Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 Bill Platt
For businesses that market wholly or partially online, it may seem that three words are the only way to get more customers: search engine optimization (SEO). Typically, the search engines being referred to are: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. These three engines have almost become interchangeable with the phrase "do a search", so much so that the word "Google" has entered the English lexicon as "find information".
There are actually hundreds of search engines, not just the Big Three that many Internet users think of (Google, Yahoo, and MSN). By focusing only on the most well known search engines for your online marketing strategy, you may be missing out on as much as 30% of the billions of searches being done online every single day.
While not the oldest search engine on the internet, Google does have the reputation of being the granddaddy. However, it is worth investigating alternative search engines - niche engines, meta-search engines, and human-powered engines.
Niche search engines focus their searches on a particular subject matter, such as blogs (http://www.blog-search.com) or articles (http://www.goarticles.com). Meta-search engines compile results from multiple search engines (http://www.dogpile.com, http://www.widow.com). Finally, human-powered search engines are composed of directory pages with link and general information, put together by humans who search for the most relevant content (http://www.mahalo.com, http://www.dmoz.org). These alternative search engines tend to have pretty high page ranks, which give more credence to the fact that online marketers shouldn't overlook them.
There is also the fact that some Internet searchers do not want to use Google because of personal or political views. Because of Google's popularity, it can (incorrectly) be perceived as having a monopoly on the search engine market. That perception, combined with opposition to a seemingly growing "corporate world", turns off some potential customers and eliminates your potential to reach them, if you focus only on Google or other big search engines.
As part of SEO, using keywords to bring in consumers is all the rage. Businesses spend a great deal of time and money researching keywords, keyword density, and effects on page rankings in results lists. Guess what? It's not only a pain for the businesses to constantly be looking for which words may get them more hits and higher rankings; it's quickly becoming over done.
Consumers are fatigued with seeing keyword-loaded articles and websites tagged with anything that could possibly be related to their search terms. This online marketing strategy may make sense in the short-term, but chances are good that by the time the strategy is perfected by your marketers, there will be a different trend altogether that needs to be learned. Marketing with the intent to only increase your page rankings, by any means necessary, is only a quick fix and could be quite expensive.
SEO tactics are starting to turn customers off. If SEO is the main priority of a marketing campaign and keyword-dense content was the impetus for the customer finding the website, this hurts the site's credibility with the consumer. Perhaps they'll buy from you once because you showed up at the top of the results page, but will they remember you next time or just do another search?
Another concern with search engines is the program spiders that crawl the Internet, looking for relevant pages for search results. Even the largest of the search engines can only cover a portion of the internet. According to Wikipedia, no search engine can search more than 16% of the net! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spidering)
In addition, the spiders have a massive amount of searching to do, which can be a slow and taxing process on the sites they are crawling. By the time a spider finishes crawling the Internet, the information collected can be outdated - pages and links have either been deleted or new information added. Spiders are certainly not a perfect means of finding good results with one search engine.
Searching just one engine at a time is time-consuming and not very cost-efficient for searchers looking for the most appropriate information or businesses to suit their needs. Enter, meta-search engines. As mentioned earlier, meta-search engines compile results from multiple engines.
Among these, dogpile.com is probably the most well-known. The problem with dogpile, as I see it, is that it spits back the top 10 results from each of the Big Three engines. This results in a lot of sponsored results at the top of the result list, followed by a mix of "normal" results and more sponsored results. The truth be known, I simply consider dogpile to be really annoying, so I avoid it.
In comparison, widow.com uses a different sort of math equation that sorts through search engine results for the most relevant information and ranks them in their results page. In an unscientific but entertaining comparison I performed, I plugged in "celebrity gossip" to both dogpile.com and widow.com.
On dogpile.com, I felt like I had to search through commercials to find the content. The results on widow.com were much more relevant, giving me results with the desired content. Plus, I didn't have to look between the annoying sponsored results to find the information I wanted.
Utilizing meta-search engines can be very time-efficient and cost-effective for online marketers, especially when doing market research, even for keyword research.
More importantly, if you can also rank in the meta-search and smaller niche search engines, you have a better chance of reaching the approximately 30% of searchers who do not use one of the Big Three engines, as their search tool of choice.
The niche audience may be smaller than the quantity of consumers you're exposed to on Google, but if you can gain an audience in the niche search engines, you are likely to find consumers intent on buying what you are selling. It's a good general marketing strategy to remember that "quantity exposure" does not always equate to "quality exposure". It's also a good general marketing strategy to never rely on only one advertiser to help you reach your target audience.
About the Author:
Bill Platt has been helping online marketers promote their online businesses since 2001, through http://www.thephantomwriters.com By using article marketing to promote his business online, he has always been able to generate lots of traffic from inside and outside of the search engines. In 2007, his website generated 125,000 visitors from non-search sources and +119,000 visitors from 59 search engines. Learn Bill's secrets - get his ebook: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Guaranteed Search Engine Rankings: Busting The Myth
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 Bill Platt
There are many companies on the Internet, who are promising that if you give them lots of money, they will guarantee you top rankings in the search engines. Buyer Beware!!!
Let Me Cut To The Chase
We all want to be on page one of Google's search engine results (SERPs). After all, the higher our websites rank in Google, the more money we will make. Every single one of us who have built commercial websites are looking to make money and perhaps even to get rich doing whatever it is we do at our websites.
But just because you and I both want to be on page one of Google's SERPs, does not mean you or I will be on page one of the results. Think about this objectively: no matter who we are or what we do, we are typically challenging thousands or millions of other web pages in our niche, for the keywords that we hope will make us rich.
Understanding Search Engine Results
There are actually two sets of listings in the search engines.
On the left, you will see the "organic listings", which by definition are free;
On the right hand side of the page in the search engine results, you will find the "Pay-Per-Click listings" (PPC). Placement in the PPC listings is an auction environment. The highest bidder on a keyword will be in the top spot in the PPC results. The second highest bid will hold the second spot, etc.
Comparing Organic and Pay-Per-Click Listings
Those who wish to rank in the organic search results will need to employ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to improve his or her rankings. There are literally hundreds of SEO companies, who specialize in helping its clients climb in the "organic" search result listings. But, SEO is a time-consuming process that requires the efforts of specialists, who have actual knowledge and skills in manipulating the search engine results. Here is what Google has to say about this practice and its accompanying industry.
Those who wish to employ paid search listings (PPC), which can frequently be much cheaper than getting to the top of the organic listings, will utilize one of the following services:
Google Adwords (http://adwords.google.com)
Yahoo Search Marketing (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com)
7 Search (http://7search.com/advertise/)
ISEDN is a bit different than the other search advertising networks. First off, they do not charge a fee for each click. Instead, they charge a quarterly placement fee. Also, instead of representing one large search engine, their ads appear on 225+ smaller search engines. (http://www.isedn.org/)
Organic listings are best if you can get them, because they will deliver free traffic to your website, sometimes for years. On the other hand, given the cost of developing organic rankings, it often makes more sense to pay a little bit each month for PPC search traffic, rather than to pay thousands per month, sometimes for years, just to break into the top few pages of the organic search results.
Some Real-World Perspective
To get your website into page one of the organic search results, can be a daunting process. To put this into perspective, I ran some popular keywords through Google to see how many search results would be found. Here we go:
travel - 1,410,000,000 results
HDTV televisions - 2,310,000
hybrid cars - 15,700,000
homes for sale - 96,000,000
real estate agents - 72,100,000
divorce attorneys - 1,640,000
cancer treatments - 3,610,000
credit card applications - 7,520,000
credit report - 51,700,000
With 1.4 Billion (with a "B", not a "M") pages vying for page one results in Google for the word "travel", and 72 million pages struggling to be seen in Google for the search term "real estate agents", is it any wonder that the people in many industries are struggling to be seen online?
If your competitors are struggling to be at the top of the search results, so will you, unless you have extremely deep pockets. With that having been said, there are some industries where getting to page one will take an investment of millions, and then there still are No Guarantees that you will succeed in your endeavor.
There Is More Than One Way To Skin A Cat
At the end of each day, only ten websites will ever be on page one of the organic search results. But, pay-per-click lets anyone who has some money to spend, to break into page one of the search results.
Depending on your bank account and your business model, SEO or PPC may be the answer to getting people to visit your website and to buy what you are selling. Depending on your keywords, the ISEDN advertising opportunity may make more sense. I have used the ISEDN network (http://www.isedb.org), and I still do use them for some of my own advertising.
But when all is said and done, what matters is for you to get your advertising message in front of the people most likely to buy what you are selling.
My Advertising Model Of Choice
In my years online, I have always turned to article marketing to get my sales message in front of the people most likely to buy my products or services.
Case in point. You are reading an article that I have written, to speak to those people who are looking for ways to advertise their business online. And at the end of this article, you will see what is called a "resource box" or the "about the author information". The resource box, at the end of this article, is my advertisement for my business.
If you reach the end of this article and you read my resource box, then I will have succeeded in getting you (someone in my target audience) to read my advertisement. If you click the link in the resource box, then I will have succeeded in getting a potential client to visit my website. And finally, if you buy my products or services, then my website will have accomplished its purpose - to turn its visitors into buyers.
The interesting truth is - and few people will point this out to you - if you click the link below and visit my website, then you will have reached my website without actually passing through a search engine to get to it. That is the beauty of article marketing - you can use this advertising model to reach your target audience, regardless of how well or how badly you rank in the search engines.
In Conclusion
There is only one company who can guarantee you top rankings in Google, and that company is Google. Although Google could guarantee you top rankings in their search results, they won't do it; not for any amount of money.
So when you see some other company making pie-in-the-sky promises about how they can "guarantee your search engine rankings", get a solid grasp on your wallet and run... the other way... fast...
About the Author:
Bill Platt has written 100+ articles to promote his business online... Why? Because article marketing works miracles, for those people who actually seek to educate their readers. Bill has provided ghost writing and article distribution services to his clients, since 2001, at: http://www.thephantomwriters.com/ In 2007, Bill wrote an ebook to teach people how to duplicate his article writing success, by teaching folks how to write articles that attract publishers and readers, traffic, sales and profits: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html
Copyright © 2008 Bill Platt
There are many companies on the Internet, who are promising that if you give them lots of money, they will guarantee you top rankings in the search engines. Buyer Beware!!!
Let Me Cut To The Chase
We all want to be on page one of Google's search engine results (SERPs). After all, the higher our websites rank in Google, the more money we will make. Every single one of us who have built commercial websites are looking to make money and perhaps even to get rich doing whatever it is we do at our websites.
But just because you and I both want to be on page one of Google's SERPs, does not mean you or I will be on page one of the results. Think about this objectively: no matter who we are or what we do, we are typically challenging thousands or millions of other web pages in our niche, for the keywords that we hope will make us rich.
Understanding Search Engine Results
There are actually two sets of listings in the search engines.
Comparing Organic and Pay-Per-Click Listings
Those who wish to rank in the organic search results will need to employ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to improve his or her rankings. There are literally hundreds of SEO companies, who specialize in helping its clients climb in the "organic" search result listings. But, SEO is a time-consuming process that requires the efforts of specialists, who have actual knowledge and skills in manipulating the search engine results. Here is what Google has to say about this practice and its accompanying industry.
Those who wish to employ paid search listings (PPC), which can frequently be much cheaper than getting to the top of the organic listings, will utilize one of the following services:
Organic listings are best if you can get them, because they will deliver free traffic to your website, sometimes for years. On the other hand, given the cost of developing organic rankings, it often makes more sense to pay a little bit each month for PPC search traffic, rather than to pay thousands per month, sometimes for years, just to break into the top few pages of the organic search results.
Some Real-World Perspective
To get your website into page one of the organic search results, can be a daunting process. To put this into perspective, I ran some popular keywords through Google to see how many search results would be found. Here we go:
With 1.4 Billion (with a "B", not a "M") pages vying for page one results in Google for the word "travel", and 72 million pages struggling to be seen in Google for the search term "real estate agents", is it any wonder that the people in many industries are struggling to be seen online?
If your competitors are struggling to be at the top of the search results, so will you, unless you have extremely deep pockets. With that having been said, there are some industries where getting to page one will take an investment of millions, and then there still are No Guarantees that you will succeed in your endeavor.
There Is More Than One Way To Skin A Cat
At the end of each day, only ten websites will ever be on page one of the organic search results. But, pay-per-click lets anyone who has some money to spend, to break into page one of the search results.
Depending on your bank account and your business model, SEO or PPC may be the answer to getting people to visit your website and to buy what you are selling. Depending on your keywords, the ISEDN advertising opportunity may make more sense. I have used the ISEDN network (http://www.isedb.org), and I still do use them for some of my own advertising.
But when all is said and done, what matters is for you to get your advertising message in front of the people most likely to buy what you are selling.
My Advertising Model Of Choice
In my years online, I have always turned to article marketing to get my sales message in front of the people most likely to buy my products or services.
Case in point. You are reading an article that I have written, to speak to those people who are looking for ways to advertise their business online. And at the end of this article, you will see what is called a "resource box" or the "about the author information". The resource box, at the end of this article, is my advertisement for my business.
If you reach the end of this article and you read my resource box, then I will have succeeded in getting you (someone in my target audience) to read my advertisement. If you click the link in the resource box, then I will have succeeded in getting a potential client to visit my website. And finally, if you buy my products or services, then my website will have accomplished its purpose - to turn its visitors into buyers.
The interesting truth is - and few people will point this out to you - if you click the link below and visit my website, then you will have reached my website without actually passing through a search engine to get to it. That is the beauty of article marketing - you can use this advertising model to reach your target audience, regardless of how well or how badly you rank in the search engines.
In Conclusion
There is only one company who can guarantee you top rankings in Google, and that company is Google. Although Google could guarantee you top rankings in their search results, they won't do it; not for any amount of money.
So when you see some other company making pie-in-the-sky promises about how they can "guarantee your search engine rankings", get a solid grasp on your wallet and run... the other way... fast...
About the Author:
Bill Platt has written 100+ articles to promote his business online... Why? Because article marketing works miracles, for those people who actually seek to educate their readers. Bill has provided ghost writing and article distribution services to his clients, since 2001, at: http://www.thephantomwriters.com/ In 2007, Bill wrote an ebook to teach people how to duplicate his article writing success, by teaching folks how to write articles that attract publishers and readers, traffic, sales and profits: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html
Send More Loyal Visitors To Your Website
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2007-2008 Casey Moher
Lots of ways exist to help you increase your website visitors. You can spend time, money and considerable effort getting variable results with many of them. Attempting various methods and studying the results has been a focus of mine. I'll review one of my favorites for you.
Offer something FREE to your visitors.
There is a high perceived value on the part of your visitor if you can provide them with useful information. Information has a high perceived-value and can truly change lives.
The first thing for you to overcome is a huge level of cautious mis-trust on the part of your visitor. Overcoming this hurdle is vital to the success of your venture.
Your approach is to locate, capture and share information of value. Searching on-line for valuable information is the most expedient way to go. It doesn't take much search time before you will be discovering subjects and information that folks want to know. Once you find the topics being sought-for, you will want to spend your time learning and writing about them.
One strategy you can employ is to share the information in the form of a multi-day mini-course that people can receive from you. You will find more success if you spend the time necessary to make this a high-quality gift. Taking time and effort now will pay off many times in the future. It costs much less than you might think to do this.
You will be offering to share this information in exchange for your visitor's name and e-mail address. The most efficient way to capture this information is with a 'squeeze-page' You'll use a basic website as the platform for your squeeze page.
Cost is the least of your considerations in getting quality work done these days. You can get your squeeze page up and running within minutes.
Please feel free to call me if you would like to learn how to get your own squeeze page activated right away. You can move things to auto-pilot function starting with these strategits.
Put some steady effort into these methods and you can end up with a profitablel list. Your efforts can become continually more rewarding all the time for all concerned as you move forward with this venture.
You can reach people around the entire world and provide them with value using your valuable products, services and information. Financial as well as emotional rewards can be yours in this process.
You can provide valuable and needed information for internet visitors before ever mentioning your website to them. You can provide good, free, valuable information with a variety of methods. Useful information presented well should be your focus as you move ahead.
Focus on the fact that your online target audience is seeking information. They are NOT there looking for an opportunity to pull out their credit card for you. No trust is a hurdle you will always have in any business. Giving away free information is a very direct way to establish trust. Valuable information can be found readily on the internet. You also likely have more information and knowledge of your own than you realize. There are many sources of information where you can find topics of interest to huge numbers of people.
The article should inform, educate and even enthuse the reader, but should NOT sell something. If you write a self-serving article that is really a sales promotion, it will be very transparent. You will have done more to alienate and push people away than to pull them close. The nearest you will come to sellling something is your resource box at the end of your articles. It will tell them who you are and give them a website address together what they can expect to gain by visiting it.
There is an amazing program I've seen recently that automates the task of article-writing. Among other features, it utilizes a 30,000 word thesaurus. Each word in the thesaurus is linked to 200 synonyms. Merging tables and blocks of words together with sophisticated software is the backbone behind this powerful tool. Science and industry now have the capacity to produce, publish and distribute articles to thousands of readers.
This is truly an invaluable tool for anyone in the internet marketing business for the long haul. Article writing and publication should be an ongoing part of your strategy. If you want more information on these useful tools (or anything else in this article), just contact me.
About the Author:
Casey Moher - Caseymoher@comcast.net (801) 941-3334
Mr. Moher is a Registered Pharmacist and Life-Long Marketing and Sales Professional. You Can Get His Free Five-Day Mini-Course on Building Targeted Website Traffic by visiting: http://www.newtrafficmaster.com
Copyright © 2007-2008 Casey Moher
Lots of ways exist to help you increase your website visitors. You can spend time, money and considerable effort getting variable results with many of them. Attempting various methods and studying the results has been a focus of mine. I'll review one of my favorites for you.
Offer something FREE to your visitors.
There is a high perceived value on the part of your visitor if you can provide them with useful information. Information has a high perceived-value and can truly change lives.
The first thing for you to overcome is a huge level of cautious mis-trust on the part of your visitor. Overcoming this hurdle is vital to the success of your venture.
Your approach is to locate, capture and share information of value. Searching on-line for valuable information is the most expedient way to go. It doesn't take much search time before you will be discovering subjects and information that folks want to know. Once you find the topics being sought-for, you will want to spend your time learning and writing about them.
One strategy you can employ is to share the information in the form of a multi-day mini-course that people can receive from you. You will find more success if you spend the time necessary to make this a high-quality gift. Taking time and effort now will pay off many times in the future. It costs much less than you might think to do this.
You will be offering to share this information in exchange for your visitor's name and e-mail address. The most efficient way to capture this information is with a 'squeeze-page' You'll use a basic website as the platform for your squeeze page.
Cost is the least of your considerations in getting quality work done these days. You can get your squeeze page up and running within minutes.
Please feel free to call me if you would like to learn how to get your own squeeze page activated right away. You can move things to auto-pilot function starting with these strategits.
Put some steady effort into these methods and you can end up with a profitablel list. Your efforts can become continually more rewarding all the time for all concerned as you move forward with this venture.
You can reach people around the entire world and provide them with value using your valuable products, services and information. Financial as well as emotional rewards can be yours in this process.
You can provide valuable and needed information for internet visitors before ever mentioning your website to them. You can provide good, free, valuable information with a variety of methods. Useful information presented well should be your focus as you move ahead.
Focus on the fact that your online target audience is seeking information. They are NOT there looking for an opportunity to pull out their credit card for you. No trust is a hurdle you will always have in any business. Giving away free information is a very direct way to establish trust. Valuable information can be found readily on the internet. You also likely have more information and knowledge of your own than you realize. There are many sources of information where you can find topics of interest to huge numbers of people.
The article should inform, educate and even enthuse the reader, but should NOT sell something. If you write a self-serving article that is really a sales promotion, it will be very transparent. You will have done more to alienate and push people away than to pull them close. The nearest you will come to sellling something is your resource box at the end of your articles. It will tell them who you are and give them a website address together what they can expect to gain by visiting it.
There is an amazing program I've seen recently that automates the task of article-writing. Among other features, it utilizes a 30,000 word thesaurus. Each word in the thesaurus is linked to 200 synonyms. Merging tables and blocks of words together with sophisticated software is the backbone behind this powerful tool. Science and industry now have the capacity to produce, publish and distribute articles to thousands of readers.
This is truly an invaluable tool for anyone in the internet marketing business for the long haul. Article writing and publication should be an ongoing part of your strategy. If you want more information on these useful tools (or anything else in this article), just contact me.
About the Author:
Casey Moher - Caseymoher@comcast.net (801) 941-3334
Mr. Moher is a Registered Pharmacist and Life-Long Marketing and Sales Professional. You Can Get His Free Five-Day Mini-Course on Building Targeted Website Traffic by visiting: http://www.newtrafficmaster.com
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Increasing Your Targeted Traffic
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2007-2008 Casey Moher
There are dozens of good ways to send people to your website. These methods come with a wide variety of results and difficulty. Attempting various methods and studying the results has been a focus of mine. I'll review one of my favorites for you.
Offer something FREE to your visitors.
There is a high perceived value on the part of your visitor if you can provide them with useful information. By capturing and sharing this free information, you can make somebody's life better and easier in many regards.
It's simply human-nature that you must constantly work to over-come a basic mis-trust on the part of your visitor. This level of mis-trust MUST be overcome before you can succeed in your efforts.
Your focus should be to find and share valuable information. Finding (and sharing) information on-line is the quickest and most effective. It doesn't take much search time before you will be discovering subjects and information that folks want to know. This shows you the topics that are being inquired upon and which you will want to include in the information you give away.
One strategy you can employ is to share the information in the form of a multi-day mini-course that people can receive from you. Make the information package you send be of top-quality for maximum results. A little more time and attention at this point will have tremendous benefit in the value of your subscriber list. It costs much less than you might think to do this.
You will be offering to share this information in exchange for your visitor's name and e-mail address. A 'squeeze page' is the best tool to use for capturing this information. A squeeze-page is simply a basic website that presents your message offering the information.
Some very professional design work is available at affordable prices these days. Your own squeeze page can be up and capturing names for you in a very quick time.
If you would like to have your own squeeze page up and running, let me know. This is a great starting point in establishing your own highly-profitable list.
With care, your subscriber list can be cultivated and a long-term relationship built with the members. You can build a very rewarding and long-lasting enterprise by steadily and thoughtfully putting these concepts to work.
Like any offline business, you are providing genuine value to your customers who have grown to trust your motives and your interest in helping them. You can be paid very well in the process.
The best strategy in any relationship-selling environment is one where you give before ever trying to take. As with other strategies, here, again you are providing something of value free to the reader. This time it is in a different format and is made available to the reader using different tools and strategies. Quality in what you provide and how you provide it is essential, easy and inexpensive.
A focus on providing information to the people you wish to reach should be foremost in your mind. They will be willing to buy something from you (now or in the future) only if they first perceive that you have something they need or want. The biggest obstacle you will always face with new readers is one of NO TRUST! Providing something free is a great way to start building it. Valuable information can be found readily on the internet. You also likely have more information and knowledge of your own than you realize. There are many sources of information where you can find topics of interest to huge numbers of people.
The article should inform, educate and even enthuse the reader, but should NOT sell something. Your articles are not the place to sell some product or service. It is their job to inform and establish your credibility and TRUST! Your key marketing tool with the article publishing strategy is found in using a resource box. This is simply an area at the end describing who you are and giving your website address where they can visit and benefit by what you offer there.
I've seen a tremendous piece of software in action that automates the process of article-writing. This tool merges blocks of words, uses a 30,000 word thesaurus and manges data bases, as well. There is some new software out there (along with people-run businesses) that helps with article production as well as distribution.
Article writing and publishing should be part of an on-going strategy. Computers and professional service companies make this vital function much easier. If you want more information on these useful tools (or anything else in this article), just contact me.
About the Author:
Casey Moher - Caseymoher@comcast.net (801) 941-3334
Mr. Moher is a Registered Pharmacist and Life-Long Marketing and Sales Professional. You Can Get His Free Five-Day Mini-Course on Building Targeted Website Traffic by visiting: http://www.newtrafficmaster.com
Copyright © 2007-2008 Casey Moher
There are dozens of good ways to send people to your website. These methods come with a wide variety of results and difficulty. Attempting various methods and studying the results has been a focus of mine. I'll review one of my favorites for you.
Offer something FREE to your visitors.
There is a high perceived value on the part of your visitor if you can provide them with useful information. By capturing and sharing this free information, you can make somebody's life better and easier in many regards.
It's simply human-nature that you must constantly work to over-come a basic mis-trust on the part of your visitor. This level of mis-trust MUST be overcome before you can succeed in your efforts.
Your focus should be to find and share valuable information. Finding (and sharing) information on-line is the quickest and most effective. It doesn't take much search time before you will be discovering subjects and information that folks want to know. This shows you the topics that are being inquired upon and which you will want to include in the information you give away.
One strategy you can employ is to share the information in the form of a multi-day mini-course that people can receive from you. Make the information package you send be of top-quality for maximum results. A little more time and attention at this point will have tremendous benefit in the value of your subscriber list. It costs much less than you might think to do this.
You will be offering to share this information in exchange for your visitor's name and e-mail address. A 'squeeze page' is the best tool to use for capturing this information. A squeeze-page is simply a basic website that presents your message offering the information.
Some very professional design work is available at affordable prices these days. Your own squeeze page can be up and capturing names for you in a very quick time.
If you would like to have your own squeeze page up and running, let me know. This is a great starting point in establishing your own highly-profitable list.
With care, your subscriber list can be cultivated and a long-term relationship built with the members. You can build a very rewarding and long-lasting enterprise by steadily and thoughtfully putting these concepts to work.
Like any offline business, you are providing genuine value to your customers who have grown to trust your motives and your interest in helping them. You can be paid very well in the process.
The best strategy in any relationship-selling environment is one where you give before ever trying to take. As with other strategies, here, again you are providing something of value free to the reader. This time it is in a different format and is made available to the reader using different tools and strategies. Quality in what you provide and how you provide it is essential, easy and inexpensive.
A focus on providing information to the people you wish to reach should be foremost in your mind. They will be willing to buy something from you (now or in the future) only if they first perceive that you have something they need or want. The biggest obstacle you will always face with new readers is one of NO TRUST! Providing something free is a great way to start building it. Valuable information can be found readily on the internet. You also likely have more information and knowledge of your own than you realize. There are many sources of information where you can find topics of interest to huge numbers of people.
The article should inform, educate and even enthuse the reader, but should NOT sell something. Your articles are not the place to sell some product or service. It is their job to inform and establish your credibility and TRUST! Your key marketing tool with the article publishing strategy is found in using a resource box. This is simply an area at the end describing who you are and giving your website address where they can visit and benefit by what you offer there.
I've seen a tremendous piece of software in action that automates the process of article-writing. This tool merges blocks of words, uses a 30,000 word thesaurus and manges data bases, as well. There is some new software out there (along with people-run businesses) that helps with article production as well as distribution.
Article writing and publishing should be part of an on-going strategy. Computers and professional service companies make this vital function much easier. If you want more information on these useful tools (or anything else in this article), just contact me.
About the Author:
Casey Moher - Caseymoher@comcast.net (801) 941-3334
Mr. Moher is a Registered Pharmacist and Life-Long Marketing and Sales Professional. You Can Get His Free Five-Day Mini-Course on Building Targeted Website Traffic by visiting: http://www.newtrafficmaster.com
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Avoid Keyword Suicide in Your Network Marketing or Online Business
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 Trey Pennewell
If you're involved in Network Marketing or MLM - same thing, different verbiage - one of the biggest challenges you will have is driving traffic to your web site. Now this could be your product site or you business opportunity site.
In many Network Marketing companies (if not all), you are given replicated web sites to send traffic too. However, there is one basic problem with that, and that is... they are replicated web sites. Your website looks exactly like the website of the other people participating with the same company. Your websites look alike, and its keywords are exactly the same. The only difference between your site and that of your neighbor is that you might get to brand your website with your own name. (What most companies fail to tell you is that the search engines frequently ignore replicated websites.)
The most successful Network Marketers know that a replicated web site is all fine and good, but if you want to have control over the amount of traffic you send to your product or opportunity web site, you need to have a domain of your own.
Why?
The basic cornerstone of any web site is the keywords that the search engines are going to use to index your site. If you are using a replicated web site, the keyword structure is usually very generic and not site specific - that is the reason why search engines ignore replicated websites.
In order to have a successful web site, you need to have control over your site, starting with the keywords of that site and the links that lead to your sales pages. Besides that, you might have more than one network marketing opportunity to promote, and you cannot promote other opportunities from your replicated websites.
But the trick, for the lack of a better word, is NOT to fight to rank in the search engines for the same keywords everyone else is targeting.
This would be "keyword suicide".
Every boy and his dog are probably fighting to rank for the keywords: MLM, Network Marketing, Home based Business, and so on. Great keywords like these are all but impossible to achieve a number one listing through the organic search results (free listings in the regular search results). People who are expending their resources trying to rank for these very competitive keywords will usually go broke, before they achieve their goals or any profits.
You should understand that you don't need the "big gun key words" to drive a huge amount of traffic to your website, and therefore to what you are promoting. Start with what is called "fringe keywords". These are less-searched keywords that are still target-specific keywords for whatever it is that you are trying to promote.
Think about it, you can become a big fish in a little pond, if you target keyword phrases that the others have not thought of or that others did not consider worthwhile. But, if you target 100 to 200 fringe (smaller searched) keywords, which are averaging 1500 queries per day, and you multiply that by the 200 keywords your rank for, then all your targeted keywords are now getting a combined daily query of 300,000 queries a day.
By targeting lesser-searched keywords, your chances of being listed on the first page of the search engines just went up ten-fold, maybe even one-hundred-fold. Just imagine having a first page listing on 100 or 200 search engine results pages for these lesser-searched keywords; how do you think that would affect your website traffic? I will tell you from personal experience - it could be huge!
So where do you start?
Well if you are like most people, you head to http://www.Google.com, http://www.Yahoo.com or even http://www.MSN.com and start researching keywords. You punch in keywords, to see who has the first page listings and then head to those sites, and check out their keywords by viewing their source code.
Let me ask you a very important question: "Do you want to work hard, or do you want to work smart?"
Most people will choose the path of least resistance and choose to work smart, unless they simply do not know any better.
Doing keyword research is time consuming and it is hard work, so to make your job faster and more efficient; instead of going to Google, Yahoo and MSN to research keywords, you should be heading to http://www.Widow.com
I know you have probably never heard of Widow Search, but I will tell you now: if you are trying to do keyword research, you should forget about http://www.WordTracker.com and all of those other paid keyword research tools. I have found in my own experience that the keyword research tools are generally flawed and offer me only one piece of information that I cannot get from Widow. The one missing component is the estimated search traffic, but if you are targeting "fringe keywords", then the volume of search is a really small consideration in your strategy.
Widow.com is a Meta search engine. With one click of a button, you can get the listings for your keywords from Google, Yahoo, MSN, http://www.DMOZ.org and http://www.AllTheWeb.com
Here's how Window.com works: like most Meta search engines, Widow does not own the database; it creates what is known as a virtual database. It takes your request, in this case your keyword research request, to several other search engines and/or databases and aggregates the results into a single list and displays them according to their source.
Not only does Widow provide you information for your query from multiply search engines, it also has a Cluster Search feature. This feature is set as the default search setting; you can turn it off and just have a blended search if you prefer, but once you understand the power of a clustered search, I don't know why anyone doing keyword research would want it turned off. You can also set the number of result views per page.
Here's how the clustering feature is a huge time saver and its many advantages. Let's use the keyword phrase "Network Marketing" as the phrase that you wish to do keyword research.
Currently when I type in "Network Marketing", it is showing the top 10 results from the multiple search engines Widow accesses, but on the left hand side of the page is my Cluster Search Results. My cluster search results has provided links for the following:
Resources, Company, Multi Level, Companies and Income; there are more, but these are the top five cluster results. In addition, within each one of these results are even more results. Now many people say that all a cluster is doing is to attempt to display themes within your results. Yes, that is true and that is a good thing. Remember, the strategy I am talking about here is to find the keywords on the "fringes" of the primary keyword phrases, so themed results will allow you to uncover those fringe keywords more quickly and efficiently.
The cluster search results allows you to drill down into the set of your results and to do it all from one search engine and one search query.
Here is the other huge advantage of using a Meta search engine like Widow, over let's say Google (the big boy on the block). Meta search engines like Widow clear away all the clutter and paid listings that are found on search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.
When you think about it, all of these search results on the big three search engines are competing for space and the attention from the user, for its paid advertisers. Web crawlers are influenced by cross-linking, Google-bombing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb), and the efforts by commercial webmasters to skew the PageRank (link popularity) scores. Therefore, the result given back to you is not a true picture of the available information, because of all the influential factors that are typically associated with search, can be manipulated by commercial enterprises.
However, a Meta engine like Widow must combine the search results and average those results (votes) from the related search engines to reveal more comprehensive and accurate results. Moreover, to keep the search result as unbiased a possible, Widow does include many paid search listings.
This benefits the user by eliminating duplicate hits and grouping the most relevant results at the top of the list. You are now doing a more efficient search of the web, and you're doing it with one search engine. Given that the Widow Search tool also incorporates Clustered Search Results and Similar Terms in its search results, the network marketer will find the task of keyword research greatly simplified and more comprehensive, than keyword-research gathered from another source. And more beneficially, Widow Search is a free service, available not only to webmasters and network marketers, but also to the general public.
So I ask you again "Do you want to work hard or work smart?"
Once you have used Widow Search as often as I have, you will finally understand that the old way is the "working hard" way and Widow Search is the "working smart" way. Check it out. I am sure that after you have used it a few times, you will agree with me on this one.
About the Author:
Trey Pennewell is one of the dozens of ghost writers creating content for the clients of http://www.thephantomwriters.com article marketing service. Trey's articles appear on numerous blogs, including many of the blogs that accept articles from The Phantom Writers article distribution service, such as the one located at: http://byte-sized-marketing.blogspot.com
Copyright © 2008 Trey Pennewell
If you're involved in Network Marketing or MLM - same thing, different verbiage - one of the biggest challenges you will have is driving traffic to your web site. Now this could be your product site or you business opportunity site.
In many Network Marketing companies (if not all), you are given replicated web sites to send traffic too. However, there is one basic problem with that, and that is... they are replicated web sites. Your website looks exactly like the website of the other people participating with the same company. Your websites look alike, and its keywords are exactly the same. The only difference between your site and that of your neighbor is that you might get to brand your website with your own name. (What most companies fail to tell you is that the search engines frequently ignore replicated websites.)
The most successful Network Marketers know that a replicated web site is all fine and good, but if you want to have control over the amount of traffic you send to your product or opportunity web site, you need to have a domain of your own.
Why?
The basic cornerstone of any web site is the keywords that the search engines are going to use to index your site. If you are using a replicated web site, the keyword structure is usually very generic and not site specific - that is the reason why search engines ignore replicated websites.
In order to have a successful web site, you need to have control over your site, starting with the keywords of that site and the links that lead to your sales pages. Besides that, you might have more than one network marketing opportunity to promote, and you cannot promote other opportunities from your replicated websites.
But the trick, for the lack of a better word, is NOT to fight to rank in the search engines for the same keywords everyone else is targeting.
This would be "keyword suicide".
Every boy and his dog are probably fighting to rank for the keywords: MLM, Network Marketing, Home based Business, and so on. Great keywords like these are all but impossible to achieve a number one listing through the organic search results (free listings in the regular search results). People who are expending their resources trying to rank for these very competitive keywords will usually go broke, before they achieve their goals or any profits.
You should understand that you don't need the "big gun key words" to drive a huge amount of traffic to your website, and therefore to what you are promoting. Start with what is called "fringe keywords". These are less-searched keywords that are still target-specific keywords for whatever it is that you are trying to promote.
Think about it, you can become a big fish in a little pond, if you target keyword phrases that the others have not thought of or that others did not consider worthwhile. But, if you target 100 to 200 fringe (smaller searched) keywords, which are averaging 1500 queries per day, and you multiply that by the 200 keywords your rank for, then all your targeted keywords are now getting a combined daily query of 300,000 queries a day.
By targeting lesser-searched keywords, your chances of being listed on the first page of the search engines just went up ten-fold, maybe even one-hundred-fold. Just imagine having a first page listing on 100 or 200 search engine results pages for these lesser-searched keywords; how do you think that would affect your website traffic? I will tell you from personal experience - it could be huge!
So where do you start?
Well if you are like most people, you head to http://www.Google.com, http://www.Yahoo.com or even http://www.MSN.com and start researching keywords. You punch in keywords, to see who has the first page listings and then head to those sites, and check out their keywords by viewing their source code.
Let me ask you a very important question: "Do you want to work hard, or do you want to work smart?"
Most people will choose the path of least resistance and choose to work smart, unless they simply do not know any better.
Doing keyword research is time consuming and it is hard work, so to make your job faster and more efficient; instead of going to Google, Yahoo and MSN to research keywords, you should be heading to http://www.Widow.com
I know you have probably never heard of Widow Search, but I will tell you now: if you are trying to do keyword research, you should forget about http://www.WordTracker.com and all of those other paid keyword research tools. I have found in my own experience that the keyword research tools are generally flawed and offer me only one piece of information that I cannot get from Widow. The one missing component is the estimated search traffic, but if you are targeting "fringe keywords", then the volume of search is a really small consideration in your strategy.
Widow.com is a Meta search engine. With one click of a button, you can get the listings for your keywords from Google, Yahoo, MSN, http://www.DMOZ.org and http://www.AllTheWeb.com
Here's how Window.com works: like most Meta search engines, Widow does not own the database; it creates what is known as a virtual database. It takes your request, in this case your keyword research request, to several other search engines and/or databases and aggregates the results into a single list and displays them according to their source.
Not only does Widow provide you information for your query from multiply search engines, it also has a Cluster Search feature. This feature is set as the default search setting; you can turn it off and just have a blended search if you prefer, but once you understand the power of a clustered search, I don't know why anyone doing keyword research would want it turned off. You can also set the number of result views per page.
Here's how the clustering feature is a huge time saver and its many advantages. Let's use the keyword phrase "Network Marketing" as the phrase that you wish to do keyword research.
Currently when I type in "Network Marketing", it is showing the top 10 results from the multiple search engines Widow accesses, but on the left hand side of the page is my Cluster Search Results. My cluster search results has provided links for the following:
Resources, Company, Multi Level, Companies and Income; there are more, but these are the top five cluster results. In addition, within each one of these results are even more results. Now many people say that all a cluster is doing is to attempt to display themes within your results. Yes, that is true and that is a good thing. Remember, the strategy I am talking about here is to find the keywords on the "fringes" of the primary keyword phrases, so themed results will allow you to uncover those fringe keywords more quickly and efficiently.
The cluster search results allows you to drill down into the set of your results and to do it all from one search engine and one search query.
Here is the other huge advantage of using a Meta search engine like Widow, over let's say Google (the big boy on the block). Meta search engines like Widow clear away all the clutter and paid listings that are found on search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.
When you think about it, all of these search results on the big three search engines are competing for space and the attention from the user, for its paid advertisers. Web crawlers are influenced by cross-linking, Google-bombing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb), and the efforts by commercial webmasters to skew the PageRank (link popularity) scores. Therefore, the result given back to you is not a true picture of the available information, because of all the influential factors that are typically associated with search, can be manipulated by commercial enterprises.
However, a Meta engine like Widow must combine the search results and average those results (votes) from the related search engines to reveal more comprehensive and accurate results. Moreover, to keep the search result as unbiased a possible, Widow does include many paid search listings.
This benefits the user by eliminating duplicate hits and grouping the most relevant results at the top of the list. You are now doing a more efficient search of the web, and you're doing it with one search engine. Given that the Widow Search tool also incorporates Clustered Search Results and Similar Terms in its search results, the network marketer will find the task of keyword research greatly simplified and more comprehensive, than keyword-research gathered from another source. And more beneficially, Widow Search is a free service, available not only to webmasters and network marketers, but also to the general public.
So I ask you again "Do you want to work hard or work smart?"
Once you have used Widow Search as often as I have, you will finally understand that the old way is the "working hard" way and Widow Search is the "working smart" way. Check it out. I am sure that after you have used it a few times, you will agree with me on this one.
About the Author:
Trey Pennewell is one of the dozens of ghost writers creating content for the clients of http://www.thephantomwriters.com article marketing service. Trey's articles appear on numerous blogs, including many of the blogs that accept articles from The Phantom Writers article distribution service, such as the one located at: http://byte-sized-marketing.blogspot.com
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