TRAFFIC DOMINATOR

Traffic Generation and Internet Marketing Articles
Lead Generation How to -- 10 Tips On Generating
More Internet Marketing Leads

Copyright © 2005 Bryant Jones

Many millions of dollars are being wasted on promoting and sending traffic to ineffective lead
generation websites. Here are my top 10 tips to make your site generate more leads for you and your company.

1. Keep it clean.

A busy, cluttered website will drive visitors directly to your competitor. Make sure your site is easy
to navigate and clutter free. We've all been to websites that are awash with information. While you need to get your message across you don't want to scare your potential customers away. Make sure your site looks tidy, with as few colors as possible. Too many flashing banners and ads will undoubtedly detract your visitors from the actual content on your site. Don't include too much highlighting. If you highlight every word in your text, it isn't highlighted it's simply bold.

2. Make it quick.

Studies have shown that the average surfer will give any site only 3 to 4 seconds before they
 formulate that all important first decision. Don't forget that first impressions last so you need to dispense with graphics that take too long to load, ensure that any necessary pictures are of a minimal file size (picture size is irrelevant here) and definitely do not have an all graphics site; they take an age to load, not to mention the search engines can not do anything with them.

3. It's all about conversion.

Paying for a PPC campaign is a very popular way to get visitors to your site, but you have to be
 careful that you manage your account for conversion not clicks. Spend money only on those keywords that convert to leads. Use the conversion tracking offered by Google and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formally Overture). Or use some other ad tracking software. The main point here is your ad campaign should be an investment, not an expense and if you are not tracking your conversion rate how will you know which it really is?

4. Create trust.

You will not generate leads from a website that does not radiate trustworthiness. Use third party
 trust indicators liberally on your site, for example testimonials, membership organization logos,
 and endorsements. Also if you state something that may be hard for your visitor to believe, explain to them the details so you build credibility.

5. Copy is the key.

Your website copy needs to be compelling, informative and lead the reader to take your desired
 action. Do not list facts and features, state benefits. You reader doesn't care if your widget does the quarter mile in 2.5 seconds. They want a widget that "Does the job so fast they can get done and take off early to go fishing"... See the difference?

6. Pre-qualify leads with content not questions

If you need a certain demographic lead, make sure your copy spells it out clearly. Clearly
 explaining the details about who is qualified for you product or service will keep you from having to screen out unqualified leads with too many questions on your form. Which brings me to my next point...

7. Shorter forms actually make for better leads

Highly qualified and highly educated prospects guard their personal information closely; keep
 forms short and only ask the minimum number of questions. Long forms with too many personal questions tend to reduce the quality and quantity of your leads. When someone is willing to share
all their personal information there is a good chance that person has nothing to lose. You have to consider what information you really need from your leads. If you don't need to know then don't ask. You can always send a follow up email. This will act not only as a good fact finder but also as your next step in creating rapport.

8. Make it easy.

Have a form on every page, or at least on every page that it makes sense to have it on. Visitors to
 your site won't take the time to trawl through 12 pages of website content to find your form and fill it out. I have seen a tremendous increase in leads when I added the form to every page of a site. I would caution you about having a form too prominent on you home page though, it tends to scare some visitors off.

9. Sweeten the deal.

Give away free information to entice visitors to fill out your form. Throughout time people have
 always loved a bargain. The feeling of getting something for nothing is usually enough to help persuade the unsure, and will often lead to extra leads and extra sales. Make sue that you give away something with a high perceived value, no one is enticed with junk.

10. Communicate in the right language and add personality.

Using plain language that communicates the personality of you and your company will build trust
 and rapport. Don't use technical jargon if you are trying to reach the masses. Very few people are likely to know industry buzz words . Keep it simple and informative and add personality at the same time. Try and answer questions before they are asked.

Use these 10 tips and generating sales leads from your website will become much easier  and a lot more profitable.  


Bryant Jones is a lead generation consultant, S.E.O. expert and the managing partner of
LeadsSolution.com (http://www.leadssolution.com). LeadsSolution.com provides lead generation services including lead generation websites and sales leads to businesses both small and large.
Top 10 Tips for Writing Google Ads

by Van Day, 2005

Here are my top 10 tips and recommendations for writing effective AdWords ads, along with some programs and resources that can help you in setting your AdWords campaigns up properly and quickly.

These tips will allow you to create ads that attract the visitors' attention, get targeted visitors with a higher click through rate, a lower cost per click, and an overall higher ROI. And allow you to do  it quickly, so that you can start recouping your investment right away, and realize some  immediate profits.

1. Identify and Target The Right Audience

Make sure you've targeted the right language and countries, right off the bat.  As an example, if you're in North America, make sure you exclude all the countries where English is not understood or spoken.

2. Refine Your Keywords

Use square brackets "[...]" around your keyword/s.
For example:

[google]
[google adwords]

Your ad will only show when the search is for the exact keyword phrase you have included within the brackets.

The ad will not show for searches that include other keywords. In my example, this would be for searches such as "google search," or "google news."

For a great resource on how to do this, you should read Chris Carpenter's ebook, Google Cash.

I've personally found WordTracker to also be a great help in the keyword process as well.

3. Include Targeted Keywords In Your Ad

Include the targeted keywords in the headline and the description of the ad. Google will highlight searched keywords in bold in the ad.

When people scan search results, they look for the keywords they have entered. Searched keywords highlighted in bold certainly help to catch the user's attention. For this reason, ads with searched keywords usually perform better than ones without.

For the best source of information on identifying and refining keywords, read Jeff Alerderson's book, AdWords Analyzer.

4. Write Ads that Have Emotion, Create Enthusiasm, and Grab the Reader's Attention

Always start your headline with an attention grabbing word.

Use power words or phrases that incent the reader to take action or evokes in them strong emotions.  Make sure the phrase is specific to the site your are promoting, or Google may reject the ad application.

And to help you write the best AdWords ad copy, you MUST, without a doubt,  review Jeff Alderson's AdWords Generator.  It is one of, if not the, best products on the 'Net when it comes to Google Adwords.

5. Make Sure You Sell Your Differentiator in the Ad

What ever it is that makes your site, product or service better and/or different, from the competitive sites, be sure you sell that in the ad.

For example, one of Amazon.com's first taglines was "Earth's Biggest Bookstore."

Another great book on this subject is Rodney Rumford's Guide to Google Profit.

6. Link To a Relevant Landing Pages

If an ad is for a specific product or service, create a landing page for the ad.  Include relevant and useful information to convert the customer. If possible,  capture the email for further marketing. Generally, a well designed landing page will almost always convert more visitors than if you simply sent the visitor to the home page.

7. Remove Common Words

In order to save valuable ad space, be sure to remove common words, such as "a, an, in, on, it, of, etc." Every word should count--you only have just a small  amount of valuable space!

8. Weed out those hunting for freebies!

Make sure you "qualify" your visitors with your ad content, in order that you don't have a bunch of freebie hunters clicking on your ad in the hopes of getting something free. You can deter freebie hunters by including the price of the product or service at the end of the ad. This will improve your overall conversion ratio and lower your average customer acquisition cost.

This may reduce your click through ratio, but that's OK. After all, you're not trying to target everybody, only potential customers. In most cases, freebie hunters will never become paying customers.

9. Simultaneously Do Split Testing

Always test 2 (or more) ads simultaneously. This is known as split A/B testing.  Determine which one has the best click through rate, then redo the other ad with new copy.  Continue this process consistently.  All the marketers who make money with Google do this, all the time!

10. Track The Return-On-Investment Of Each Ad

Google tracks the click through rate of an ad, but doesn't track any conversion ratios. To be honest with you, the analysis tools the Google provides are not good at all.  The best product out there, that can help you manage your Google campaigns, is Rodney Rumford's proven product, Adwords ProfitSoft.  He has used this tool himself to manage all his clients' campaigns, and has just recently released it for sale on the 'Net.

Conclusion:

Remember that advertising is a never-ending series of tests. Always track your ads. Never stop testing different keywords and ads to improve your conversion ratio, lower your ad cost, and increase your ROI.

Advertising in Google's AdWords program really works, and works fast, if you spend the right amount of time upfront ensuring that you properly set everything up correctly.

The primary products that are recommended in this article are:

All of these resources can be found at Profit With Google .
Van Day is also the owner of Traffic Dominator and Piano Music 4 You.

SEO One-way Web Links: 5 Strategies

by Joel Walsh

With so much talk about search engines putting a damper on direct reciprocal links, the hunt for the elusive one-way inbound link is on.

As someone who works with small business website owners, I've heard just about every inbound-linking scheme there is. In the end, I've only seen five strategies that really work consistently for getting hundreds of links.

Less Effective One-Way Link Strategies

Yet there's perennial interest in alternative linking strategies. They range from bad to OK, but none offer as much potential as the five major ways of getting links.

* Link farms never seem to die. The latest variations try to pass themselves off as viral marketing, but are really a sort of endless pyramid scheme: you link to me, so I link to someone else, who links to someone else, and on and on down the line. Link farms can get you delisted from search engine indexes, so don't even try them.

* Affiliates can provide you with one-way inbound links if you use affiliate software that links directly to your site rather than through a redirect. But many, many affiliates are now placing all their affiliate links in redirects of their own invention, to help protect their commissions from pirates who will simply apply to the program themselves to get a discount.

* Posting to web forums and blogs regularly will get you one-way inbound links, but they'll only have search-engine value a small percentage of the time. Many blogs and bulletin boards use search-engine-unfriendly dynamic file formats, automatically encase links in script, or use robot instructions to prevent spiders from following links.

* Many one-way inbound linking strategies fall into the great-if-you-are-lucky-enough-to-get-it category, such as winning a web award or being featured on a high-PageRank website just for being so great.

* Other one-way incoming link strategies are in the this-will-take-forever-to-get-anywhere category, such as offering to provide testimonials to all your vendors in exchange for a link to your site. (Hint: If you can get more than twenty links that way, you probably need to simplify your supply chain.)

Now, on to the five major ways of getting large numbers of one-way inbound links. Some are better than others, but they all have more potential than some of the more madcapped strategies. Of course, none is a good strategy all on its own. You have to understand all five strategies in order to really gain a distinct advantage in the one-way link hunt.

1. Waiting for Inbound Links

If you have good content you will eventually get one-way inbound links naturally, without asking. Organic, freely given links are an essential part of any SEO strategy. But you cannot rely on them, for two reasons:

* Unfortunately, 'eventually' can be a very long time.

* Worse, there is a vicious cycle: you can't get search engine traffic, or other non-paid traffic, without inbound links; yet without inbound links or search engine traffic, how is anyone going to find you to give you inbound links?

2. Triangulating for Inbound Links

Search engines will have a tough time dampening reciprocal links if the reciprocation is not direct. To get links to one website you offer in exchange a link from another website you also control. This would seem to be a mostly foolproof way of defeating the link-dampening ambitions of Google and the rest. If you have more than one website, you probably are already employing this linking method. There are only a few drawbacks:

* You need to have more than one website in the same general category of interest or the links won't be relevant.

* The work required to set up this kind of arrangement and verify compliance is not insignificant. The process cannot be automated to the same extent as direct one-to-one reciprocal linking.

* As with traditional reciprocal links, a very big drawback is that the links are mostly on 'Resources' pages that are just lists of links. There's only a small chance of getting significant traffic from these links. Plus, any 'Resource' page may well eventually become an easy target for link dampening, if that hasn't happened already.

3. Submitting to Directories

They are the legendary fairy lands of SEO: PageRank-passing, no-fee-charging, and actually well-run directories of relevant links. Yes, they really do exist. An SEO acquaintance tells me he knows 200 good ones just off the top of his head. Plus, there are other kinds of directories: directories of affiliate programs, of websites using a certain content management system, of websites whose owners are members of this or that group, of websites accepting PayPal, etc. etc.

Ah, a link in a PageRank-passing link directory: it's a good deal if you can get it. But let's say you do get links from all 200 such directories and a hundred more from the little niche directories--now what?

4. Paying for Inbound Links

Buying and selling text links on high-PageRank web pages has become big business. Buying good traffic-generating 'clean' links is a great alternative to pay-per-click advertising, which confers no SEO benefit. But, there are a number of pitfalls of relying primarily on paid links for SEO:

* The cost of the hundreds of links required for substantial search engine traffic can become prohibitive.

* As soon as you stop paying, you lose your link--you are essentially renting rather than owning, with no 'link equity' building up.

* Google is actively trying to dampen the impact of paid links on rankings, as revealed in various patent filings. A website can try to mask the fact that the links are paid, but how well it does that is out of your control.

* Given Google's mission to dampen paid links' effectiveness, paid link buyers have an interest in verifying that a potential paid link partner is 'passing PageRank.' But identifying appropriate PageRank-passing paid link partners is quite a task in itself.

* Google also has a stated mission of dampening the value of any 'artificial' links. Having most of your links on PageRank 3 or higher web pages would seem to be a dead give-away that your links are 'artificial,' since the vast majority of web pages (note: not necessarily websites, but their pages) are PageRank 1 or lower. Meanwhile, buying PageRank 0 or 1 links would have so little impact on a site's PageRank that it would not be worth the expense.

5. Distributing Content

All of the above four inbound-link-generating methods really do work. But it is the fifth method of getting one-way inbound links that is the most promising: distributing content

The idea is simple: you give other websites content to put on their sites in exchange for a link to your site, usually in an 'author's resource box,' an 'about the author' paragraph at the end of the article.

The beauty of distributing content for links is that the links generally generate more traffic than links on a 'resources' page. Plus, your article will pre-sell readers on the value of your site.

The downside, of course, is that it's no small amount of work to create original content and then distribute it to hundreds of website owners. But nothing good ever came easy. And on the internet, one-way inbound links are a very good thing.

Joel Walsh is the head content writer for UpMarket Content. Get more information on website content promotion

Make Your Traffic Pay With Google AdSense

By Shelley Lowery

If you've been looking for an easy and effective way to generate revenue from your website, Google AdSense just may the answer.

AdSense is a powerful new advertising revenue program that's taking the online world by storm. It was created by Google to enable sites that are rich in content to increase their advertising revenue simply by displaying Google AdWords pay-per-click ads.

Google AdSense really makes selling advertising space very easy since they handle everything for you. With access to a database of over 100,000 advertisers, you'll never have to worry about finding reliable advertisers for your site again. 

The concept is really very simple. If you have a high-quality site that provides text-based content (such as articles) you may qualify to display Google AdWords text ads on your web pages. Once your site is approved, you'll receive a portion of the pay-per-click charge for each click-through.

The great thing about Google's amazing AdSense advertising system is that it displays ads on your web pages that are relevant to the content on the page. Adsense's Mediabot first scans the page to determine the theme of the content.  Google then displays text ads that match the page's theme. This increases click-through rates considerably because relevant text ads displayed in proximity with quality content are highly effective.

Although it's free to apply to the AdSense program, Google will review your site and approve or reject it for participation.

Since there has been a great many sites that were rejected, you should make sure that your site meets Google's criteria before you apply. You can find the guidelines here: https://www.google.com/adsense/policies

Google is basically looking for high-quality sites that offer lots of text-based content. The key words to keep in mind here are "quality" and "content." If your site is loaded with
advertising, under construction, or has broken images and links, you probably won't be accepted. But if you have a quality site and provide your visitors with plenty of relevant content you should easily get in. 

The more content-rich pages that are on your site, the more advertising revenue you can earn. It's really that simple. If you don't have content of your own, there's a wealth of free content available on the internet! Just subscribe to any of the following article announcement groups to receive new article submissions each and every day:

Article Announce - Articles on all types of topics

AABusiness - Articles that are business oriented, including: Business, Networking, E-commerce, Sales, Business Communication, Promotion, Internet Marketing, etc.

AAInternet - Internet/web oriented articles, including:
Web Design, Web Development, Ebooks, Ezines, Web Sites, Search Engines, etc. 

AAHome - Home, Garden, and Family oriented articles, including: Home, Parenting, Gardening, Relationships, Cooking, Crafts, Recipes, etc. 

AAHealth - Health & Fitness related articles, including physical and emotional health topics.

AAGeneral - General Interest types of articles.

With your subscription to any of these groups, you'll not only receive new article submissions delivered to your email, but you'll also have access to the archives which already contain thousands of top-quality articles.

Visit this URL for more information:
http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm

Once you've found a few articles that are relevant to your website, simply create a new page for each one. For example, if you find five relevant articles, you can create five brand new content pages on which you can display your Google AdWords ads.

Not only will you be adding valuable content for your visitors to use, but you'll also increase your site's traffic and revenue  potential. It's very much a win-win proposition no matter how you look at it.

Once Google has approved your site, you simply choose the style of ads you'd like to use and paste the AdSense code into your web pages where you want the ads to display. 

Although all of the ads are text ads, there are currently four layout options to select from:

  ·  Standard 468 x 60 banner format (displays up to 2 ads)

  ·  Vertical 120 x 600 skyscraper ad (displays up to 4 ads)

  ·  Horizontal 728 x 90 Leaderboard (displays up to 4 ads)

  ·  300 x 250 Inline rectangle (displays up to 4 ads)

Although all four ad styles can be effective, the "skyscraper" ads placed toward the top right side of your page or the "Leaderboard" ads placed at the top of the page generally will provide a higher click-through rate than the other two styles.

But each page is different so your results may vary. You should test the different formats on your pages and use the style that is most effective for the content.

Once you begin to display the ads on your site, you can visit AdSense and log in to your account. You'll be able to see how your ad campaign is performing. You can view the number of clicks, impressions, click-through rate and your accrued revenue. 

If some of the ads compete with your own products or services, you can log in to your account and "filter out" the unwanted ads. Also, you can display other ads as long as they ads don't mimic AdWords ads.

Google AdSense is quite simply the best advertising revenue program available right now. Why not take the plunge and start earning some revenue from your website?

You can get all the details on the AdSense website.
 

Shelley Lowery is the publisher of Etips -- Web Design, Internet Marketing, and Ecommerce Solutions. Visit
Web-Source.net to sign up for a free subscription and receive a free copy of her highly acclaimed ebook:
"Killer Internet Marketing Strategies.

10 Minutes to Your Google Sitemap...

Copyright © 2005 Ron Hutton

Google's calling your name...

Hi, Google here. We want to index your website...

Is anyone there?

This article has a free corresponding online video tutorial that shows you how to summons the magic Googlebot to spider and index every page on your website, and it will only take about 10 minutes of your time.

Go here now to watch exactly what to do, step-by-easy-step...

http://www.gothrive.com/google-sitemap-video.htm

What you have access to with the new Google Sitemaps program is truly a gift from the Google gods. They've offering you a tool that you can use to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in the search engine database. With Google Sitemaps, webmasters can now take charge and make sure that their entire site is crawled and indexed.

One important note to make is that the Google Sitemaps program will not necessarily improve the ranking of your site's pages. It only ensures that Google knows what you've got online for them to look at.

Before reading the following statement, promise yourself that you won't stop reading if you see a term that seems a little scary. OK? Promise? Good. Go ahead and keep reading then.

The format specified by Google for "their" sitemap is XML (extensible markup language). Did I loose you yet? No? Good again.

You do not need to understand how to code XML to participate in the Google Sitemap program. There are plenty of free online tools that will create your XML sitemap for you with no XML knowledge required on your part. More on this in a second.

What information is including in this XML sitemap?

1) The URL for every file on your website.

2) A relative priority rank that you can assign telling Google which pages on your site are most important for them to look at.

3) The date last modified for each page.

4) Anticipated change frequency per URL. This again is a variable that you control.

According to Google, your XML sitemap can include up to 50,000 URL's. If your site is a real monster and has in excess of 50,000 URL's, then you'll need to create a hierarchy of sitemaps with one leading to the next. This way you'll be able to lead Google to all of your pages.

The options for generating and maintaining your Google Sitemap range from complex systems that are highly automated to very simple systems using online sitemap generators that require nothing more than clicking a few buttons.

Google now keeps a list of these 'third party suppliers' of generators on their site. Find them here: http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html

The program that's demonstrated in our free video tutorial (http://www.gothrive.com/google-sitemap-video.htm) is found here: http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp

In a nutshell, here are the steps involved with using online generators:

1) Start the program.
2) Enter your site's URL
3) Click the "Start Crawling" button
4) Customize URL priorities and change frequencies
5) Save the site map to your local hard drive
6) Upload your new Google XML sitemap to your website in the root directory (where your home page resides)
7) Validate your new sitemap
(can be done here: http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/internet/google/submit-validate-sitemap/)
8) Submit your XML sitemap to Google.

You can access the pages for the Google Sitemap program here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

8 steps in about 10 minutes. That's all there is to it.

One question that you might ask is whether or not you still need an HTML sitemap, and the answer is "Yes, you still need your conventional sitemap". XML sitemaps are not intended for human visitors. To see what I mean, take a look at the two following sitemaps:

HTML sitemap: http://www.gothrive.com/sitemap.html

XML sitemap: http://www.gothrive.com/sitemap.xml

Which version do you prefer? Your visitors will like the HTML and Google prefers XML.

When you add pages or new content to your site and you want Google to go back to have a fresh look, just log in to your Google Sitemaps control panel, select the sitemap to revisit, and click "Resubmit". It's never been easier to get Google to spider and index a website. Don't miss your opportunity to use this tool to your advantage.

Ron Hutton is a 20 year sales and marketing veteran with a passion for coaching and training. Subscribe to "GoThrive Online", for big juicy marketing tips in small, easy-to-chew, bite size servings. Free Video Tutorial Archives Here:

http://www.gothrive.com/free-video-library/video-directory.html
 

Things You Already Know - But Aren't Doing

Copyright © 2005 Willie Crawford

At a recent seminar, one of the attendees reminded me of why most seasoned Internet marketers are not more successful. This seminar attendee and I were sitting at a table in the hotel's lounge with several other guests and speakers. He began to enumerate all of the things that he had done the first NIGHT of the seminar. He'd gone back to his room, and, in the middle of the night, implemented three proven techniques that speakers had shared on the first day.

I wanted to yell "YES!" He'd discovered the golden "keys to the kingdom." He understood that nothing happens until you take massive action. He was one of those rare individuals that doesn't over-analyze but just DOES the things he understands he needs to do.

As I sat there at the table, I wanted to grab the others, shake them, and ask, "Why didn't you guys do the same thing last night?"

By the time you've been in Internet marketing for a year or so, if you've studied everything you could get your hands on, you "know" all that you need to know to be successful online. Then it's just a matter of DOING it.

Here's a list of thing you probably already know but aren't acting upon:

1) Follow-up Is The Key. We all know that most customers won't buy on the first contact. You need to capture their contact information and follow-up. Many Internet marketers have this part down, BUT they stop after only 5-7 follow-ups. You need to follow-up FOREVER. Make sure that you have at-least 15-20 follow-up messages in your autoresponder sequence. You need to be there when your prospect is ready to buy. If they are no longer interested, they will unsubscribe.

2) Procrastination Kills Most Projects. You don't have to do things perfectly the first time, you just need to get started. You can always refine and revise things later. Your perspective customers/subscribers/clients can't buy from you until you present your offerings to them. Get over the perfectionism, and get it "out there!" Get over your fear of making mistakes by MAKING a few and seeing that it won't kill you. In-fact, there's a very good chance that your mistakes won't even be noticed :-)

3) Test And Track Everything. If you are not constantly trying to improve your results, they won't improve. If you're not tracking the results of what you're "testing" then you don't know what's working. Don't just talk about testing and tracking - do it. Then, stop doing the things that don't produce results and keep doing those that do.

Amazingly, most people know that many things they're doing are not producing the desired results, yet they keep doing them!

4) Practice Your Copywriting. It's the words on your webpages, in your ezines, and in your emails, that sell. The only way to get better at writing more convincing copy is to study what others have written and practice. Over time, if you really practice, you get better. Your nervous system becomes conditioned to write better copy with much less effort.

Build a swipe file of proven, effective copy. Model and "rip-off" elements from stuff in your swipe files.

It's what I use - EVERYDAY!


5) FOCUS For Greater Results. Decide on an objective, lay out the steps to reach that objective, and then force yourself to ignore most other things. Learn to shut out distractions and take projects through to completion. Stop worrying that you may miss something. You're not likely to miss anything REALLY important.

If necessary, set aside specific times to read email, answer the phones, even to walk the dog. During the times you've set aside to get a given project done, just focus on that project, and you'll get it done.

Also, force yourself to spend less time doing non-productive things such as watching television, or reading questionable opinions on discussion forums. When you do watch television, study how they use marketing. When you do visit discussion forums, look for commonly discussed problems that might suggest a new product to you.

Repeatedly ask yourself during the day, "Am I just procrastinating?" This will bring you back into focus.

Force yourself to do just the five things above (that you already KNOW that you should be doing) and your results will shock you. After you've actually made these five things HABITS then you can focus on implementing other, new, more-productive habits. Form the new habits one at a time, but start today. NO, start now!

Willie Crawford has taught PROVEN Internet marketing techniques to thousands of successful Internet entrepreneurs since late-1996. Grab a free copy of his comprehensive, 20-Lesson Internet Marketing Success Course now at: http://WillieCrawford.com

Hypnotic Selling: Get Their Unconscious Mind to Say Yes!

Copyright © 2005 Danek Kaus

By David R. Barron and Danek S. Kaus

One of the most powerful ways to sell anything is to use the techniques of modern hypnosis.
In a clinical setting, a hypnotist gently guides the client into a trance. Once in that relaxed state, the unconscious mind more readily accepts suggestions to stop smoking, lose weight or feel more confident, etc.
  
Of course, while you’re trying to make a sale or close an important deal, nobody is going to let you put them into a trance.   Or will they?

They will if they don’t know that you are doing it.

Two of the most powerful ways to reach someone on an unconscious level are to use Distracted Sentencing and Embedded Commands.   In order for these techniques to work, you must first establish rapport with your prospect. Much has been written about rapport so we will just give you the highlights.

You create rapport by being like someone. You become more like them by doing the same things they do. If they are leaning to one side of their chair with their legs crossed, you sit that way too. If they speak quickly, you speak quickly. If they speak slowly, match their pace, and so on.
Rapport techniques work because on an unconscious level, they are thinking: “He’s just like me.”
Once you have rapport, you can begin to influence people in powerful ways. Things that you say that may seem odd in other contexts, will now be overlooked.

Distracted Sentencing :

This technique allows you to give a suggestion or command while someone is momentarily confused.   To use Distracted Sentencing, you insert a nonsense sentence or phrase (one out of context) in the middle of a group of other statements that would otherwise make perfect sense. Immediately follow the nonsense sentence with a suggestion or command, then continue with what you were saying before.

When selling a car, you might say something like: “This car has great acceleration yet it still has excellent gas mileage. The power train comes with a five-year warranty and the engine has 300 horsepower. Dogs pulling bobsleds are trained completely by voice commands. Go ahead and get behind the wheel. The seat has full lumbar support and can be adjusted automatically ….”

The nonsense sentence causes the conscious mind to momentarily focus inward (going into a trance) to make sense of it, while the unconscious mind hears the suggestion or command.
The suggestion resolves the momentary confusion. Because people find confusion uncomfortable, they are likely to follow the suggestion because it offers a resolution.

Embedded Commands:

You create them by marking out the commands with tonality, speed and pace.   Read the following sentence out loud:

This car is so exciting that many people take it for a test drive. When they do, they have a lot of fun. They come back and tell me they want to buy this car.

Nothing special, right?

Now say the sentence out loud and when you see three dots (… ), pause. Change your voice tone on the words between the dots. You might raise or lower it or go deeper. And say these words just slightly slower than the rest of the sentence.  Ready?
Go.

This car is so exciting that many people … take it for a test drive …. When they do, they … have a lot of fun. They come back and tell me they want to … buy this car.

If you were to say this to a prospect, the unconscious mind would hear: “Take it for a test drive. Have a lot of fun. Buy this car.”

Because you’re bypassing the conscious mind, chances are, they will buy.

These techniques are extremely powerful. They can make you the master of any situation. We urge you use them ethically.

David R. Barron and Danek S. Kaus are the authors of “Power Persuasion: Using Hypnotic Influence to Win in Life, Love and Business.” To learn more visit www.power-persuasion.com/book
 

10 POWERFUL Reasons WHY 'Articles' Remain The Internets #1 Marketing Strategy

Copyright © 2005 The IWE, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

We've all heard it... "Content IS King" and for good reason because it IS as far as the Internet is concerned.

And when it comes to web surfers, they come online for two reasons, One is to check there email and reason number Two is to search the web for "Information".

How do you think the Internet received the reputation as the "Information Super-Highway"?

Because thats what its primary purpose was before they decided to commercialize it to what it is today.

And... what do 'Articles' contain?

The answer is quite simple... "Information".

So, what does this have to do with you?

Be the one who supplies it.

It's that simple.

Now, for the rest of this article I'm going to give you 10 POWERFUL reasons WHY you should and/or need to get started using 'Articles' as one of your online marketing strategies so you too can reap the benefits.

With that said, lets move on to reason #1.

Reason #1. Search Engines LOVE them.

It's no secret that Search Engines LOVE content, so if you supply it on a regular basis your giving them a great reason to stop on by to take a look around.

Once there they'll spider and index your website which is just what you want.

Reason #2. Website and Newsletter owners always need them.

I touched base on this earlier about why web surfers come online.

Website owners need fresh content to keep there visitors and/or subscribers coming back, where as newsletter publishers also need fresh content for their "email" newsletters that they publish and send to their subscriber base.

Remember the two reasons I discussed earlier about WHY web surfers come online. BINGO!

Reason #3. They generate Life Long residual Traffic.

Articles produce Life Long residual traffic because website owners, newsletter publishers and article directories archive them for there visitors to read and search through.

And since you have a 'Resource Box' located at the end of every article you produce with your website info and URL you'll receive traffic.

Reason #4. Great way to get One-Way HIGH PR links.

This is probably one of the best reasons because when you offer your free information with 'Reprint Rights' and the website owner decides to archive your article within their article directory and their website happens to have a High PR(popularity ranking) ranking, guess what?

You'll be able to 'Piggy Back' off there PR giving your website a PR boost because at the end of every article you produce your able to leave your 'Resource Box' with all your websites info and most important of all, your URL.

Reason #5. They're VIRAL.

This is yet another great reason to start using articles as one of your online marketing strategies simple because your going to offer 'Reprint Rights' with all the articles you produce giving Website and Newsletter owners permission to publish them causing a VIRAL explosion and Traffic surge to your website.

Reason #6. You can syndicate them via RSS.

If your up to speed on the latest marketing technology called RSS(Real Simple Syndication) and you write 'Articles' on a regular basis you can set-up an RSS feed that web surfers and/or website owners can 'Opt-In' to and syndicate your 'Articles' via RSS to them, plus, you can also submit your RSS feed(s) to RSS search engines and directories.

Depending on how many 'Opt-In' this is yet another great reason to get started with 'Articles' and another way to generate LOTS of Free targeted traffic.

Reason #7. Bloggers with BLOGS need "Information" to.

Bloggers with BLOGS or Web-Logs need information to.

If you provide quality information related to a specific Blog that blog owner just might post your article on his/her blog for their audiences/readership to read giving you again more FREE exposure for your business.

It gets better. Blogs also use RSS(Real Simple Syndication) to syndicate there content to various search engines, RSS search engines and directories giving you again more FREE exposure through their feed.

Reason #8. Info-Product developers need it to.

Ever receive a free ebook of some sort in your Inbox with related articles inside it from other authors?

When you offer your articles with 'Reprint Rights' and someone decides to include your article in there ebook for a Viral marketing campaign they're working on, guess what?

More FREE targeted traffic for YOU as that particular ebook circulates across the Internet.

Reason #9. Post them to related Forums and Newsgroups.

Remember, the Internet is all about numbers and Forums and Newsgroups contain numbers to and are yet another avenue for you to gain some extra exposure for FREE for your online business through your articles.

Just make sure you read there 'Terms' before you start posting because you don't want to receive any 'Flames' in your Inbox.(They can be Nasty.)

Reason #10. You gain INSTANT credibility as an Expert.

The best way to gain the trust of your potential customers online is to supply them with quality "Information".

By doing this your stepping up and telling them that you know what your talking about within the industry your in giving them a reason to look into what you have to offer further by following the link you provided within your 'Resource Box' at the end of your article.

WoW! Are those 10 POWERFUL reasons to get started with 'Articles' or what?

You get all those benefits by just producing ONE article.

The more you produce the more you'll benefit.

Do you see how powerful 'Articles' are now and how they can take your online business to the next level?

I certainly hope so.

In conclusion: "Content IS King" online and will remain King for as long as the Internet exists.

It's now up to you to step up to the plate and decide whether or not You want to tap into this 'Proven Internet Marketing Strategy' yourself and reap all the benefits I just finished explaining above.

Want to get MORE 'Insider' marketing Secrets on How-To drive Traffic to your website? Subscribe to Cory Threlfall's ezine called... The Internet Wonders eZine at -- http://www.internetwondersezine.com -- Or, go shop his popular CBmall with over 10,000 Ready-To-Download products. Go to ==> http://www.internetwondersezine.com/cbmall
 

How to Boost Your Traffic and Profits With Content!

Copyright © 2005 Mike Law

Are you aware of how vitally important and valuable CONTENT is to your online business? In fact, content can do more to build your business and profits than just about any other resource or service available.

Following is a list of 5 key ways that content can help build your traffic, subscribers, and customers starting today!...

1. Boost your search engine ranking and daily visitor count by posting keyword rich articles and content on your web-site. For example, if your business involves offering products and services related to fitness, posting fitness related articles and content will attract unlimited prospective customers on a regular basis!

2. Generate double or even triple the number of newsletter subscribers you do currently, simply by offering content in the form of "special reports" or manuals as bonuses for subscribing to your publication. People love freebies, so give them what they want and watch as your results increase!

3. Create an automated cashflow by using content to formulate multi-part email training courses with related web-site or affiliate links "sprinkled" throughout each course. Use an autoresponder service to automate the delivery of your training course (such as a 5 part training course delivered over a 5 day period).

Training courses can also serve as excellent bonus offers for your prospective newsletter subscribers.

4. One of the most important keys to a successful online business is not JUST having a list of mailing list or newsletter subscribers... It's about building a trusting relationship with your subscribers (ie, "cultivating" your list)...

By sending informative articles (content) to your list on a regular basis you will establish yourself as an expert on your topic of business, as well as gain the trust of your subscribers over time. As a result, your subscribers will be EAGER to take advantage of your "paid" product and service offers. (Just make sure that you NEVER take advantage of the relationship you develop with your list by offering products or services of poor quality just to make a quick buck!)

If there is one "constant" in Internet marketing, it's this: A cultivated list of subscribers is as good as money in the bank. Write that down and never forget it!

5. Another excellent way to generate no cost traffic is by submitting ready-made articles to "content hungry" web-site and newsletter publishers with your "resource box" attached. A resource box is nothing more than a little 3-6 line "bio" about you and/or your web-site - including a link to your site (or even instructions on how to subscribe to your newsletter)...

When submitting or offering your article(s) for reprint purposes, just make sure to specify that each article is to be reprinted "as is" with your resource box attached.

...Even one article can go a LONG way towards generating no cost traffic and visitors for you. Just imagine your article being sent out to a newsletter subscriber base of 100,000 individuals - many of whom will be reading YOUR included resource box and clicking on your URL to learn more about what you have to offer!

Well there you have it, 5 sure ways to build your online business exponentially with the help of articles and content...

With the declining effectiveness of many of the online advertising methods that we've relied on in past years, content is only strengthening its position as the ultimate KEY to generating unlimited traffic, subscribers, and customers!

Mike Law is CEO of http://www.WealthOnTap.com a company which mentors people on making a living on the internet. http://www.pluginprofitsitebiz.info Complete Money Making Site Setup FREE!

The Greatest Internet Marketing Strategy Using Google Adsense

Copyright © 2005 Dean Shainin

Are you writing articles with the idea of marketing your internet business?

Discover how using the right keywords in articles and having Google Adsense ads on your content site is now one of the most profitable ways of internet advertising.

Are you using this internet marketing strategy?

If not, you may be leaving thousands of dollars of extra profits on the table by not utilizing this strategy.

This is one of the many reasons writing original quality content articles is now the latest marketing buzz.

The two basics that you can combine to really power a successful website. Content and links.

You already know that right?

Are you writing articles and submitting them using such services as SubmitYourArticle?

Many internet marketing pro’s have been writing articles for many years.
They already know the value of original quality content and using keywords will drive targeted traffic to their websites from the search engines such as Google.

So why don’t all internet marketing business owners write and submit articles for their internet marketing strategy?

The simple answer is that it takes time to write articles, submit them and get targeted traffic to their websites.

Another reason, is that writing articles reminds us of school research papers, essays and reports that are a deep negative anchor in the subconscious mind.

Did you enjoy writing when you were in school?

If your answer is yes, you have an advantage over the 95% of internet marketing business owners that want to make money online with a work at home opportunity.

Imagine how much opportunity there is for you because of knowing this simple fact.

The other 5% are taking advantage of this internet marketing strategy and internet advertising, by using Google Adsense ads to make money online on the front and backend writing articles.

Why do you think marketing sites want fresh, quality, original keyword rich content?

The website owner can have an article with keywords that relate to their website content. This helps their websites page rank when indexed by the search engines. Which in turn, gets more Google Adsense ads to show above, below and or next to the article on their website with targeted traffic.

Think about this for a moment. Imagine taking advantage of a work at home opportunity, marketing from both sides of the sales coin with 3 simple steps.

3 Simple Steps To Success With Content And Keywords

1.) You write quality original content, keyword/phrase rich articles, with links to your website in the resource box.

2.) You build a website or web page with targeted keyword/phrase rich original content for the targeted traffic that originates from your articles.

3.) You have Google Adsense ads that are targeted to your
keyword/phrase rich original content site when visitors looking for more information arrive.

If you did not get all that, you may want to read it again.

A Win-Win Situation For Everyone Involved.

The person looking for quality content and information.

The person writing the original content articles.

The person with the quality original content rich website.

And Yes, Google Adsense and their advertisers are getting targeted traffic and sales, but so is everyone else.

Internet marketing business owners who incorporate Google Adsense with writing articles, can make money online if done properly with this internet marketing strategy.

An Overview Of Google Adsense And Writing Articles.

There are 3 keys to internet marketing success writing articles and using Google Adsense ads.

1.) Keyword Research. Find popular subjects and keywords/phrases, using a keyword selector and suggestion tool by Overture and 7Search.

2.) Writing Articles. Write original content with keywords from your research.

3.) Quality Content Site. Build a quality content site incorporated with Google Adsense ads that target the subject and keywords of your article and website.

There are many marketing business ideas.

Starting an internet marketing business can be very rewarding and at the same time challenging.

It’s best to take the time to research and develop an internet marketing strategy.

You can find all the tools, information and resources online by doing a Google search on any subject such as Google Adsense.

Internet marketing opportunities are wide open for you. Writing articles and using Google Adsense for your internet marketing strategy is one way to get a piece of the action.

Are you going to take advantage of the greatest internet marketing strategy online today to make money online with Google Adsense and writing articles?

Just get started. Do whatever it takes to write something. For building long term success, there’s very little you can do that will give you near the same results online today.

Dean Shainin makes it easy to learn from today's top marketing experts. For details and to claim your free Bonuses for Subscribing to Our Newsletter, visit:http://www.EndlessIncomeForLife.com

Analyzing referrer logs of your traffic is necessary to measure your success!

by Robin Nobles

Congratulations! Your hard work and persistence in optimizing your pages have resulted in a dramatic increase in traffic to your site, which is just what you wanted.

But, are you analyzing that traffic and using it to strengthen your site? Or, are you quickly glancing at your log files every week or so to see how much traffic you're getting, and letting it go at that?

Before we go on, let's define exactly what log files are.

When someone visits your website, server software counts and tracks, i.e. "logs", that visit. It also keeps a record of it for a certain period of time. Part of the saved information is called a referrer log.

Referrer logs can help you analyze the traffic to your site. Though each referrer log program provides slightly different data, some of the more common information includes:

Which engines have sent you traffic;
What keywords were used to find your site;
Which pages were accessed the most or the least;
Who are the visiting spiders;
User profile by region;
Average length of time someone remains on your site;
Average number of user sessions or page views per day;
Top entry and exit pages;
Top referring sites;
Summary of activity by day;
Server errors;
Bandwidth, which is the measure (in kilobytes of data transferred) of the traffic on the site; and,
Type of technology used by your visitors.
But why is it so important to study your traffic? Isn't it enough to know that your traffic is increasing, without having to spend valuable time analyzing it?

Think about it this way. If you know which engines are sending you the most traffic, you can boost your optimization strategies for those engines by creating additional pages for other relevant keyword phrases. This could increase your traffic even more.

Or, if you know that you're not getting any traffic at all from a particular engine, you'll be able to consider strategies for findability on that engine.

Through your referrer logs, you'll probably discover that you're getting found through keyword phrases that you haven't even considered before. In that case, you certainly don't want to change those pages and lose the traffic. By the same token, if you're getting found under a keyword phrase in one engine, wouldn't it be worth creating pages for the other engines for that same keyword phrase to see if you can bring in some additional traffic?

You can also find out through which pages you are losing visitors. This begs the questions...why are you losing visitors? ...and what changes can you make to keep them from leaving?

Simply put, a referrer log can give you an enormous amount of information and can serve as a road map for future changes to your site.

So, how can you view your referrer logs?

Ask your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to provide referrer logs in extended log format. If they don't provide referrer logs, you're missing out on some extremely valuable information about your web site. You may even want to consider changing ISP's.

However, even if your provider captures referrer information, you may want to get a program to read it, since the raw data can be a little cumbersome to analyze.

Here's an example of such an entry:

216.219.177.29 - - [15/May/2000:23:03:36 -0800] "GET /index.htm HTTP/1.0" 200 3956 "http://www.altavista.digital.com/cgi- bin/query? pg=aq&text=yes&d0=1%2fnov %2f99&q=email+marketing%2a +AND+email marketing%2a&stq=30" "Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; SK; Windows 98)"

Not exactly easy reading, is it?

However, through the above entry, you can learn:

The IP address of your visitor -- 216.219.177.29
The date and time of the visit -- [15/May/2000:23:03:36 -0800]
The first file requested -- "GET /index.htm HTTP/1.0"
The fact that the request was completed -- 200
The number of bytes that were transferred -- 3956
Where your visitor came from and the keywords used to find your site -- "http://www.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/query? pg=aq&text=yes&d0=1%2fnov %2f99&q=email+marketing%2a +AND+email marketing%2a&stq=30"
Browser and operating system of the visitor -- "Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; SK; Windows 98)"
Though the information in the raw data provides invaluable information to you, you can easily see that it requires a little effort to analyze it yourself.

If you're serious about analyzing your traffic, consider obtaining a quality log analysis software program. Examples of programs are listed at the bottom of this article.

When analyzing your referrer log information, what should you look for?

Number of page views per day
Page views (or page impressions) refer to how many "hits" your site has had to HTML pages only. A hit is an action on a web page, such as when a user views a web page.

Number of user sessions per day
User session refers to the activity of one visitor to a web site.

How long users are staying on your pages
How long did the users stay at your website? Are they finding what they're looking for, or are they getting frustrated and leaving?

If visitors are immediately clicking out of your site, maybe it's time to set up an onsite search engine. After all, once you get visitors to your site, you want them to be able to find what they're looking for. <http://www.searchbutton.com>SearchButton.com is an excellent service. It even provides statistics on who is searching your site, the most popular searches, and will also alert you to searches that produced no results.

Ginette Degner, Professional Optimizer with SearchEngineServices.com, adds,

"The time users spend at a site tells me if they are actually reading the site or just clicking in only to leave immediately. Perhaps I am not conveying the purpose of the site well enough to make them stay. Or, I am listed under the wrong phrases. If I am buying traffic from GoTo or another engine, I like to know if the words I chose are valuable to me or just a waste."

Most requested and least requested pages
Degner further explains,

"Which page is attracting the most visits and how long are they there? This helps me decide what areas of a site need to be expanded upon and what areas can be dropped. For an example with a sports picks site, we found that the least visited page was the record the handicapper used to show everyone his win/lose ratio for picks and the chat room. So we dropped the page and spent the programming money on live scores and a sports news page."

Top entry pages
How are people first coming in to your site? Which pages are bringing you the most traffic? What about some of your other pages? What can you do to make them "top entry pages" too?

Top exit pages
Exit pages are another very important area of a log file, according to Degner. She goes on to ask and then elaborates on the answers...

"Where are they leaving? What off site links are they clicking on the most? If this is an intro page or another sub page that is a doorway, I may need to get rid of it or use a redirect. It tells me where I am losing visitors."

"As an example, a client insisted upon having a second intro page that played their radio commercial, so you clicked on the index page to enter and were stuck in a second media-enhanced page. We could see half of our traffic leaving right there and going no further into the site, which was a really big clue that it was a turn off to the surfing public."

"A lesson to corporate sites - a website is the wrong place to be vain. Serve up your product or service immediately or pay the price with an impatient dotCom'r."

"On other sites, we have discovered that a screen shots page made a huge difference in converting sales, and that was where the most orders came from (exit link was the order link)."

Single access pages
Which pages are being viewed by themselves, where visitors aren't even clicking to go to another page? Again, look at these pages carefully to see what you can provide on the page to keep up the interest of your visitors. You're losing them, and you need to figure out why.

Errors, such as 404 pages
If your visitors encounter too many error messages when visiting your website, they'll assume that you don't do your "house cleaning," and the professional image of your site will plummet several notches.

Most active countries
If you want a corner of the international market, study this data carefully. How many user sessions are being generated for each country that's important to your business? How you can beef up efforts to improve those numbers? Are you creating highly targeted information pages for your international keywords?

Top referring sites and URLs

Top referring search engines
Do you have some top ranking pages in certain search engines, but you're not seeing coinciding traffic through those engines? If so, you may need to rethink your keyword strategy, because a truckload of #1's won't do you any good if traffic doesn't follow.

Keywords that searchers are using to find your site
If you're being found under a particular keyword in one engine but not another, boost efforts in the other search engine and try to bring in more traffic. Also, study this section closely for any holes in your keyword-thinking strategies.

Remember that search engine positioning strategies begin with a simple keyword or keyword phrase. If you're having problems finding a keyword phrase that will bring you more traffic, visit WordSpot.com and sign up for their free trial service, or visit Overture's Search Term Suggestion List. Also most search engines have "related search" results that can give you some clues, don't over look that information.

Browsers used by your visitors
Check this section periodically to make sure that the technology offered at your website can be used by the majority of your visitors. In other words, if many of your visitors are accessing the web using older browsers, you will want to be careful about using technology that will prevent them from fully utilizing your website.

Visiting spiders
Which search engine spiders have visited your site recently? After submitting your pages to the engines, be sure to monitor this section closely for spider activity.

What do the experts feel are the most valuable parts of a referrer log?

Charlie Morris, Managing Editor of Web Developer's Journal, -- http://www.wdvl.com/Internet/Management -- looks at the list of most popular pages first.

"This is something that's easy to act on - whatever content is most popular, simply produce more of the same sort of thing. The list of 404s should also be one of the first sections to look at, as sometimes (though not always) it's easy to find and fix these errors, greatly improving short- term traffic and your long-term reputation."

"The most important thing of all, however, is simply to compare a site's traffic from month to month, to measure how well your promotional efforts are working. It's surprising how many sites don't do this carefully."

To Rocky Rawstern, Professional Optimizer with SeventhWave.com, the most important areas of the referrer log are

"specific search strings (what the browser was looking for), search engine traffic counts, and finding keywords that are hit but aren't on our list to work on. We will work harder on a search engine that we aren't getting much traffic from."

The spider/bot sections are the most valuable areas of a log file to Ginette Degner. "When did they spider our site and how many pages? Which engines are sending me the most traffic? What words or phrases are being used consistently? What exact phrases were used to get to my site? All of this information assists me with positioning. I can find the strengths and weaknesses of a website and exploit the strengths and work to fix the areas that are lacking."

Excellent closing advice for positioners

Ginette Degner says,

"Keep track of when a spider hits your site and how deep and compare it to the dates you submit and the dates the pages actually appear in the index. You will start to see a pattern emerge with each engine. Yes, there are hiccups, but it will help you time your submissions, and when a client asks you when they can expect to see results, you can answer intelligently."

"When you are stumped as to why none of the words you optimized for are hitting, look at the logs. Use the words you see actually hitting with the search engines in your reporting files (Top Dog or WebPosition Gold). It can open your eyes and help you find more avenues of traffic for your client."

"At the very least, you can show some positions which will make a client more comfortable because you are showing they are getting traffic from the engines. This helps immensely when you hear 'I do not have any sales' from a client. You can steer the client to rethink their approach or sales copy."

So, take the time to analyze your traffic, and then put that valuable information to work on your website and reap the benefits of even more traffic!

Log Analysis Programs

WebTrends
http://www.webtrends.com

FlashStats
http://maximized.com/products/flashstats

Analog (free)
http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~sret1/analog

Webalizer (free)
http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer

Search Engine Ranking
By Fitz Adom
Optimize Your pages for the Search Engines

This is an article about Search Engines. If you have been looking for some very good information and you have been disapointed in the past then this the place to be.

When considering optimizing your site for submission to the SEs, what is most important to consider, is the title of your webpage.

Most people that are concerned with search engine optimization focus obsessively on keywords and HTML tags. But when it comes to getting ranked by search engines, the only tags that matter are TITLE, and the META tags KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTION. And you have to be very careful about how you handle each one.

TITLE tag

TITLE makes a big difference, especially with Google. It should be short (less than 40 characters seems to work best) and, most importantly, should match the search queries people will be using to find your site. This could lead to a struggle with the marketing managers: They'll want your site's page titles to contain the company name and/or a positioning statement. Ask them what good that will do if no one ever sees the pages.

This is a good TITLE tag that will generate traffic from people searching for "picasso":

<TITLE>Pablo Picasso</TITLE>

This is a mediocre one:

<TITLE>Artstuff: Pablo Picasso</TITLE>

This one will put you out of business:

<TITLE>Artstuff: Your Number One Online Resource for Fine Art Solutions!!!</TITLE>

META NAME="Keywords"

Keyword spamming is the number one favorite trick for search engine optimization. But many of the sites that stuff a zillion keywords into their pages are hoping to get clicks to their pages just to show ads -- they don't care if they get any repeat business. But if you want to draw real customers, focus on the keywords you think your users will be searching for.

For our Picasso page, something like this would work (note that uppercase letters don't matter):

<META NAME="keywords" content="Pablo Picasso, Pablo, Picasso, painting, cubist, painting, ceramics, collage, Spain, Guernica, Paris, 20th century, Girl Before a Mirror">

Repeating the most important keyword twice seems to work with some search engines, but repeating more than that will cause some of them to ignore the whole page.

What keywords are people searching for? It's important to focus on the right ones. predicts (and search engine logs confirm) that traffic for any particular keyword on a search engine will be proportional to its popularity rank. That is, the number of queries (and hence potential clickthroughs to your site) for the most popular keyword will be ten times greater than that for the tenth most popular term. And traffic to term #10 will be 1,000 times higher than traffic to term number 10,000. If you're not matching the top keywords, forget it.

What keywords are people searching for? It's important to focus on the right ones. Zipf's Law predicts that traffic for any particular keyword on a search engine will be proportional to its popularity rank. That is, the number of queries (and hence potential clickthroughs to your site) for the most popular keyword will be ten times greater than that for the tenth most popular term. And traffic to term #10 will be 1,000 times higher than traffic to term number 10,000. Search engine logs don't quite match Zipf's curve, and they vary from one engine to the next. But the lesson remains: If you're not matching the top keywords, forget it.

Where to find the top keywords? A free resources is a weekly emailing from Wordtracker. Keyword popularity varies from search engine to search engine, but across the Web (and according to a few well-placed contacts at search engines) these listings are close enough.

META NAME="Description"

This field gets used for the page summary on Inktomi and some other engines, so don't cram it with keywords: A scary-looking description on a search engine's results page could discourage people from clicking through to your page, even if it scores high. (We'll cover more on descriptions in Step 3.)

Page Text

It never hurts to have the search terms you want to match near the top of the page. But cramming in a list of spam-style keywords can also backfire -- Google will display them under the page title on its results page, and Inktomi will show them (as do many others) if there is no DESCRIPTION tag.

Stuffing long strings of repeated keywords into pages used to magically get them to the top of search engine results, but that was before the search engineers realized what was going on and learned how to prevent this from happening. Once in a while you'll see a "spamdexed" page near the top of your results, but this trick works less and less frequently these days.

Links from Other Domains

Look at the top results for the terms you most want to match. Will those sites link to you from their domain? If they do, some of their relevance will rub off on your pages. There are ways to use this dishonestly (see "How to Cheat" on Page Five), but usually sites only link to other sites they're comfortable being associated with.

Even if your site does manage to claw its way to a plum position in the search results, that doesn't guarantee that users will follow the link -- that still takes some convincing.


How to Build Massive Keyword Lists

By Rob Taylor © 2005

As keyword marketing becomes more and more expensive and competitive, it has become essential when building your lists to focus on the maximum number of phrases and their variations that a surfer might enter into the search engines.

Why?

Because according to Amit Singhal, principal scientist at Google, a guy who really should know what he's talking about, over 50% of the 200 million searches performed a day have never been searched before. He also said: "When performing a search most surfers give a 2-4 word query."

So here are my top 18 recommended ways to build massive keyword lists:


1. Visit your competitor's web pages and look in the title and meta tags.

2. Search for brand names in Google's Sandbox. This will return additional keywords that searchers entered when using the brand name. You can also enter regular keyword phrases and get related keyword phrases that have been searched on Google. Link: https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox

3. Look over your past customer testimonials, and see if there are any keywords you can use. This strategy lets you get inside your customer's mind to produce more market centric keywords.

4. Consider synonyms. A synonym is a word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or other words in the language. Enter your keywords into Roget's Theasaurus for a list of related synonyms. Also visit LexFN.

Links: http://thesaurus.reference.com & http://www.lexfn.com

5. Think of singular and plurals keywords.

6. What about verbs? Example: Ride, rode, ridden, ridding, rides.

7. Use hyphenation and variations. Example: off-shore, offshore, off shore.

8. Consider domain names. Many people enter domain names into the search engines rather than their browser address bar. Example: cnn.com. In June 2005 cnn.com was searched 843,256 times on Overture.com.

9. Get books on your subject and use the terms in the index and glossaries to grow your keyword lists.

10. Download a free copy of Weblog Expert Lite. Then ask your web host how to download your raw stats files. Run them through the software and you will then discover every possible keyword combination that surfers have used to find your website.

Link: http://www.megastep.com/wle

11. Use Wordtracker. What does Wordtracker do? "... helps you find all keyword combinations that bear any relation to your business or service - many of which you might never have considered." Wordtracker is an essential tool to use.

Link: http://www.keywordlistbuilder.co.uk

12. Then go to the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool. Enter in a keyword and Overture returns all the prior month's searches that include your phrase. The problem with the Overture tool is that it doesn't give you the exact way that the search was entered. This is why it is essential to use a tool like Keyword Tumbler (see # 18) to generate the maximum possible number of keyword combinations that a user might enter a search phrase into the engines.

Link: http://inventory.overture.com

13. Use abbreviations and misspellings. A good misspelling tool is Search Spell. Search Spell uses actual misspellings entered into the search engines. Misspelled Keywords is another software tool that will literally create thousands of misspellings for any given keyword phrase you enter into it.

Link: http://www.searchspell.com/typo & http://www.misspelledkeywords.co.uk

14. Use acronyms. An acronym is a word formed from the initial letters of a name. Example: due diligence becomes DD. A good acronym generator is Acronym Finder. Link: http://www.acronymfinder.com

15. Combine your keyword phrase into one word. Example: strawbale houses => strawbalehouses.

16. Use "space" and "+" with keywords. Example:
- strawbale+houses
- strawbale +houses

17. Visit Crossword Compiler and download their demo software. Plug in your keywords and discover a multitude of additional words.

Link: http://www.crossword-compiler.com

18. Once you have your list compiled visit Keyword Tumbler and download the free software. Put your keywords into a text file and then let Keyword Tumbler generate multiple variations of each keyword phrase you have... instantly!

Link: http://www.keywordtumbler.com

It does this simply by mixing the words in each phrase around. Example: "horses for sale" generates a list like this...

horses for sale
horses sale for
for horses sale
for sale horses
sale horses for
sale for horses

As Perry Marshall, author of the Definitive Guide to Google AdWords said at a recent seminar: "Every combination of keywords that somebody could conceivably type in on Google is a market."

I hope you have found this advice useful? It's the exact same procedure I use everyday when fighting the pay-per-click wars.

(c) 2005 Megastep International - All Rights Reserved

About the Author:

Rob Taylor has been marketing online since 1996. Take advantage of his battle tested marketing strategies that could quietly make you five figure cash profits every month. Subscribe free to his high content newsletter at http://www.megastep.com