our contest, we can actually cap that in our rules, i.e., "Not to exceed 6 cartridges". So we associate our costs to that, which does not make this a cost prohibitive program at all, depending upon the program success. Again, the mileage and customers we gain from our contest is potentially huge, and if it works well, we continue it... at a maximum cost of 6 toners per year for a Grand Prize.

* Free Gifts - Don't discount this one, many people grab hold of these 'offers' to feel like they are making out. All else being the same, the customer does get something for nothing. Now, if the item truly has no value, then the customer has little to no interest. And, it actually 'cheapens' the image

of your firm (be careful). We decided with our products and business customer profile, this would not work for this business. But it could work for you or your products.

* Referral Programs - Another potential attraction (savings) for your customer. I say potential because this type of referral program, like price, should not be the only USP. When used in conjunction with others, this can steadily grow your business (sales) as well. You need to develop a program that somehow rewards referrals. For example, it can be something simple like "Refer a customer to our business and when we ship their order you will receive or accrue credits, dollars, points, or 5% off your next order". Get the idea? The key is to make it of value, and still keep it cost effective.

* Reminders - This was it! The big one, it was unique, it has great value to the customer, and it reinforces our Customer Satisfaction! This was also laughed at when first mentioned.

So? What was the plan? We acquire a software program that can be set to automatically e-mail each customer based on their own usage when their toner and supplies were potentially running low (i.e., 30 or 90 days or any date we choose. Once set-up it is all automated (cost effective)! It also gave us their e-mail address (important anytime) and with our reminders we could include any special or seasonal offers that might further attract more sales.

So, what did this company find?

In a nutshell - Their products are priced well to compete. In this case, we discarded free shipping as not really cost effective. We stressed Satisfied Customers in all of our marketing materials with testimonials and real-life examples. We are also developing a contest to further set us apart from our competitors. We could not find a free gift we thought would add any value to the customer (but continue to look). They are considering a Referral Program as well.

The real USP in combination with the others was our unique E-mail Reminder System. At that time, no other competitor was offering anything like this! This IS a Unique Selling Proposition and was perfect for our example. Put all these together, and this company has numerous 'edges' on their competition. Once customers are aware of these differences that set you apart from all the rest - growth is almost certain! That company is in a much better position to 'own' their market online, or at a minimum increase their market share.

The more you get the word out, the more you're sure to benefit from these type ideas.

I understand this was a pretty broad example but you should get the idea.

You won't always come up with an idea that no competitor has or offers, but if only 3-6 competitors offer that same USP, you are still in the top tier of your competition instead of lost somewhere un-noticed while buyers continue to purchase through your competition. You decide.

Use this article for your training, website, or newsletter by simply adding the following footer;

Written by and Copyright © Scott Sedwick

SEO 101 - The Basics of How to Get to the Top of the Search Engines

Depending on your site's subject matter, you might even be able to start earning a significant income purely from the popularity of your site. For example, if you have a site on jokes you might be able to get a substantial amount of traffic, but you're unlikely to earn a huge income.


On the other hand, if you have a top ranking site on Google for the keyword phrase "web hosting", you'll be able to earn at least $1-2 million (probably more like $3-4 million) per year from that site alone. However, to get into the top 10 in Google for the phrase "web hosting" is extremely difficult, you would need to be a search engine pro to do it - even then, it might take you two years to get there with a team of 5 people working around the clock.




A profitable site will be based on a good keyword phrase, a good topic (or subject material) and be different enough to stand out from the competition. If you can combine these elements successfully you'll increase you chances of turning a profit from your site.




Keep in mind that there are a number of niche areas where there is not so much competition but still the opportunity to make a decent profit. There are hundreds of such areas where you have the potential to earn $500-2000 per month. We'll talk about keyword research and finding profitable niche areas in later issues, but for now, let's look at the basics of how to get a site to the top of the search engines.




I'm going to focus on SEO for Google because it's the largest (and the best) search engine which will generate the most traffic, especially if you can master all of the right optimization methods. Google has a very complicated system for determining which sites make it to the top of the search engine. There are many factors involved and there is no precise formula. A further consideration is that Google often changes its formula so you can't rely on it being the same from month to month. However, there are a few key factors which are unlikely to change dramatically:


Keywords phrases should be one of the most important considerations when you are optimizing your site (remember that for each page of the site you should concentrate on one or two keyword phrases).

Keyword phrases (which you want to get to the top of the search engine for) should be well researched. For more information on researching keywords, have a look at http://www.profitpuppy.com/keyword-research.htm where you can find links to useful keyword tools.




Key factors for getting to the top of Google:

1. The keyword phrase in the title of the page - you should have the phrase in the title of the page.
2. The keyword phrase in the text of the page - you want the keyword phrase to be up the top of the page, preferably as high up the top of the code on the page as possible. You also want the phrase repeated a few times on the page. Don't worry about how many times, just at least 3-4 times and more if you think it fits in naturally with the content of the page.
3. Include the keyword phrase in a large font heading with H1 tags (this may make a small difference).
4. Links into your site from other sites (covered in more detail below).
5. Links within your site (covered below).
6. Links to other sites (covered below).


Links into your site from other sites

This is probably the most important factor for getting good search engine listings. You need to have good links coming into your site from other sites. You want those links to be from popular sites that also have lots of links coming into them. Google uses a Page Rank system which is a rough measure of how many links are coming into your site. You want links from sites that have good Page Rank. Creating 50 of your own sites and interlinking them won't increase your page ranking.




How do you get links from other sites?
The main ways are to: Create a great site that people naturally want to link to, Get an affiliate program so people can link to your site and get paid, swap links with other sites, get listed in directories such as dmoz.org and buy links from people who have sites with a high PR (Page Rank). Again, we'll be talking about this in more depth in another issue of the newsletter.


The most important consideration with incoming links is that you need to have the keyword phrase in the link that directs traffic to you your site. Getting listed in directories such as DMOZ (Open Directory Project) can also help you significantly in getting a good search engine ranking in Google.


Links within your site

It helps once again if you have the keyword phrase in the links to each page of your site. For example, let's say you have a site on baby products and you have one page where you are trying to optimize for the keyword phrase "cheap baby supplies". You should make sure that links that come into that page have the phrase "cheap baby supplies" so that your links look like this: Click here for cheap baby supplies


Links to other sites

You can improve your page rank if you link to other sites that have high search engine listings for the phrase that you are trying to optimize for. Note: it can also hinder if you link to pages that are off-topic. For example, you don't want to link to a chemical arms factory from your baby supplies site.

Some other things you don't want to do (and some things that make no difference at all) are:


1. Repeating the keyword phrase multiple times on the page unless it makes contextual sense.
2. Placing hidden links on your site - for example, links that are the same color as the background of the page won't be recognized by Google.
3. Optimizing your site too carefully - if it's obvious that you have optimized your site for Google (for example, if all your incoming links use the same keyword phrase) you may be penalized. Google looks for sites that are more 'natural' in their structure, so if all links look the same this won't look like an organic site to Google robots and you may be penalized for it.
4. Despite popular opinion, Meta tags don't really help at all. However, the description tag is important because that is the description that will appear in your listing on Google.

Finally, you may have heard of people using automated pages and or 'cloaked pages' to get high search engine rankings in Google. Personally, I don't believe in taking this approach as it's a non-sustainable way of getting high search engine rankings (that's not say that some people who aren't very successful at it). I know of atleast 3 highly successful companies who generate automated pages using this software http://www.profitpuppy.com/traffic. This is a sneaky way to make it to the top of of the search engine rankings, but it can work; one guy I know is earning several million dollars per year using this technique. So it can work, but as I mentioned before, I don't think it's sustainable and the Google engine doesn't take kindly to it.





How do I submit my site to the search engines?

My personal philosophy is that if your site is not found naturally by following links then it is unlikely to rank in the search engines - I don't usually bother submitting to search engines.


So that's the basics of how to get to the top of the search engines. We'll have a look at the more advanced stuff later on. It takes a lot of time knowledge and dedication to get there but once you master it, SEO is a fantastic way to get traffic and make money on the web.

By Robert Rawson

The Link Swapping Trap

If you want to make money on the web, you must get traffic
to your website. If you want to get traffic to your website,
you must have a high rank in google's search results. Google
ranks websites based upon the number of links that point to
the site.

Many novice webmasters believe they can trick Google into
giving their website a high rank by swapping links with
other webmasters. One reason they believe this, is because
"wanna-be" web marketing "experts" keep spouting that trash.

It's only partially true that Google ranks websites based
upon the number of links that point to the site. Google
uses a highly sophisticated page ranking formula that keeps
changing and evolving all the time. Google caught onto the
link swapping trick years ago.

Novice webmasters put all their link swaps on one
gigantically long page referred to as a "link farm". When
Google's robot finds a link farm, their ranking formula
penalizes the websites listed in the link farm. If Google
finds the same site listed in many link farms, they remove
that site from their search engine.

Just about every week I get an email message saying
"I placed a link to your website on my website. Please put
a link to my website on your website. Here's where you can
find your link on my website" ... followed by a link to a
single webpage containing hundreds of links ... a link farm.

I usually reply to such a message with a request to remove
the link to my website from their webpage. The novice
webmaster often responds with a message of pure astonishment.
Link swap requests have become so common lately that I have
been responding by clicking on the "Delete" button.

Every webmaster that wants to swap links has a website
with zero traffic. Even if Google didn't penalize websites
for being listed in a link farm, why would I want to send
traffic away from my website to a website that can't return
any traffic?

Not only are these novice webmasters not experienced in the
way of the web, they seem inexperienced in the way of the
world. The first rule of the universe is "you never get a
free lunch". If you want your website to rank high in Google,
you have to pay them. If you can't afford to pay them, you
have to do the work.

It's hard work to get traffic to your website. There is
only one method I know that works: put valuable, original
content on your website. Other websites, blogs, and forums
will post links to the valuable content on your website,
not with a link swap, but as a resource to their audience.

When someone places a legitimate link to valuable content
on their webpage, the webpage has low link density.
Google's page ranking formula gives the page a high score.
If a link to your webpage is found on a high scoring
webpage, that raises the rank of your webpage.

On the other hand, a page with a high link density, with
hundreds of links and little other content, gets a negative
score from Google. If a link to your webpage is found on a
webpage with a negative score, that lowers the rank of your
webpage.

Don't try to scam Google by swapping links, and don't
cooperate with foolish webmasters who think there is a
"free lunch". If you want to get a higher ranking in Google,
resulting in more traffic to your website, there is only
one way - good old fashion hard work.

Avoid Search Engine Blacklisting

The best way to avoid being blacklisted by the search engines is to avoid using some questionable techniques that were once popular to gain high rankings. Even if your website is not blacklisted by using some of the techniques below, it may be penalized (buried in the rankings) so your traffic will suffer all the same. When a search engine blacklists a website it will throw your listing off their site and block your site from coming aboard again. This can be done by blocking the domain name, the IP address or both.

Here are a few techniques to avoid, so that your site will not be blacklisted:

Mirror Websites

Mirror websites are sites with identical content but different URL's. This was once a method used to gain high rankings in the search engines, but since search engines are smarter now, this will only get you penalized or blacklisted.

Doorway (gateway) Pages

Doorway pages are pages with little real content for your visitors that are optimized to rank highly within the search engines. These pages are designed so that visitors will move deeper into the website where the real content lies. Navigation to the doorway pages are usually hidden from the visitors (but not the SE robots) on the homepage.

Invisible Text and Graphics

Using invisible text (text the same or a very similar color to the background) was once used to spam a homepage and some inside pages with non-stop keywords and keyphrases. Also links to doorway pages and hidden site maps can be done with invisible text (or invisible graphics). Some designers will create a graphic link with a 1 pixel by 1 pixel raster image and link this to a hidden inner page such as a hidden site map.

Submitting Pages Too Often

Submitting the same pages to the search engines within a 24 hour period can get you penalized and may delay your website from being listed in the rankings. Some search engines believe that pages submitted sooner than every 30 days is too much. The 30 day rule is a good rule to follow when submitting to multiple search engines.

Using Irrelevant Keywords

Using irrelevant keywords in a website's metatags and / or body copy in order to achieve high rankings will most certainly backfire. Search engines now want to see parity between these two areas and if your site is thought to be spamming with irrelevant keywords, you site will be penalized or blacklisted.

Automated Submissions to the Major Search Engines

Using an automated service or software to submit your website to the search engines can be extremely counterproductive. Most of the major search engines and directories accept manual submissions but do not like to be spammed with the automated ones.

Cloaking

Cloaking is the practice of deceiving both the search engine and the visitor by serving up different pages for each. The visitor sees a nicely designed and formatted page and the search engine robot scans a page of highly optimized text. Any practice that is deceptive should be avoided and the downfall of cloaking is that, if caught, the website can be banned permanently.


Using a Cheap or Free Web Host

Using a cheap or free web host can hurt in the search engine rankings. Frequent downtime, pages taken down for exceeding the bandwidth deter robots from indexing your site. If a robot cannot access your site often enough, your site will be dropped from the search engines. Hosting is cheap, so if you are serious about your website get your own domain name and host not one like: geocities.com/yoursite.

Sharing an IP Address

Sharing an IP Address even from a legitimate web host can get your site in trouble. If you have cleaned up your website from all of the techniques mentioned above and your website still does not get relisted by the search engines in a couple of months, check with your host to see if you are sharing an IP address with other sites. If so, you may consider moving your website to a new host who will give you your own IP address or at least one that is not shared with another company who has had their IP address (an yours) banned by the search engines.

FAST's Director of Business Development and Marketing, Stephen Baker, has stated that globally there are approximately 30 million crawl-able servers and approximately two-thirds have been banned by the FAST network for spamming. If these numbers are correct, your site may be blacklisted or penalize for "guilt by association."


By Kevin Kantola

What is Froogle?

Keeping in touch with other sites like Amazon.com, Buy.com and Yahoo.com, Google created a new shopping search tool called "Froogle". It has been called one of the most innovative price conscious tools on the Internet. Using the same technologies of Google.com, Froogle employs direct data received from merchants and through web crawls alone. Depending on the successes of the beta testing phase will provide adequate information as to whether Google continues with Froogle.

Housing over 15 different products and categories ranging anywhere from electronics, computers, food and gourmet, health care products, books, music and video, sports & outdoor equipment as well as toys and games, the list will only continue to grow in the coming months. Its searching capabilities mirror its mother page; it can be found at froogle.google.com and items can be found either in their product categories or by a dynamic keyword search. The results published are limited to one item per store. Every item appears with a thumbnail attached as well as a detailed product description, which includes price. Google doesn't bias any website and often you will find products that exist on Amazon and Yahoo. This approach mirrors the Google philosophy of less details, more products.

The remaining products are crawled throughout the Internet as most other keywords are sought. Currently merchants can setup their accounts and sell on Froogle right away! There is no cost or cost per click through associated with adding your products to Froogle. Merchants can sign up for free and monitor how Froogle displays their product. This technology is open to the public at no initial cost or commissions. 

Depending on how many items your company may want to sell on Froogle; you have to create a data feed file, which can be done with any spreadsheet software or by a text file. The opportunity to get involved with Froogle is incredible; chances are if you are selling a product and are optimized on the Internet for Google, your product may already exist.

By Jakob Jelling

Donuts Anyone?

When we ran the contest back in 1998 we had a idea there would be a few visitors but we got a big surprise. We had up to 1000 people per hour from the local area sitting on the web site waiting for the cop to come in the drive thru. We ran the contest for 2 months and it was the best advertising we had ever done. It produced more then 500 new customers per month and caused a bunch of people to get involved in a contest we felt was going to be middle of the road. As I met with a marketing guru 2 months ago we had sat and chatted about advertising that worked and the Donut shop cop came back to life.

We had been looking for a way to bring customers to our new products that we had been offering on the net www.nostingkypits.com & www.growumgreen.com these products needed to get out to the public and get know we felt this could be accomplished with donutshopcop.com. as we had a list of emails that I had collected from jokes friends and family had sent me I sent out a email inviting them to have a look and see if they wanted to join and play the game.

After I sent out a total of 1500 emails personally addressed we got a whopping 85000 hits. It may have to do with the fact of offering win your weight in donuts. Also the fact is when the friend who you referred wins you also get the same prize. This month we are doing some test advertising for a company in Cambridge. It seems to be going ok and people are hitting the site just fine.

Some of the equipment we are using for this can be bought off the shelf if you have the desire to set this up. We used a ATI all in wonder pro for capture. For the camera we used a Samsung video cam on a video cable back into the card. The computer is a old p3 500 with 128 megs ram on Windows XP. The cam software is Webcam32 it is a breeze to setup. It pushes a still back to the server every 60 seconds. It all sits on a cable connection for a local business. There are from 3 to 9 cop cars in the donut shop each day and your chances of winning are high.

For the first win we give them a Tee shirt and some product samples with all names going into the draw for the monthly prize. We plan to offer bigger and better things as we go along. Internet access (1 year DSL connection), lease on a car for a year, boats , bikes and other products as we get rolling all it takes is a little imagination and the sky is the limit.

On our next venture we are going to setup other cams in fast food places and it may be a cop or who knows !!!!

The cam is setup on the Tim Horton's in Waterloo Ontario Canada.

Looking for help or more info you can contact me directly


By Richard Willis

Build Your Own Online Network

Many online business owners and marketers use a variety of tools to make their business successful. Good strategies include maintaining a web site, publishing an ezine, joining affiliate programs, advertising on other people's ezines, and much, much more. As any good Internet "guru" will tell you, getting your name and product "out there" is the most important part of your success. So, the general rule is: Use as many strategies as possible.

What I suggest is that you take this rule one step farther. What I think works best is combining as many of the strategies together, as possible. In other words, when you can, build your own network, using the tools you already have in place. And I'm using the word network, as it relates to networking your online systems -- not in the sense of a prospect or client network, though I have some tips on that, near the end of this article.

So, let's break down this concept. Suppose you have a web site that promotes a product or service. You probably have a sales letter, some testimonials and a merchant account, so people can buy your product. Now, what I would suggest next, if you don't already have it, is your own ezine (online magazine, operated by an e-mail autoresponder). You get visitors to subscribe to your ezine, using a pop-up or another type of FREE subscription form on your web site. Again, this may not be new to most people, but here's another spin on it. In addition to your pop-up or basic sign-up form on your site, why not add a page to your site, with a link on your home page, that does nothing but promote your ezine.

You see, many people pass up your subscription form, because they are afraid of SPAM, or they don't know enough about your ezine. Will it interest them? Or, will it just bombard them with more advertising?

A separate page can explain exactly what the ezine does, promote articles that you have in it, even give a sample issue, so prospects can see what they are getting. Be sure to have several subscription forms on this page between sections of your text, so people have plenty of opportunity to subscribe. Also, be sure that visitors are linked back to your home page, once they've subscribed, so they get back to looking at your product. Any good autoresponder will have this feature, which is crucial, because although you desperately want people signing up for your ezine, you also want them to read your sales letter and, hopefully, buy your product.

Make sure your ezine articles always link back to your web site, so you are constantly promoting yourself. After all, this is really what ezines are for.

Another part of good online networking is to set up affiliate programming, in a similar fashion to the aforementioned ezine promotion. That is, instead of just offering your own product as an affiliate program, set up a separate page on your web site for affiliate programs you use. So, you might have a link on your home/sales page called "Other Great Products." Obviously, you can use your own creativity for this title.

This link will take visitors to a site that promotes other products, for which you gain a commission as an affiliate. If you are unfamiliar with affiliate programs, visit ClickBank, the largest free affiliate program on the Internet. Most Internet marketers only offer their own product to people, who want to join affiliate programs, or they may offer just one other related product, with a link on their home page.

Plus, don't forget any other web sites of your own. Always be sure to link to them on all of your URLs and in your ezine articles. The key to building your own online network is to be sure you have promotional pages for all of your products and affiliates on your web sites and to link everything together. Remember, you want every visitor on your e-mail list, and you always want them landing back on your promotional pages.

One final thought. Promoting your business network offline is also critical to your success. Some basic techniques I use are:

? URL on return address stickers

? Business cards with ezine address and web site

? Fliers at community businesses and public places (be sure your community knows you above all others)

? Free seminars in regional communities, discussing my topic (remember, you don't need to make money here - all you want is to get your name out there and to get e-mail addresses, so you can add them to your ezine list)

? Teach a class at a community college (get more e-mail addresses)

? Give free information away at community festivals, like Home Days

? Advertise in your local Money Saver magazines. It's cheap, and it reaches tens of thousands of people, who love cheap or free stuff.

? Anything else you can think of that get people to your site and to your ezine

Stay positive. Building a network takes time and hard work, but it's well worth it in the end.

By Mark Barnes

How to Get Unlimited Free Advertising

The opportunities for getting free advertising for your product or services are limited only by your own imagination and energies. There are so many proven ways of promoting your own objectives without cost that it literally boggles the mind just to think of listing them. One way is to write an article relative to your particular expertise and submit it to all the publications and media dealing in the dissemination of related information. In other words, become your own publicity and sales promotions writer. Get the word out; establish yourself as an expert in your field, and "tag-along" everything you write with a quick note listing your address for a catalog, dealership opportunity, or more information.

Another really good way is by becoming a guest on as many of the radio and television talk shows or interview type programs as possible. Actually, this is much easier to bring about than most people realize. Write a letter to the producer of these programs, then follow up with an in-person visit or telephone call. Your initial contact should emphasize that your product or service would be of interest to the listeners or viewers of the program - perhaps even saving them time or money.

Other ways of getting free or very inexpensive exposure include the posting of advertising circulars on all the free bulletin boards in your area, especially the coin-operated laundries, grocery stores, and beauty and barber shops. Don't discount the idea of handing out circulars to all the shoppers in busy shopping centers and malls, especially on weekends. You can also enlist the aid of the middle school students in your area to hand out circulars door-to-door.

Some of the more routine methods include having a promotional ad relative to your product or service printed on the front or back of your envelopes at the time you have them printed with your return address.

Be sure to check all the publications that carry the kind of advertising you need. Many mail order publications just getting started offer unusually low rates to first-time advertisers; a free-of-charge insertion of your ad when you pay for an order to run three issues or more; or special seasonal ad space at greatly reduced rates. And there are a number of publications that will give you Per Inquiry (PI) space - an arrangement where all orders come in to the publication, they take a commission from each order, and then forward the orders on to you for fulfillment.

Many publications will give you a contract for "stand-by" space. In this arrangement you send them your ad, and they hold it until they have unsold space, and then at a price that's always one third or less than the regular price for the space you need, insert your ad. Along these lines, be sure to check in with the suburban and neighborhood newspapers.

If you send out or publish any kind of catalog or ad sheet, get in touch with all the other publishers and inquire about the possibilities of exchange advertising. They run your ad in their publication in exchange for your running an ad for them of comparable size in yours.

Finally, there's nothing in the world that beats the low cost and tremendous exposure you get when you advertise a free offer. Simply run an ad offering a free report of interest to most people - a simple one-page report with a "tag-line" inviting the readers to send money for more information, with a full page advertisement for your book or other product on the backside. Ask for a self-addressed stamped envelope, and depending on the appeal of your report and the circulation of the publication in which your ad appears, you could easily be inundated with responses!

The trick here, of course, is to convert all of these responses, or a large percentage of them, into sales. This is done via the "tag-line," which issues an invitation to the reader to send for more information, and the full page ad on the back of the report, and the other offers you include with the complete package you send back to them. As mentioned at the beginning of this report, it's just a matter of unleashing your imagination. Do that, and you have a powerful force working for you that can help you reach your goals.

How Popular Are You,... Online That Is?

With the web today you "sorta haveta" have a rank in the major search engines if you want to be seen. I mean with 250,000,000, yes 250 million searches a day on Google? alone, how are your visitors and potential customers going to find you?



Now, there are numerous ways in which a Search Engine ranks a website; by keyword density, relevancy, content, etc. etc.. But Link Popularity is an ever growing statistic in how the Search Engines continue to rank websites.



Link popularity, is how "popular" your website is. That is how popular your site is compared to other websites. To put it another way; it is the number of "other websites" that have a link on their website to your website. Did you get that? :)



Now, although Link Popularity "building" is a large science and art in itself, I'll briefly touch on a couple ways in which you can see how popular you are and how to go about improving your link popularity.



A small side note though, is link popularity is a BIG way in which Google? ranks their search results. They refer to this as "PageRank". With the Search Engine, FAST, they call it "link score".



Now there are quite a few software programs and sites that can help build your link popularity as well as check your popularity.



Now, there are many ways to check your link popularity. But if you simply want to get a small idea, a little way for you to do this is go to any search engine and type in, "link popularity", without the quotes, and there will be lots of results for you to choose from. And then simply pick a site and check your site popularity.



Now, a small way to build your popularity is by going to the altavista.com engine and type in "link:yourcompetitor.com", and the results that show up will tell you what sites have posted links to your competitor's websites.



Then simply visit a site and look for a contact method, be it an email address, phone number, etc. and express an interest to them in trading links. It is a win-win method for both sites so, you have nothing to lose. Some might happily oblige, and some might not. It's certainly worth a try.



In summary, link popularity can be a never ending chore if you have a website. This is because having links on related websites to your website is a very good form of Targeted Traffic which never really quits, because most related links stay up for a long period of time, thus providing a continuous stream of targeted traffic, which, by the way is totally cost free.



And Search Engine traffic and reciprocal link traffic are the best forms of Targeted Traffic there is online. And both are free.



By Burke Ferguson

Not Common But Effective Free Marketing

We all know the many "free" traffic producing avenues. We all know about free classified ads, traffic exchanges, web site submitters, banner exchanges, link exchanges, but how many of you have ever thought of this FREE traffic avenue! In the past I have tried, I think, every free method of advertising, and have also had some success with the variety of free advertising resources. I have also tried different paid advertising sources. They have been very effective in building my business, but many times have proven to costly,especially when you are just starting out in a new business. So I was always on a quest to find new and better ways to advertise. Then I met a person on line with the secret!!

Now, your probably wondering what I could possibly be referring to when I claim to have a source of free advertising that is not commonly practiced. What could I possibly be doing to bring traffic to my website that many other marketers are not prating. What do I know that most of you don't know. Well, I am going to give you the secret right now!

Some time ago, I met a person who was pretty effective in online advertising. After many email correspondences, and being told of all the free ways to advertise, he confided in me. He told me one of the most effective, and FREE, ways to advertise your business is to write articles. At that time I thought he was crazy!! Writing articles? How on earth can writing articles promote my business? After I corresponded with this person, I discovered the "how" in my question. He gave me alot of incite into this method of adverting. Now I will share this knowledge with you!

Here is the hidden source of traffic in writing an article. When I have completed the article, I write a few sentences about myself and include my website address or email address. (Please see bottom of this article for an example.) Ok, what do I do after I write an article? There are many ezine owners that would love to print your article. Search out ezines that would fit the category in which your article would be of interest to the readers. Contact the owner. Or you can find places that you can submit your article to which is like a data base for ezine owners to go to when looking for content for their newsletter.

Secondly, there are webmasters who would love to put your article on their site. By using your article, they don't have to do all the "pencil pushing" work, and they get good content for the web site. If the have a good web site, with alot of good info then they will get more visitors, and happy visitors at that! Meanwhile these people will read your article and some of them will visit your web site. In this way, you are giving something to someone and getting something in return....FREE traffic. Placing these articles in as many places as you can find will increase the number of visitors to your site.

What can you write about? Anything!! Write about anything you can. Maybe you have some good cooking tips. Write an article about your tips. Find appropriate web sites, newsletters, and ezines to submit the article to. Or maybe you are a mechanic, and can give some do it yourself tips. Write out your tips, and again find appropriate places to submit your article to. Maybe you don't feel like you have anything to write about. How about the vacation spot you visited last summer? Write a review! You see there is so much information on the web. There are so many sites looking for content about such a variety of topics, you can write about anything and find places to submit your article.

Now stop and think about it! If you know anything about ezines, you will know some of them have 1,000's and 10's of thousands of readers. Some may only have hundreds of readers, but multiple that by 5 or 10 and the number of folks being exposed to your web site is quite alot! Now maybe your are starting to see why writing articles are such a good source of free traffic! So Get Started!

Gather your thoughts

Write out notes

Check your spelling and grammar

Write using details and descriptive word.

Search for editors and webmasters wanting your article

Submit you article to the databases

Place the article on your own web page and advertise the free info!

Be creative

I hope this information has been helpful to you. I hope you will put this information to work for you. I hope you will discover for yourself the wonderful marketing tool writing articles can be for you. Above all I hope you can look back one day and say like I do, "Boy am I glad that guy shared this information with me!" I am so thankful for that person taking the time to teach me about writing articles. He spent time and effort teaching me. Now I hope with the time and effort I have taken to write this, I have taught you something you will appreciate.

Please keep in mind, the keep to be a success in any business you need patience! A business takes time to grow.You must be willing to stick with it. Begin your business with giving it at least 1 year. One full year of dedicated commitment. Work and Patience will pay off! If I can be of any help to you in your online marketing endeavors, drop me an email taffin@tnni.net

All Success to you + God Bless,

By Tracy Finney

Is Your Websites Link Directory Even Worth Having?

Let's face it, getting (and keeping) a good Google page rank is no easy task and requires constant attention. Not just in getting reciprocal links, but honing your Meta tags, and keeping your content fresh. But we are here to discuss only one part of the pagerank dilemma. In fact this article will focus more on other, and in some cases, more important benefits of a proper links directory.

Directory Structure

Categorize your directory well- Meaning the more categories you have the better organized your directory is. More categories means your visitors can locate particular links a lot faster.

Minimize the depth of your categories- You should not make your directory more than three category levels deep, for instance if you are a travel site and have a category for Jamaica, then the structure example would be Travel>>Caribbean>>Jamaica. Easy navigation for your site visitors is the main reason for this.

Reason two for minimizing your directory depth- Search engines will spider each page of your website, they will determine the pagerank of each page based on its content, and distance away from your homepage. Use this as a rule of thumb; each level down from your homepage will cost that page "one" pagerank point. Using the example above, this is what is meant here, Travel>>Caribbean>>Jamaica: the Travel" page would have the highest pagerank being closest to your homepage, let's say it has been give a Google rank of 4, the next level "Caribbean" in all likelihood would have a rank of 3, and so on.

No more than 20 links per page- There is not a link partner in the world that wants his/her site to be on your link page as link number 100. I would rather be link number 3 on page number three than link number 100 on page one. This is clutter, and useless to all involved, you, your link partner and especially your site visitor. Keep this in mind as well, when the search engines spider your site they will also notice more pages on your site thus determining that you offer more content. Your link partners will also appreciate it.

Relevant Links

Do your visitors really care if you own a travel site and have links to recipe sites? Of course not. Although locating good quality link partners for your site will take more time, it will be well worth it in the long run. If you have a travel site, seek out rental cars, vacation spots, travel accessories, and the like. Your visitors are on your site because they (at that moment in time) are interested in what your site has to offer, do not change the visitor's train of thought into anything other than what you want them to think about, in this example, traveling and things associated with traveling.

Make Money from your links?

Of course! Reciprocal linking is a great way to help your website's search engine ranking, but making immediate cash from your links is a whole level up from that.

Join affiliate programs like Commission Junction and add some affiliate links to your directory. For our travel site example, you can get offers like travel accessories, rental cars and the like.

Have a good mix of links to other sites and affiliate links- You do not want a directory full of affiliate links, this is a major turn-off to your visitors. As a matter of fact, you should have at least a 10 to 1 ratio of regular links vs affiliate links.


Advertise in your directory

Since you now have a well organized directory with an excellent structure, limited to 20 links per page, and a lot of pages with good advertising space, it's time to place some banners.

You can advertise some of those good sites that you are affiliated with and place a banner or two on every page.

Keep it neat- You should have quality space on the left or right side of your directory add a Skyscraper banner to either side (only one per page though), it is well known that the bigger the banner the more clicks on that banner you should receive. A skyscraper is usually 120 x 600 in size. Add a single banner at the top center of each page as well; make it a different ad, offer something different than your skyscraper. This is the most valuable banner location on any page, use it for banners.

Sell banner spots- Now that you have a well categorized directory, you can sell ad space to vendors whose products or services appeal to that particular category. You can even offer the top spot on a particular page for sale or as a trade for the same kind of link for your site in someone else's directory.

Exceptions to the rule

There are those sites that do not fit into any category of your site that have that HUGE Google page rank, and you want them to link with your site. Here is a tip for you to keep those sites happy and get that top rank. In addition to you're regular links directory, create a separate smaller reciprocal links directory. This may be only 1-3 pages in size. This directory must have a direct link from your homepage (most top rank sites require that), and title it something like "Special Link Partners" or "Recommended Links". Add only page ranks of say 6-7 or higher to this special directory. This will ensure your most important link partners that you will not be burying their link inside your link directory.

We have quite a large selection of software in our downloads directory at http://www.bullmarketer.com that can help you automate the process of managing your own links directory. One program in particular is Arelis by Axandra. This software is not only VERY user friendly but offers tons of features. There is a free lite version available for download.


By Derek Arnold

5 Successful Tips For Marketing Your Website

This could be the most amazing article to ever be released
as you read this please keep in mind that the tips I am
about to share with you are from my experience with my own
successful website HaileysComet Weekly Ezine.

(1)List Building: One of the most POWERFUL ways to promote
any website is to have your own list to promote with. This is something that you have heard many times and it is the
first thing you should be doing to start your way down the
road to success. Building a list is not something that is
hard nor is it costly. There are many ways that you can do
this one would be to start your own newsletter or safelist.
This is something that is easy to do and it is very very
profitable.

(2)Ezine Advertising: Still the most powerful advertising
that you can get on the internet. Ezine's have subscribers
that are looking for ways to make money or increase their
incomes. Solo Ads are the best! They are sent to the
publishers data base by their self with no other adverts,
Also TopSponsor Ads are a great source of advertising
because it is the first thing the readers will see when
they start reading the Newsletter Issue for that day.

(3)SearchEngine Advertising: Now with Affiliate programs
you do not have much control over the way that the webpage
is built. So in order to get your affiliate program ranked
in searchengines is to use a Frames Page Template. This is
a text template that can be put in HTML to mirror your
affilate page with your affiliate link. This way you can
add your own meta tags that will help you get a higher page
rank. 

(4)Leads And Traffic: This can be very responsive
advertising because you can target your market of buyers,
Alot of time these lead companys are using FFA and
Classified Ads lead pages to get email addresses of people
that are looking for ways to make a income. Good Lead
companys use a Double Optin Process to capture leads of
people that are looking for ways to get advertising or
affiliate programs to join. You can do a search for Leads
and Traffic sites through your searchengines like google
and excite.

(5)PPC (Pay-Per-Click): PPC advertising can be some of the best ways to advertise any business on the internet. There are many of PPC's that you can place your advertising with. Just do a search with google and excite and you will find that they are many of them to pick from. These PPC's can drive all types of targeted traffic to your website or affiliate program for pennys on the dollar. You can also own your own PayPerClick system and send traffic to your site and at the same time use it to build your own targeted list!

The above information is what has pushed HaileysComet Weekly Ezine to the success that it has become and it will work for you as well. 90% of all people that are successful in marketing and advertising have the above or started out with the tools that it takes to make a living online. If you are wanting to jump start your success there is one tool out there that you can use that is proven to pull in loads of cash and help you build a business with the profit you make.

The product is called The Total Resale Package. It has every tool that you need to start,run, and succeed with your very own business. You can pick up a copy of the Total Resale Package here. http://www.haileyscometweekly.com/total-resale/

This is just one of the tools that will put you in the life that you want. It works for me and so many others that are just starting out and I share it with everyone. You can learn more about minisites and the above information with out any cost by coming to my site at the link below and signup for our weekly newsletter. It is packed with some of the most helpful hints and tips to get you started and keep you going in your venture to freedom!

Good Luck In Your Quest!

By Damon Smith

Increasing Link Popularity WITHOUT Exchanging Links

Yes, it can be done. Here are 7 ways that a site can acheive
increased link popularity without having to exchange links:

Directory Submissions - Submit to the Open Directory and other
sites like JoeAnt and Gimpsy. These are all human reviewed
directories, therefore search engines will consider that your
site must be of pretty good quality to be listed in them. Submission
to these sites is free, but there can be quite a wait to get
reviewed, since editors are unpaid volunteers. In addition to
a link popularity boost, a listing in Open Directory will get
your site listed in the other Open Directory powered sites
like Google's web Directory, AOL's web directory and many others.

Tips For Directory Submissions:

Editor Check - Is there an editor for your desired category?
If not, consider applying. For Open Directory, this can
give you the power to add your site much more quickly.

Link Title - Don't try any tricks to get keywords in your title
if they are not in your company name. This will get your listing
edited if the listing is approved or rejected outright. The
title must be your official website or company name.

Description - Again, don't try to insert extra keywords here,
it could backfire and your description will be edited or your
listing rejected. The description should be short and concise.
Just tell what your website offers and give some product or
service examples if appropriate. Again, keep it short!

Be patient! - It may take weeks or months to be reviewed. If
you've submitted before and are still not listed, try writing
a polite note to the editor of the category to see if there
was a problem.

Paid Submissions - Paid submissions to quality directories
and portals is also a good idea. It is well known that a
listing in the Yahoo directory area will give you a good
Google PageRank boost. Listing in the Yahoo directory area
is $299, so skip this option if your budget is limited.

Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Submissions - Google lists the
results of many smaller pay-per-click search engines. This
can help link popularity if your site is listed in these
results for your important keywords and phrases. There are
hundreds of these smaller PPC engines that offer a free
advertising credit just for signing up. Take a jaunt on
over to PayPerClickSearchEngines.com for a good list of them.
Submit listings under all your important keywords and phrases
and include keywords in your title.

Affiliate Program - Having an affiliate program can boost your
overall sales by letting other sites do the advertising for you,
but did you know that this can also help link popularity? For
some affiliate program services like Commission Junction or
LinkShare, they use a special link to track clicks and sales,
so these may not be effective since they do not contain your
actual domain name. The kind of affiliate program I am talking
about is the type that uses your domain name in the tracking URL
you give affiliates to use. Something like:
http://www.yourcompanyname.com/aff?64340
As long as your affiliate program uses this type of link, then
your site should see an increase in link popularity. Just make
sure you offer a good incentive for affiliates so that they will
add your link to their site. Even better, you can approve only
related sites or sites with a good Google PageRank or Alexa
traffic ranking into your program!

Specialized Submissions - What type of site do you have? What do you
sell? Chances are there is a directory that specializes in just
sites like yours. Have a casino or gambling site? There are many
gambling portals and search engines. Submit to all of them.
Have a site that sells antique fishing tackle? Yep, there are
directories relating to fishing, but you can also submit to the
many antique and collectible directories as well! Sell wedding
dresses in New York? Submit to the many wedding and bridal directories
and the New York search engines too. Whatever your niche, chances are
that there is a specialized directory or search engine for that area.
Find them and submit! You'll benefit from the targeted traffic they
send but also increased link popularity.

Create Your Own Directory - Set up your own specialized search engine,
directory or portal catering to your target audience. Your site can
be a featured or showcase site on the main page and other pages!
To attract users, add interactive content such as forums, have chats,
offer contests, the possibilities are endless.

Expired Domain Names - Maybe a site in your industry has gone out of
business? You may be able to pick up their domain name and with it
all their incoming links and traffic. Increase your link popularity
by adding your link to the site prominently, then go ahead and
re-direct the user to your site after a few seconds. Don't re-direct
quickly or you may not reap any link popularity benefits.

That's it! 7 ways to increase your website's link popularity without
maintaining a links page and without sending your visitors to competitors!

By Kacey Donston