Pay Per
Click Advertising
(C) Michael Rasmussen
All Rights Reserved

Advertising your services or products on the Internet is both
extremely effective and extremely competitive. There are several
ways to go about attracting traffic to your website; Pay-Per-Click
is one of the options you can choose from, along with developing an
SEO, or search engine optimization campaign. Both pay-per-click and
SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of
search engine results as possible. One of the differences is that it
takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign versus months for a
good SEO campaign.

Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that most search
engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires
a bid for a "per-click" basis, which translates to your company
paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor
to your site. There is the added bonus that when a per-click site
sends your website traffic, your site often appears in the results
of other prevalent search engines.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and
disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor your
pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effective. One of
the greatest advantages is that you never have to tweak your web
pages to change your position in search engine results, as you must
do in a typical SEO campaign. What you do have to do in a
pay-per-click campaign is pay a fee.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process.
You just bid and you’re up and running. It doesn’t demand any
specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search
engines and keywords, the easier - and more effective - the process
will be.

The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding war. A
higher bid than yours will lower your position on search engine
results. This means that you will have to raise your bid to regain
your position - which can obviously become quite expensive,
especially if you are bidding on a popular keyword.

In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective form of
marketing for your business, you must do some computing to figure
out how much each visitor to your site is worth. You can compute
this value by dividing the profit you make on your website over a
given period of time by the total number of visitors for that same
time period. For example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and
there were 2,5000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50
cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.

The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which your
business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show a profit, not
to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you are aiming at a figure
less than 50 cents per click.

Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost considerably more
than 50 cents a click. The only way around this is to bid less for
these phrases or you will be paying too much for each individual
hit.

The key (pun intended) to success is to learn everything you can
about search engine keyword research. The good news is there isn’t a
limit to the amount of keywords you can add to your bid because
additional keywords do not add additional cost. This translates into
a lot less hassle for you because there is no need to optimize your
site to index a particular set of keywords.

Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than others are,
but they will not cost you anything except time to set-up your
account in your pay-per-click bid. Of the popular search engines
that offer pay-per-click, one called Overture provides an online
tool that will give you the data on how often particular keywords
are entered into their search engine. They also offer suggestions
for keywords after you enter a description of your site.

In pay-per-click, this written description is crucial. You must
understand that the object of your description is not to generally
attract visitors, but to be as specific as possible so that only
those visitors who are likely to buy your service or product go to
your site. You must use expert marketing copy to guarantee that your
description is both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal
candidates to your site. This description is your most powerful tool
to insure that your bid is profitable.

Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is that you
constantly monitor your bid. It is very important that you bear in
mind that the results of the top search engines providing
pay-per-click advertising, which are Overture and Adwords Select,
usually appear on other popular search engines. Because of this, the
competition for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find
that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click to yield
a profit.

If this happens, it is advisable to withdraw your bid on that
particular keyword and try another one. Remember: when you pay too
much per click to make a profit, you are in essence losing the
bidding war.

Since losing is not acceptable, you must have a plan in place to
closely track the effectiveness of your keyword. It is advisable to
monitor your keywords on at least a monthly basis.

Not only is careful monitoring important, but the analysis of
visitor behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer
motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring and consumer
analysis is essential to your overall business needs, and will also
insure that your pay-per-click campaign is a success.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

Filed under: Search Engines by admin
4 Comments »

Paid
URL Inclusion
(C) Michael Rasmussen
All Rights Reserved

There are many ways to promote your website and one of the most
efficient ways is to use search engines. Search engines are the
first stop for most people trying to find information, services, and
products online. Because of this, it is essential that your website
appears quickly in search results.

The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of which offer
what is known as "paid inclusion." This means that you pay the
specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be
included in their index.

Of course, every search engine already has an automated program
commonly called a "spider" that indexes all the web pages it locates
online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your
web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines,
as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The major
issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.

A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra
spider that is programmed to index the particular pages that have
been paid for. The difference between the spider that indexes pages
for free and the spider that indexes only pages for a fee is speed.
If you have paid for inclusion, the additional search engine spider
will index your page immediately.

The debate over paid URL inclusion centers around the annual fee.
Since the regular spider of these search engines would eventually
get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is a renewal fee
necessary? The fee is necessary to keep your pages in the search
engine’s index. If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be
aware that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines,
your page will be removed from their index for a certain amount of
time.

It’s easy to get confused about whether you would benefit from paid
inclusion since the spider of any search engine will eventually
index your page without the additional cost. There are both
advantages and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and it is only
by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able to decide
whether to spring for the extra cash or not.

The advantages are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapid re-indexing.
Paid inclusion means that your pages will be indexed quickly and
added to search results in a very short time after you have paid the
fee. The time difference between when the regular spider will index
your pages and when the paid spider will is a matter of months. The
spider for paid inclusion usually indexes your pages in a day or
two. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to your pages, the
regular spider will never locate them at all.

Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your pages
often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this is that you can
update your pages constantly to improve the ranking in which they
appear in search engines, and the paid URL inclusion spider will
show that result in a matter of days.

First and foremost, the disadvantage is the cost. For a ten page
website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from $170 for
Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have to pay each engine
their annual fee. How relevant the cost factor is will depend on
your company.

Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is the limited
reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines, Google,
Yahoo, and AOL, do not offer paid URL inclusion. That means that the
search engines you choose to pay an inclusion fee will amount to a
small fraction of the traffic to your site on a daily basis.

Google usually updates its index every month, and there is no way
you can speed up this process. You will have to wait for the Google
spider to index your new pages no matter how many other search
engines you have paid to update their index daily. Be aware that it
is only after Google updates their index that your pages will show
up in Google, Yahoo, or AOL results.

One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a good deal for
your company is to consider some common factors. First, find out if
search engines have already indexed your pages. To do this, you may
have to enter a number of different keywords, but the quickest way
to find out is to enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages
appear when you enter the URL address but do not appear when you
enter keywords, using paid inclusion will not be beneficial. This is
because your pages have already been indexed and ranked by the
regular spider. If this is the case, your money would be better
spent by updating your pages to improve your ranking in search
results. Once you accomplish this, you can then consider using paid
inclusion if you want to speed up the time it will take for the
regular spider to revisit your pages.

The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid URL
inclusion is to decide if it’s a good investment. To figure this
out, you have to look at the overall picture: what kind of product
or service are you selling and how much traffic are you dependent on
to see a profit?

If your company sells an inexpensive product that requires a large
volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be the best
investment for you; the biggest search engines do not offer it, and
they are the engines that will bring you the majority of hits. On
the other hand, if you have a business that offers an expensive
service or product and requires a certain quality of traffic to your
site, a paid URL inclusion is most likely an excellent investment.

Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated frequently.
If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis, paid inclusion
will insure that your new pages are indexed often and quickly. The
new content is indexed by the paid spider and then appears when new
relevant keywords are entered in the search engines. Using paid
inclusion in this case will guarantee that your pages are being
indexed in a timely manner.

You should also base your decision on whether or not your pages are
dynamically generated. These types of pages are often difficult for
regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to include the most
important pages of a dynamically generated website will insure that
the paid spider will index them.

Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its search engine,
although these pages usually reappear in a few months. There are a
number of reasons why this can happen, but by using paid URL
inclusion, you will avoid the possibility. Paid URL inclusion
guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they are
inadvertently dropped, the search engine will be on the lookout to
locate them immediately.

As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider when it comes
to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment depending on
your situation. Evaluate your business needs and your website to
determine if paid URL inclusion is a wise investment for your
business goals.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

Filed under: Search Engines by admin
3 Comments »

Monitoring Search Engine Positions
(C) Michael Rasmussen
All Rights Reserved

Since search engines are the first stop for people on the Internet
looking for goods or services, the position your website appears in
search results is an important factor. If your URL shows up far down
the results list, the chances of the consumer never finding you
increase incrementally. Once you achieve a high search engine
position, it is essential that you make sure you maintain the high
ranking you have worked so hard to achieve.

This means you must come up with a strategy to monitor your search
engines positions. This strategy is crucial to the success of any
marketing campaign. Think of your search engine positions as your
online portfolio. Would you let your stock portfolio be ruled by
chance and market fluctuations, or would you keep close tabs on your
stocks so you could buy and sell when the time is right? This is the
way you must consider your search engines positions.

Be aware that at first, after you have launched your search engine
campaign and done all the right things to increase your rankings,
you will most likely see a continual upward climb. What you need to
be on the lookout for is the moment that upward climb reaches a
plateau. When this happens, your search engine position campaign
moves into stage two, the monitoring and protecting stage.

In stage two, do not be concerned about the short-term fluctuations
in your positions. These are similar to the subtle rising and
falling of stocks in a portfolio. Short-term movement is an integral
part of the whole process. It’s the long-term changes that you must
watch for and prepare to act on immediately.

Analyzing the long-term trends of search engines positions is
imperative. The way in which search engines rank websites may change
at the drop of hat. If you are unaware of these changes - many of
which are subtle yet can be deadly to your ranking - your position
may drop to the bottom of the list before you can get your bearings.
To prevent this kind of precipitous drop, you must create a system
to monitor your positions on a monthly basis. Devise a chart to keep
tabs on your top ranking positions or your top pages, and make sure
to watch "the market" closely.

Each search engine uses a formula to compute website rankings. When
a search engine changes this formula in any way, it may raise or
lower your ranking. Some search engines use a number of different
formulas, rotating them so that a formula doesn’t become overused or
outdated. Depending on which formula is being applied, your search
engine position may suddenly drop or rise in rank significantly.
Therefore, you must check your positions frequently in order to
catch when a search engine changes formulas and what effect it has
on your positions.

You must also deal with your competition - a crucial factor you must
always be vigilant about. Your competitor’s position may suddenly
rise, automatically lowering your position. Or their position may
drop, pushing your position higher. Each month, expect position
changes due to the continual changes that are occurring in your
competitor’s position, and be prepared to adjust your marketing
strategy to compensate for decreased rankings. Monitoring these
fluctuations will also give you vital information about how to
improve your website to increase your position in search results.

Of course, you must discern what the most popular search engines are
in order for your monitoring efforts to be effective. Right now,
there are ten popular search engines that direct most of Internet
traffic to your sites. The challenge you face is that these top ten
may change from month to month.

This means that your must not only monitor your search engine
positions, but you must also keep track of the ranking popularity of
the search engines you are monitoring. Find out which search engines
people use most frequently every month and be sure to live in the
present! People are fickle about their favorite search engines, and
it takes constant vigilance to follow their dalliances. The search
engines they loved when you first launched your campaign may be old
news in the next few months. You must adjust your list of engines
according to the whims of the Internet users. Check out http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html
for a current list of website favorites.

Another factor to monitor carefully is a sudden drop of your
positions in all search engines. This is not the same as monthly
fluctuations - this is a neon red warning sign! It could mean a
number of different things.

It all your search engine positions have plummeted, it may indicate
that search engines spiders - those sneaky programs that seek out
your site and rank their positions - have found some type of problem
with your website. If you have recently changed the code, for
instance, the spider may become utterly confused and consequently
drop your positions disastrously. If a spider creeps up on your
website when it is down for adjustments or changes, you may actually
disappear from a search engine index entirely. Or a search engine
may drastically change its formula, and suddenly all of your website
come up as irrelevant. If that search engine is a current favorite,
it may create a domino effect, causing all of your position to drop
in all search engines.

Some search engines rely on the results from other search engines,
and it is vital that you know which engines these are and keep track
of all the engines they influence. The biggest problem here is that
search engines will sometimes change affiliations, and this can
create a major shift in the geography of the Internet. For example,
recently Yahoo decided to display only results gleaned from Google.
So you must not only monitor your own positions, but you must keep
abreast of seismic shifts in the landscape of the Internet as a
whole.

Finally, pay attention to your keywords. Keywords are the foundation
bricks of the entire search engine system, and they demand
individual scrutiny in your monitoring efforts. If you have found
that a number of your positions have plummeted, it may mean that a
page of your website has become invisible or inaccessible to search
engine spiders. Or the competition for that particular keyword or
phrase has recently rocketed into outer space. In either case, you
must act quickly and efficiently to regain lost ground.

Your search engine marketing campaign is an investment. If costs you
time and money on a continual basis. Protect this investment as
diligently as you would your financial portfolio. In the same way,
track your positions from an objective perspective, and monitor your
positions on a regular basis. Make sure your time and effort reap
rewards by keeping your eye on the big picture - your long-term
marketing campaign.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

Filed under: Search Engines by admin
16 Comments »

Increasing Your Search Engine Ranking
(C) Michael Rasmussen
All Rights Reserved

The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may
seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided
dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you - the time has come
to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your website
is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually
succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid
this issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the
Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo,
and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine
rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be
more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up
in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed
to your website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available
online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve
higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your
pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved
rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the
title bar on your homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the
words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase
search engine rankings, the words on your homepage’s title bar
should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which
would include your company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages
you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should
contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page
itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them
to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the
title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each
other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website content.
Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content
rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must
contain the most important keywords - the words that potential
customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not
desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen
words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this
text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read
the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic
format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try
to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is
HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic
form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML
format in order to increase your search engine rankings.

Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like
something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code.
Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine
rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still,
it’s worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use
meta tags in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access
the code. To do this, click the "view" button on the browser menu
bar, and select "source." This will pull up a window revealing the
underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they
usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a meta tag
would read: meta name="keywords" content=. If you do not find code
that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may
not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost
helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor
that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings.
Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website.
Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked
to from your links page.

If you type in "free link popularity check" in a popular search
engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked
to your site. In the case that there aren’t many sites linked up to
yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine
rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign.
Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting
that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires
checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with.
Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine
ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful
Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search
engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps
listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself.
Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing.
Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality
customers will be directed your way.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

Filed under: Search Engines by admin
22 Comments »

Increasing Link Popularity
(C) Michael Rasmussen
All Rights Reserved

Search engines are the gateway to the Internet; they are the first
tool that potential customers use to find the products and services
they need. This is why link popularity is so imperative. If the
customers do not find your website, you have no possibilities of
making any sales.

You’re probably wondering what the blazes is popular about a link!
Well, in a word - plenty! Link popularity refers to the ranking
assigned to your website by the search engines, and it determines
the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered into a search
engine. So, you’re probably wondering, how do I make my link
popular?

Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites
that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. It’s a
simple formula, but a very important one. Google created the system,
and now virtually all the most popular search engines employ it to
rank your web pages in their indexes.

The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to
achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is
almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search
engine. But don’t be discouraged; there are tried and true ways of
achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.

There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that
just linking up with a large number of other websites will not
achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite
effect. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites that
are nothing more than "link farms" - pages containing line after
line of indiscriminate links. Search engines may aggressively
discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link
farm, so steer clear of them!

The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you are
linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about your
visitors seeing. The last thing you want your website to appear as
is indiscriminate and cheap. Linking to sites of poor quality will
only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.

So let’s get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link
popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all the
popular search engines.

The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the door, is
to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open Directory
Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related, you will want
to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that it will cost you
around $300 a year, it will be money well spent. If your site is
non-commercial, the listing will be free, but it will take time and
follow-up to actually get it listed. Open Directory is gives you a
free listing whether you are business-related or non-commercial, but
be prepared to make a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your
site listed.

You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of appropriate
category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if
your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in the
middle of Nowhere, Tiny State, do NOT submit your listing to
"Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State." BIG MISTAKE! All you have to
do is look a little deeper - and submit your listing to the "Fine
Alpaca Wool" category. You will not only associate yourself with
culture and quality, but you will be listed in a national category.

The next step after you have attained directory listings is to
locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity.
Try to find sites that are in some way related to yours, so not only
will your link popularity increase, but your customer base may also
be expanded. You want to avoid your competitors and look for sites
that are useful to your site’s visitors. Let’s look at the Alpaca
Wool site example. Linking up to a site that sells knitting supplies
would be helpful to your visitors, and the chances of the knitting
supply site wanting to link up to your site are also greater. By
linking to a related site that will be relevant to your website’s
traffic, you are increasing both of your site’s business prospects -
and both of your sites’ link popularity.

Not all sites want to link to other sites, so you will have to do
some research when you are looking for possible linking partners.
Google is an excellent starting place for your search. Make sure you
enter keywords that you think quality customers will also enter to
find your own site. Remember, your criteria are quality, highly
ranked, non-competing websites that have a links or resources page.
Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the quality
of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out
the other sites they are linked to, and determine if your own site
would fit in with the crowd.

When you decide you have found a good prospect, you must set out to
woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link on your own links
page to their site. This is an essential first step; it shows good
faith, and ups your chances significantly of their reciprocity.
After you have added their link, you must contact the webmaster of
their site. Since this is almost always done by email, you want to
make sure it is immediately clear that your message is not junk
mail. This requires that you tell them right off the bat that you
have added a link to their page on your site. A hook like this
almost always insures the reader will read on.

Next, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much you
appreciate their website. Make sure you emphasize that you have
actually visited their site, and that their site is not just a
random pick. Give them the address of your links page, and ask them
to check out the link for themselves. It’s a good idea to mention
that they will not only benefit from the increased traffic your
website will direct their way, but you will also increase their link
popularity. Briefly, explain why link popularity is so essential,
but do this in a sentence or two so you don’t sound like a
professor! Finally, tell them you would greatly appreciate if they
would reciprocally add a link on their own links page to your
website.

Go through this process with as many appropriate sites as you can
find, bearing in mind the criteria of quality and
non-competitiveness. After you have emailed all relevant sites, be
sure to check these website frequently to see if they have added a
link to your page. Give it about a month, and if no link appears,
try another charming email. Then give it another month, and if your
site is still absent from their links page, it’s time to remove
their link from your own links page. The only time you want to
pursue a link further than this is if you believe a site is crucial
to your link popularity and your business needs. Just remember to
keep all your communications complimentary and cordial.

Then set up a schedule to check your ranking in search engines
frequently to see if your link popularity has improved. This is not
achievable in the blink of an eye. It will take some time and a good
deal of work. There is no way around the labor-intensive quality of
improving your link popularity, which is why search engines regard
it with such importance.

By the way - make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site or you
will never persuade anyone to link up to you. Be prepared to keep
plugging away at this process, as long as it takes, until you
achieve link popularity stardom!

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

Filed under: Search Engines by admin
18 Comments »

Evaulating Web Site Performance
(C) Michael Rasmussen
All Rights Reserved

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing
campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on
how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t
know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail
to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and
monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online
announcement that you are in business.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it
is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them,
or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that
your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first
indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out
the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline
measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual
offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your
gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those
visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to
monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase.
This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an
essential element of the efficacy of your website. To find the site
conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure
out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your
site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site,
but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion
rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors
and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a
purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ÷ 2000 X 100).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make
sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site
conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not
everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer.
However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product,
or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate
will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you
make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing
strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low.
There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic
to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization
campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in
search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster
and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to
improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine
optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after
your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep
on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts
to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your
website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For
example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this
form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four
levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer
may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure
your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or
ordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The
goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill
out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your
online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company
brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and
loss in your online campaign.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

Filed under: Search Engines by admin
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Analyzing Website Traffic
(C) Michael Rasmussen
All Rights Reserved

Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for
a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of
this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic
information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use
of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be
overwhelming if you don’t understand how to apply it to your
particular business and website. Let’s start by examining the most
basic data - the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly,
and monthly basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your website’s
activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you
see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but
this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior
of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge
the effectiveness of your site.

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as
"hits" and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site.
Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the
server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to
the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how
overblown the concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage
has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in
reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single
page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing
your website traffic.

The more visitors that come to your website, the more accurate your
interpretation will become. The greater the traffic is to your
website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in
visitor behavior. The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few
anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.

The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well
or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to
determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors
spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it
usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to
figure out what that problem is.

It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of
visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or
intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge
of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint
specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use
time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and
ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you
believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page
needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link
to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you
could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors
can access the necessary information on that page.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot
of time on pages that you think are less important, you might
consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that
particular page.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about
the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and
motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet
marketing campaign.

Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or
contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit
rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find
exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a
number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice a
exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit
page. In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are
exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you
must closely examine that particular page to discern what the
problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page,
minor modifications in content or graphic may have a significant
impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of
exiting at the wrong page.

After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it’s time to turn
to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular keywords are
directing a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted
the visitor - meaning that they find what they are looking for on
your site, and even better, fill out your contact form or make a
purchase - the more valuable that keyword is.

However, if you find a large number of visitors are being directed -
or should I say misdirected - to your site by a particular keyword
or phrase, that keyword demands adjustment. Keywords are vital to
bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business
with you. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to
find your site will give you a vital understanding of your visitor’s
needs and motivations.

Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing
in your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have
achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a
sure sign of burgeoning success.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free
monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web
site promotions that can help YOU!

Filed under: Search Engines by admin
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Business Tips To Help You Succeed
by Jack Humphrey

GENERAL IDEAS

Never let a day pass without engaging in at least one marketing
activity.
Determine a percentage of gross income to spend annually on
marketing.
Set specific marketing goals every year; review and adjust
quarterly.
Maintain a tickler file of ideas for later use.
Carry business cards with you (all day, every day).
Create a personal nametag or pin with your company name and logo on
it and wear it at high visibility meetings.

TARGET MARKET

Stay alert to trends that might impact your target market, product
or promotion strategy.
Read market research studies about your profession, industry,
product, target market groups, etc.
Collect competitors’ ads and literature; study them for
information about strategy, product features and benefits, etc.

Ask clients why they hired you and solicit suggestions for
improvement.
Ask former clients why they left you.
Identify a new market.
Join a list-serve (email list) related to your profession.
Subscribe to an Internet usenet newsgroup or a list-serve that
serves your target market.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Create a new service, technique or product.
Offer a simpler/cheaper/smaller version of your (or another
existing) product or service.
Offer a fancier/more expensive/faster/bigger version of your (or
another existing) product or service.
Update your services.

EDUCATION, RESOURCES AND INFORMATION

Establish a marketing and public relations advisory and referral
team composed of your colleagues and/or neighboring business
owners to share ideas and referrals and to discuss community
issues.
Meet quarterly for breakfast.
Create a suggestion box for employees.
Attend a marketing seminar.
Read a marketing book.
Subscribe to a marketing newsletter or other publication.
Subscribe to a marketing list-serve on the Internet.
Subscribe to a marketing usenet newsgroup on the Internet.
Train your staff, clients and colleagues to promote referrals.
Hold a monthly marketing meeting with employees or associates to
discuss strategy, status and to solicit marketing ideas.
Join an association or organization related to your profession.

Get a marketing intern to take you on as a client; it will give
the intern experience and you some free marketing help.
Maintain a consultant card file for finding designers, writers and
other marketing professionals.
Hire a marketing consultant to brainstorm with.
Take a "creative journey" to another progressive city or country
to observe and learn from marketing techniques used there.

PRICING AND PAYMENT

Analyze your fee structure; look for areas requiring modifications
or adjustments.
Establish a credit card payment option for clients.
Give regular clients a discount.
Learn to barter; offer discounts to members of certain
clubs/professional groups/organizations in exchange for promotions
in their publications.
Give "quick pay" or cash discounts.
Offer financing or installment plans.

MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

Publish a newsletter for customers and prospects. (It doesn’t have
to be fancy or expensive.)
Develop a brochure of services.
Include a postage-paid survey card with your brochures and other
company literature. Include check-off boxes or other items that
will involve the reader and provide valuable feedback to you.
Remember, business cards aren’t working for you if they’re in the
box. Pass them out! Give prospects two business cards and
brochures — one to keep and one to pass along.
Produce separate business cards/sales literature for each of your
target market segments (e.g. government and commercial, and/or
business and consumer).
Create a poster or calendar to give away to customers and
prospects.
Print a slogan and/or one-sentence description of your business on
letterhead, fax cover sheets and invoices.
Develop a site on the World Wide Web.
Create a "signature file" to be used for all your e-mail messages.
It should contain contact details including your Web site address
and key information about your company that will make the reader
want to contact you.
Include "testimonials" from customers in your literature.
Test a new mailing list. If it produces results, add it to your
current direct mail lists or consider replacing a list that’s not
performing up to expectations.
Use colored or oversized envelopes for your direct mailings. Or
send direct mail in plain white envelopes to pique recipients’
curiosity.
Announce free or special offers in your direct response pieces.
(Direct responses may be direct mail, broadcast fax, or e-mail
messages.) Include the offer in the beginning of the message and
also on the outside of the envelope for direct mail.

MEDIA RELATIONS

Update your media list often so that press releases are sent to
the right media outlet and person.
Write a column for the local newspaper, local business journal or
trade publication.
Publish an article and circulate reprints.
Send timely and newsworthy press releases as often as needed.
Publicize your 500th client of the year (or other notable
milestone).
Create an annual award and publicize it as an outstanding employee
of the year.
Get public relations and media training or read up on it.
Appear on a radio or TV talk show.
Create your own TV program on your industry or your specialty.
Market the show to your local cable station or public broadcasting
station as a regular program. Or, see if you can air your show on
an open access cable channel.
Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper or to a trade
magazine editor.
Take an editor to lunch.
Get a publicity photo taken and enclose with press releases.
Consistently review newspapers and magazines for possible PR
opportunities.
Submit "tip" articles to newsletters and newspapers.
Conduct industry research and develop a press release or article
to announce an important discovery in your field.
Create a press kit and keep its contents current.

CUSTOMER SERVICE AND CUSTOMER RELATIONS

Ask your clients to come back again.
Return phone calls promptly.
Set up a fax-on-demand or email system to easily respond to
customer inquiries.
Use an answering machine or voice mail system to catch after-hours
phone calls. Include basic information in your outgoing message
such a business hours, location, etc.
Record a memorable message or "tip of the day" on your outgoing
answering machine or voice mail message.
Ask clients what you can do the help them.
Take clients out to a ball game, a show or another special event
just send them two tickets with a note.
Hold a seminar at your office for clients and prospects.
Send hand-written thank-you notes.
Send birthday cards and appropriate seasonal greetings.
Photocopy interesting articles and send them to clients and
prospects with a hand-written "FYI" note and your business card.

Send a book of interest or other appropriate business gift to a
client with a handwritten note.
Create an area on your Web site specifically for your customers.

Redecorate your office or location where you meet with your
clients.

NETWORKING AND WORD OF MOUTH

Join a Chamber of Commerce or other organization.
Join or organize a breakfast club with other professionals (not in
your field) to discuss business and network referrals.
Mail a brochure to members of organizations to which you belong.

Serve on a city board or commission.
Host a holiday party.
Hold an open house.
Send letters to attendees after you attend a conference.
Join a community list-serve (email list) on the Internet.

ADVERTISING

Advertise during peak seasons for your business.
Get a memorable phone number, such as "1-800-WIDGETS."
Obtain a memorable URL and email address and include them on all
marketing materials.
Provide Rolodex® cards or phone stickers pre-printed with your
business contact information.
Promote your business jointly with other professionals via
cooperative direct mail.
Advertise in a specialty directory or in the Yellow Pages.
Write an ad in another language to reach a non-English-speaking
market. Place the ad in a publication that market reads, such as a
Hispanic newspaper.
Distribute advertising specialty products such as pens, mouse pads
or mugs.
Mail "bumps," photos, samples and other innovative items to your
prospect list. (A bump is simply anything that makes the mailing
envelope bulge and makes the recipient curious about what’s in the
envelope!)
Create a direct mail list of "hot prospects."
Consider non-traditional tactics such as bus backs, billboards and
popular Web sites.
Project a message on the sidewalk in front of your place of
business using a light directed through words etched in a glass
window.
Consider placing ads in your newspaper’s classified section.
Consider a vanity automobile tag with your company name.
Create a friendly bumper sticker for your car.
Code your ads and keep records of results.
Improve your building signage and directional signs inside and
out.
Invest in a neon sign to make your office or storefront window
visible at night.
Create a new or improved company logo or "recolor" the traditional
logo.
Sponsor and promote a contest or sweepstakes.

SPECIAL EVENTS AND OUTREACH

Get a booth at a fair/trade show attended by your target market.

Sponsor or host a special event or open house at your business
location in cooperation with a local non-profit organization, such
as a women’s business center. Describe how the organization helped
you.
Give a speech or volunteer for a career day at a high school.
Teach a class or seminar at a local college or adult education
center.
Sponsor an "Adopt-a-Road" area in your community to keep roads
litter-free. People that pass by the area will see your name on
the sign announcing your sponsorship.
Volunteer your time to a charity or non-profit organization.
Donate your product or service to a charity auction.
Appear on a panel at a professional seminar.
Write a "How To" pamphlet or article for publishing.
Produce and distribute an educational CD-ROM, audio or video tape.

Publish a book.

SALES IDEAS

Start every day with two cold calls.
Read newspapers, business journals and trade publications for new
business openings and for personnel appointment and promotion
announcements made by companies. Send your business literature to
appropriate individuals and firms.
Give your sales literature to your lawyer, accountant, printer,
banker, temp agency, office supply salesperson, advertising
agency, etc. (Expand your sales force for free!)
Put your fax number on order forms for easy submission.
Set up a fax-on-demand or email system to easily distribute
responses to company or product inquiries.
Follow up on your direct mailings, email messages and broadcast
faxes with a friendly telephone call.
Try using the broadcast fax or email delivery methods instead of
direct mail. (Broadcast fax and email allows you to send the same
message to many locations at once.)
Using broadcast fax or email messages to notify your customers of
product service updates.
Extend your hours of operation.
Reduce response/turnaround time. Make reordering easy reminders.
Provide pre-addressed envelopes.
Display product and service samples at your office.
Remind clients of the products and services you provide that they
aren’t currently buying.
Call and/or send mail to former clients to try to reactivate them.

Take sales orders over the Internet.

Filed under: Linking by admin
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One
Good Link Deserves Another
by Jack Humphrey

There is nothing on the web that compares to a good link when you
are talking about building steady streams of traffic to your site.

Did you know that one good link can bring you more daily traffic
than a #1 position on a search engine? It’s true!

Did you also know that there are sites out there, thousands of them,
who rely solely on the traffic they get from reciprocal links with
other webmasters? There are! I call the webmasters of these sites
Link Minded people!

No webmaster in their right mind would argue that links aren’t the
lifeblood of the internet. A search engine is only a directory of
links. A link directory on your domain is also a search engine when
you use the proper technique of creating a “themed category listing.

I think the biggest problem on the net today is that so many
webmasters are looking for a Magic Pill that will solve their
traffic problems with The Click of a Button. How many times have you
seen an ad with those exact words in it? 50? 100 times or more?

Well, I am sorry to tell you, there is no magic pill. That I can
absolutely positively guarantee. There is no substitute for plain,
old fashioned hard work and dedication to your website and the
business you would like to succeed in. The internet offers tons of
automation solutions, and even reciprocal linking has had a couple
of valiant attempts and even successes at a certain degree of
automation.

But exchanging meaningful, traffic-driving links with other
webmasters is and always will be a personal, one-on-one thing. It is
like a mini joint venture with other webmasters and you have to
address them without bulk mail or spamming in order to even have a
chance at getting the mother of all links someday!

When you look at reciprocal linking (the oldest original form of
advertising since the web began) it is really surprising how few
marketing experts deal with the topic. I wrote a book about the
whole phenomenon simply because there were so few people looking
into the science of link swapping!

And there is a science to it! There are pitfalls. There are plain
NO-NOs. There are myriad ways to waste your time chasing after
useless links, or worse, links that will get you banned from some
search engines! Reciprocal linking is not link farming or posting to
400,000 Free-for-All links pages. (A most detestable practice used
for awhile by all newbies, then abandoned after the damage is done.)

In short, you really have few choices on the net better than
starting a link directory and asking webmasters with relevant
content to your site for a link swap. Unless you have a huge budget
and can afford to pay someone to get your site optimized and ranked
in the top ten on all the big engines, there aren’t other
alternatives.

Banner exchanges suck visitors from your site. Traffic exchanges
bring you hits, but totally uninterested visitors. Ezine ads are an
important linking strategy, but that is an ongoing process you do to
get quick spurts of traffic, not ongoing, steady streams of it. Plus
it is hard to know where to get the best ads and usually the best
ads are pretty expensive on a small budget.

My recommendation for people who really want their site to be
noticed to the tune of 1000 hits a day or more, who are on a budget
and are just starting: start a link directory on your site and have
clear instructions on how to swap links with you.

Then, search the net for your link partners (relevancy is SO key
here, don’t swap links with Victoria’s Secret if you sell fishing
line!) send them personalized emails asking for swaps, set up top
listings for those willing to be “link partners and keep going until
you have at least 100 links to your site! (Verifiable at
altavista.com by typing in “Link:yourdomain.com)

Then, stop and take a break and start again. It’s work. Even with
automation software. Nothing good comes on the net without work. Did
you EVER in your life see a successful business owner who said “It
really was easy, no real work at all to get where I am today!?

But the payoff here is guaranteed: Reciprocal links will bring you
traffic and increase your site’s link popularity and ranking on the
search engines. Any webmaster willing to do what it takes to succeed
should be willing to work their fingers to the bone to get a huge
amount of traffic through link swapping!

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How to get 1 Million Hits Without the Search Engines
by Jack Humphrey

I love to show people how they can actually get up to 1 million hits
per month using reciprocal links. People are doing it right now all
over the web and have the live server log files to prove it. And you
probably are thinking, “Yeah they are on top of the search engine
lists! Actually, top listing on the search engines is not the cause
of their hits! It’s a side-effect.

Reciprocal links alone put them in the Million-a-Month Club.
Reciprocal links, good ones, can do much more for you than any
search engine ever will.

Wow Jack, that’s a bold statement, got anything to back that up?

How about the server logs of people getting over a million hits per
month who did nothing more than seek out link partners and ONLY
submitted to each major search engine ONCE? Would that convince you?

Well check it out. Here are two sites that use reciprocal linking
almost exclusively with all other forms of advertising bringing in a
relatively negligible amount of traffic. When looking at their live
server log files, pay attention to the following things:

1.) Qualified traffic from reciprocal links.

Look at the Refers Report and check the section labeled ‘/’.
Underneath you will find which links and search engines are sending
these websites traffic.) Search engine traffic to the sites’ Link
Directory pages.

In the Refers Report, find the headings that start with /links/,
with the name of the Link Directory pages directory after. Search
engines send lots of traffic to these pages. These pages were never
submitted to the search engines!

Example 1: CTEX CD Replication holds the number one keyword
placement on Yahoo for "CD replication." How did they get there?
Link popularity! Check out their live server log files at: http://www.ctexinc.com/stats/index.html

Example 2: Toolady.com is a website that has been using
reciprocal links for a long time and her web site traffic was
generated completely reciprocal links! In four months it became one
of the most heavily trafficked bird web sites on the internet. No
other form of marketing was done. Check out her server log files
here:

http://toolady.com/reports/log_bird.html

So you tell me, are search engines the almighty savior you thought
they were a minute ago?

Relevance of Your Links

Relevance has a lot to do with how a search engine robot will treat
you nowadays. That’s why I always talk about the importance of
building a link list or "theme index" for your site (call it a
reciprocal link exchange) that closely resembles the topics or
products you deal with in your site. (But not those, of course, in
direct competition to you.)

Now the FFA and Link Farm people are going to be mad at me, but this
is the truth!

Here’s a test. If I fail it you may publicly scorn me!

Go to any FFA page on the web and look for Yahoo.com. Try Amazon.com,
or CocaCola.com… There must be TONS of their links on FFA pages -
EVERYBODY knows those guys! Go ahead and check it out, I’ll be here
when you get back!

Glad you’re back - how many links did you find? None? Yikes!

Now go to Altavista.com and type link:yahoo.com in the search
window. What happened? Well, I just did it and it said: We found
6,670,578 results. (By the way, don’t you love how the search engine
will report millions of links just like it reports none? Doesn’t it
seem like they would be like "WOW, six million links!!!")

That’s 6,670,578 links pointing to Yahoo.com!!

And not a single one from a link farm. Now don’t go getting ideas in
your head about getting 6 million links. You don’t need that many to
flood your site with enough traffic to keep you selling widgets, or
informing the public on the effects on the ozone layer from methane
gas produced by cattle. (What? hey its late, that was the best
example I could come up with! How do I know what you’re into?)

No, you need far fewer links than that to get 1,000,000 hits a
month. And, with a million hits a month, how many methane
gas-to-oxygen converters do you think you could sell to farmers to
mount on the backs of their cows to protect the ozone layer? I’d say
at least a whole heap!

There is automation software out there that people are using to
drastically optimize their link lists and I highly recommend
checking them out. The best and first of its kind can be found at
webmastertraffictools.com.

This software has a fully functioning demo that will spider the web,
set up your link directory, AND upload it to your server. It also
does a mail-merge function to personalize all your link requests to
other webmasters and mails for you. All in the DEMO version!

You CAN do all this manually, but it is highly recommended that you
at least check out the automation software demo above to see what
the best of the best webmasters are using to get those million hits
per month.

(Author’s note: It has not yet been proven whether methane produced
by cow emissions affects the ozone layer. Example above is
fictional.)

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