20 Things You Need to Know Before Optimizing a Web Site

By Kalena Jordan

One of the most important aspects of a search engine optimization project is also one of the most overlooked – preparation! There are some important steps to take in advance of optimizing your site that will make sure your SEO is successful.

Before You Start

Before you start any search engine optimization campaign, whether it's for your own site or that belonging to a client, you need to answer the following questions:

1) What is the overall motivation for optimizing this site? What do I/they hope to achieve? e.g. more sales, more subscribers, more traffic, more publicity etc.

2) What is the time-frame for this project?

3) What is the budget for this project?

4) Who will be responsible for this project? Will it be a joint or solo effort? Will it be run entirely in-house or outsourced?

Answering these questions will help you to build a framework for your SEO project and establish limitations for the size and scope of the campaign.

Ready: How Search Engine-Compatible is the Site Currently?

Something I find very useful before quoting on any SEO project is to produce what I call a Search Engine Compatibility Review. This is where I carry out a detailed overview and analysis of a site's search engine compatibility in terms of HTML design, page extensions, link popularity, title and META tags, body text, target keywords, ALT IMG tags, page load time and other design elements that can impact search engine indexing.

I then provide a detailed report to potential clients with recommendations based on my findings. It just helps sort out in my mind what design elements need tweaking to make the site as search engine-friendly as possible. It also helps marketing staff prove to an often stubborn programming department (or vice versa!) that SEO is necessary. You might consider preparing something similar for your own site or clients.

Steady: Requirements Gathering

Next, you need to establish the project requirements, so you can tailor the SEO campaign to you or your client's exact needs. For those of you servicing clients, this information is often required before you are able to quote accurately.

To determine your project requirements, you need to have the following questions answered:

1) What technology was used to build the site? (i.e. Flash, PHP, frames, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, Flat HTML etc)

2) What are the file extensions of the pages? (i.e. .htm, .php, .cfm etc)

3) Does the site contain database driven content? If so, will the URLs contain query strings? e.g. www.site.com/longpagename?source=123444fgge3212, (containing "?" symbols), or does the site use parameter workarounds to remove the query strings? (the latter is more search engine friendly).

4) Are there at least 250 words of text on the home page and other pages to be optimized?

5) How does the navigation work? Does it use text links or graphical links or JavaScript drop-down menus?

6) Approximately how many pages does the site contain? How many of these will be optimized?

7) Does the site have a site map or will it require one? Does the site have an XML sitemap submitted to Google Sitemaps ?

8) What is the current link popularity of the site?

9) What is the approximate Google PageRank of the site? Would it benefit from link building?

10) Do I have the ability to edit the source code directly? Or will I need to hand-over the optimized code to programmers for integration?

11) Do I have permission to alter the visible content of the site?

12) What are the products/services that the site promotes? (e.g. widgets, mobile phones, hire cars etc.)

13) What are the site's geographical target markets? Are they global? Country specific? State specific? Town specific?

14) What are the site's demographic target markets? (e.g. young urban females, working mothers, single parents etc.)

15) What are 20 search keywords or phrases that I think my/my client's target markets will use to find the site in the search engines?

16) Who are my/my client's major competitors online? What are their URLs? What keywords are they targeting?

17) Who are the stake-holders of this site? How will I report to them?

18) Do I have access to site traffic logs or statistics to enable me to track visitor activity during the campaign? Specifically, what visitor activity will I be tracking?

19) How do I plan on tracking my or my client's conversion trends and increased rankings in the search engines?

20) What are my/my client's expectations for the optimization project? Are they realistic?

Answers to the first 10 questions above will determine the complexity of optimization required. For example, if the site pages currently have little text on them, you know you'll need to integrate more text to make the site compatible with search engines and include adequate target keywords. If the site currently uses frames, you will need to rebuild the pages without frames or create special No-Frames tags to make sure the site can be indexed, and so on.

This initial analysis will help you to scope the time and costs involved in advance. For those of you optimizing client sites, obtaining accurate answers to these questions BEFORE quoting is absolutely crucial. Otherwise you can find yourself in the middle of a project that you have severely under-quoted for.

The remainder of questions are to establish in advance the who, what, where, when, why and how of the optimization project. This will help you determine the most logical keywords and phrases to target, as well as which search engines to submit the site to.

For those of you optimizing web sites for a living, you might consider developing a questionnaire that you can give clients to complete to ensure you tailor the web site optimization to their exact needs.

Go!

So now you are clear about your motivations for optimizing the site, you know more about the target markets, you know how compatible the existing site is with search engines and how much work is involved in the search engine optimization process. You're ready to tackle the job.

About The Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

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Free Publicity Tips To Unlock Google's Top Search Ranking Secrecy

By CR Ransom

The biggest grief from many companies is their Google search engine ranking. Learn how using free publicity can land any company at the top of Google's radar. Making it on Google's front search page results is like kicking it with the cool kids when you were in school. Remember it was even harder to stay and appear to be cool; the same rules still apply with Google. It is hard work to get in and even harder to stay at the top.

Here is what to do until, when, and make Google find you all using free publicity.

Until Google Finds You:

The first thing to do until Google finds you is to fake it to you make it. Act like Google already found you; boost and brag about being the top dog in your business industry. Toot your own horn by telling everyone you know and tell them to tell everyone they know about your business. This allows you to receive free publicity and enlist support of others by helping you spread the word.

Bonus Tips: Give free seminars, offer referral bonuses, start a monthly tips newsletter. This will allow you to continue to receive even more free publicity and make you appear to be an expert.

When Google Finds You:

When Google finds you be ready to produce and make sure that you can deliver while handling increased productions. When you land on Google's main page celebrate, take the time to do a press or media release announcing your rank and how many other sites are listed in the search category. This again will be free publicity for your business because the media highly respect Google's search results and making it to the top can make a really good story.

Bonus Tips: Prepare an online press media kit, answer questions in blogs, write promotional articles giving how to advice. Make sure that you continue to promote your expertise and website to keep your ranking on Google.

Make Google Find You:

Claim your greatest reward by making Google find you. PR is the ultimate solution to make Google find your website on the Internet. Write media and press releases that cover news about your business relating to topics such as announcements, breakthroughs, research, new products, etc. Once the releases are picked up by media sources you will start receiving free publicity. The more media sources pickup your releases the more often times your releases will be posted on their website; helping to make Google find you.

Bonus Tips: Pitch story ideas about your business to the media, stay in the news at all times, join social network websites, start a blog, etc. All of these resources will increase your chances of receiving free publicity and help make Google find your website.

Following these easy steps will help keep you high on Google's radar and bring in tons of website traffic from your hard work and efforts. Get ready, set, go Google.

About The Author
"CR" Cataunya Ransom is the Co-founder of Mosnar Communications, INC. She developed a niche for Luxury PR & Global Marketing. Guiding clients on how to brand, market, and promote luxury products, events, and services. Highly respected as a luxury public relations expert! "CR" consults clients and speaks to audiences about luxury public relations and global marketing practices. http://www.mosnarcommunications.com.

Having Trouble Improving Your Google Ranking?

by Jim Pretin

Google is by far the most important search engine on the net. To rise to the top of their search engine, you need to improve your link popularity and you need to understand how they measure your link popularity (over 50% of all search engine traffic comes from Google, and if you can rise to the top, you will likely rise to the top of all the other search engines as well).

Link popularity is defined as the number of sites that are linking to your site. Some websites have thousands or even millions of sites linking to them, while others might have only a few. The search engines use the number of inbound links your site has as a measure of how important your site is, which translates into your search engine ranking.

The actual number of links to your site is not the only variable used to calculate your link popularity. The search engines also examine the relevance of the links to the subject matter of your site. For example, if a website that sells vitamins has 4,000 inbound links, but the source of most of the links are websites that have nothing to do with vitamins, then the algorithm that search engines use to determine link popularity will take that into account, and the link popularity score will not be very good.

It is possible for a website with a relatively small number of quality inbound links to be ranked higher than a site with a bunch of irrelevant or insignificant links. If I have a website that offers quotes for auto insurance, and I have 800 quality inbound links, then I might receive a much higher search engine ranking than another mortgage site that has 3,000 links that stem from link farms or Free For All (FFA) pages.

If you try to acquire inbound by using link farms or FFA pages, not only will it hurt your search engine ranking, but you might get permanently removed from the search engine listings. Links farms are sites where you can instantly exchange links with all the sites listed in that directory. FFA pages are pointless link directories. The search engines usually discount any links that come from either of these sources.

Now that we understand what link popularity is and how it works, we need to look specifically at how Google measures it. They use a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.

One factor that Google uses in their algorithm, obviously, is the total number of sites linking to you. The more links you have, the higher your score will be. However, their algorithm is a little more complicated than that, and it is possible for a website with fewer links to be ranked higher than a website that has more links.

The reason for this is because Google also measures the quality of your links. If your website is about vitamins, and the site linking to you is a video game site, then that is not considered a quality link. The link still helps your score, but the link would help your score much more if it were from a website whose subject matter is the same as yours.

Also, Google gives a higher score to a link if it comes from a page that has actual content that relates to your keywords. For example, if your site is about jewelry, and another jewelry website has posted a link to your site on their links page, that link is not as valuable as a link to your site coming from a blog or a message board where a lot of information about jewelry is being written or discussed.

Also, they give an even higher score to a link if it contains anchor text that matches one of the keywords that describes your site. For example, if I have a site that sells lawnmowers, and a blog about lawnmowers has posted a link to my site, it helps my score even more if the link text (also known as anchor text) is LAWNMOWERS. To learn more about anchor text, go to a search engine and look up ANCHOR TEXT and you will be able to learn about it.

Another factor used by Google to score your link popularity is the diversity of keywords contained on sites linking to you. For example, if you have a site that sells handbags, and all the links to your site are from other sites that contain nothing but the keyword HANDBAGS, Google considers that to be abnormal. To get a higher score, you need to have links coming from sites that contain a variety of keywords related to handbags, such as BUY HANDBAGS, LEATHER HANDBAGS, etc.

It is difficult to increase your link popularity, but now that you understand how your score is calculated, you can devise a plan to improve your score. You might want to consider posting to forums and blogs that contain information that is related to your site, and when you post, include a link to your site.

About the Author
Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com/, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form.

An Epic Tale Of Google SEO And The Inbound Link

By Matt Jasckon

An Introduction To Google (For Those That Might Need It)

Google is the behemoth of search engines, the plateau we aspire to, and the chagrin of many a Webmaster and marketer. If they love your website, you will in turn grow to love the masses of traffic they send your way. In contrast, if they deem your site to be of little or no value then you'll struggle to fill the aching void in your Internet marketing. OK, so th at might be a little over the top but to the battle hardened SEO a lot of it will probably ring true and they are certainly the biggest and most popular of the current search engines.

The Torrid Tale Of The Ever Changing Google Algorithm

Optimizing any site to promote it within Google search engine results pages can prove to be an ongoing saga. After countless months of optimizing, tweaking, linking, and improving you might be lucky enough to find your site listed at the top of the results page. If you do then we all hail you and you have the unarguable right to give yourself a firm pat on the back. Problems can arise, though, when Google perform another of their seemingly uncountable algorithm updates. Boom, your site suddenly drops from top spot to page 53 of the results. After a week of crying, shouting, and screaming the results begin to settle and your site once again finds itself heading towards the dizzy heights of page one.

Again, this is a slight over-exaggeration in most cases. Google do update their algorithms because they attempt to prevent the unethical few that we have all come to know and love as black hat SEOs from gaining that coveted top spot. In fairness to Google, this can't be an easy battle. They make a change, the black hat SEOs change their methods to match. Google again make some changes in a bid to counteract these new methods and, what do you know, the black hat SEOs pop up again with some new, equally cunning ploy to steal the top positions from the rest of us Google abiding promoters. And so, the algorithms change once again.

An Introduction To Our Hero - The Inbound Link

However, since time immemorial Google has loved the inbound link in an almost incestuous fashion. A quick browse through most result pages will throw up results that you might find to be a freak or just completely wrong. Those sites contain little or no mention of the keyword, or search phrase, in question and yet they're appearing above your impeccably optimized page. Looking beyond the search results and toward a link popularity tool you will inevitably find that the site in question has an excellent link profile.

Why Use A Link Building Service To Fight Your Battles?

Google deem an inbound link as a tick, a gold star, and a big bag of brownie points for your page. If that inbound link also contains the aforementioned keywords as anchor text then you should expect great things in the future. If you're looking for the single most important Google SEO factor then inbound links are what you are looking for. The size of the tick or the amount of brownie points that are found in your special bag are determined by just how beneficial an inbound link is.

It's Not The Size Of Your Links...

Quality is, on the whole, much more important than quantity. Reciprocal links were once the weapon of the Webmaster looking for Google acceptance, but they now place less weight on a reciprocal link as they do on a one-way link. Google want to promote a natural or organic Internet network. They don't want to see links that have been traded, in any way, and instead want to see sites gifted a link because of the value that they offer to visitors.

Google Battling Techniques

In reality, of course, gaining organic links is not a simple process. You need to have traffic before you have any hope of gaining organic links and so it's necessary to look elsewhere. The technique that I, as a Google battler, prefer is the use of article submissions. This can be a submission to article directories in the hope that every man and his site will pick it up, or submission to individual high quality websites. It isn't important. What is important is the degree of control that article submission offers.

Commanding A Regiment Of Inbound Links

Submitting an article makes me the boss, or General if you prefer, of my links to an excellent extent and the search engines certainly don't seem to have a problem with it (yet). I can control the page content, the anchor text, and in the case of individual submissions I can control the quality (dare I say it - PageRank) of the site or page that links to me.

Fighting On An Even Battlefield

Page content is important. Gaining a link from a page that is based on a topic irrelevant to your own is near useless. Even ensuring that the text immediately surrounding your link and the anchor text are relevant does not offer what I look for in a linking page. I want complete (or as near as possible to complete) relevancy.

Don't Camouflage Your Links

Control over anchor text is vital. The anchor text of a link is the visual element that readers can see, it's the section of the HTML that is viewed and clicked by readers, and it is the section of a link that many inexperienced promoters get completely wrong. When you start a link building or a rticle submission campaign it is important to determine the keywords you will be targeting and include these keywords in the hypertext of the link and preferably at least once or twice in the article itself. Most article directories allow for two links so use them both for different keywords, preferably pointing to different pages of your site.

Always Be Planning Your Next Inbound Link Campaign

The final factor regarding linking that is vitally important is that you keep going. Even when you reach the top spots for your most competitive keywords you have to keep plugging away. The second you let it drop you can guarantee that another site with another eager Webmaster at the helm is chomping at the bit ready to take over the mantle of Google number one.

Only Fools Rush In

New websites should always take care not to build too many links too quickly. Google do see this as meaning you employ an underhand method of link building because new sites typically cannot muster up thousands of links in their first few days. Take your time, submit one article to several directories, and then wait to be indexed. Using this technique you will get indexed relatively quickly and after a couple of weeks you can start to post articles with a little more regularity.

Conclusion And A Little Ambush Prevention

Inbound linking is potentially (I use that word only to try and prevent the ambush of criticism from others) the most important aspect of Google SEO. A good link profile with a reasonable number of inbound links from high quality, and relevant websites can make up for under optimized or even un-optimized website content. What it can't make up for is the use of other black hat SEO techniques. Do everything above board and it is less likely that you will become one of the anti-Google druids; those that spend the rest of their online life frequenting message boards and blogs relaying the tired tale of how they were once an online millionaire before Google destroyed them.

About the Author
Matt Jackson is the website content copywriter for WebWiseWords. As well as providing insightful tales of epic optimization battles he also offers his unique link building service to anyone that is even remotely interested and several who aren't.

Creativity Boost: Be More Creative - How To Give Your Creativity Permission To Be Amazing

Creativity is abundant in each of us. The problem is not that we're not capable of being creative. The problem is so often we don't ALLOW ourselves to be creative.

Let's say you're a sports car enthusiast. On your front drive is the most gorgeous Ferrari you could imagine. And it's all yours. But because it's been so long since you even sat in it, let alone took it for a spin, you barely notice it's there anymore.

Every day you walk past your beautiful automobile with its V12 engine waiting to purr into life and its shiny red paintwork glimmering in the sun. But it might as well be a rusting old wreck there, the amount you use it.

Then you go around all day gazing longingly and enviously at other beautiful cars driving around, wishing you had such a fabulous machine to drive. Even though there's one right there on your front drive!

It's a similar story with our creative talents. If it's been a long time since we used our creativity regularly, then however creative we're capable of being, we simply overlook it, and "forget" all the creative potential and abilities that lies within us.

So what can you do to realise the creativity in you once again and start putting it to use?

Back to the Ferrari for a moment. If you look on your kitchen counter where you keep all your keys, you'll realise there's a Ferrari keyring, with a Ferrari key. It's been there all along waiting for you to take it out to the Ferrari, put it in the ignition and go for that blast on the open road you've been longing to take for years.

What's the equivalent "key" to your creativity? It's all about giving yourself permission to be creative, allowing that creative talent within you to come out to play and show you what it can do.

So how do you give yourself this permission to be creative? How do you turn the key in your ignition?

There are many ways. Here are 3 of the most important ones:

1. Create Everyday. When you creativity knows it has a regular time slot in which to come out, it becomes far more willing to reveal its talents. It knows that the same time each day is put aside for creative work, rather than being like a kid after the heavy first snowfall of the winter sitting inside wrapped up in coat, scarf, gloves and boots but not being allowed out to play until his mother says it's OK to go and make a snowman.

2. A place to create. If each time you want to create you have nowhere to go, or your desk or creative space is cluttered up with all sorts of other stuff that gets in the way of you creating easily, you're not going to be very creative. Dedicate at least the corner of a room to your creative projects and have it set up and ready for creating with everything you need close to hand.

3. Capture your ideas. A lack of ideas is a serious creativity killer. But the problem is not that you don't have enough ideas, it's that you don't capture them when you do have them. By capturing ideas as soon as they come to you in a sketchbook or on a voice recorder, you keep a supply ready to explore. This sends the message to your creativity to produce more ideas, because it knows you're going to make use of them. Again, you've given it permission.

These are 3 ways you can start using today to give your creativity the permission it needs to come out and play and show you just how amazing it can be.

So grab the keys, hop in your Ferrari and head out for the open road!

Google PageRank: Webmaster's Paranoid Hell!

by Titus Hoskins

Recently Google did a major PageRank update where a lot of sites were downgraded. Many experts believe this PageRank update was Google's response to link selling - sites which sell links lost points in their PageRank.

Google measures all web pages on a scale of importance from 0 to 10, which is shown in a small green pixel bar on browsers carrying the Google Toolbar. PageRank is "supposedly" measured by the number of backlinks to your site.

Online democracy in action, a link is a vote for your site. The more votes you have the higher your site is ranked. At least that's how it was supposed to work until a lot of high PR sites started selling links and put a monkey wrench into the whole system.

The latest update may be a smart move on Google's part to curtail this practice; who's going to buy a link from a PR2 or even a PR4 site? Besides this could be more than a warning that your site will go down even further if you continue to sell links.

Now this is more of a cosmetic change in PageRank than a real change in your true rankings in Google. Just because your PR goes down doesn't mean your keyword rankings or traffíc from Google also goes down.

I saw some of my sites go up, some stayed the same, but my major site took a big hit - falling from PR6 to PR4. This was more of a devastating blow than I expected mainly for psychological reasons than actual consequences. After years of building the best content you can muster and constantly getting quality one-way links, to see that PageRank drop was very disappointing and hits to the core of your online work.

I have been around for a while so I have experienced many Google Updates - anyone remember the Florida Update? I also keep my ears peeled to discussions of the latest updates in Webmasterworld and Stompernet, and I even read Matt Cutts when I get real nervous... so I knew not to panic just because of the sudden drop in PageRank.

I also knew what most of the SEO experts were saying was true because my major keywords stayed the same and my Google traffíc actually went up. But that's little comfort when you're talking about Google; you immediately go into overdrive and try to figure out where you went wrong. What caused the drop - because whether PageRank is meaningless or not, you're still going in the wrong direction.

I saw many of my competitors drop too, but many stayed the same and a few even increased in PageRank. What are they doing right; what am I doing wrong? I don't sell links but does Google think I am selling links was my main concern? I even moved one external link from my main page to another part of my site, just in case Google is mistaking that as a paid link.

Welcome To Webmaster's Paranoid Hell!

For SEO reasons I have very few external links on my main page. Can't see why Google downgraded my main site. I have been at PR6 for years.

Herein lies my main beef - with Google you don't really know where you stand; you are constantly walking on eggshells. No matter how good your content or your site is - one misstep and you could be in the doghouse. All your hard work can be taken away in a heartbeat.

It wouldn't matter so much if it was one of the other two major search engines downgrading your site but this is Google.

Free organic traffíc from Google is vital to any online site or business. I would take traffíc from Google over any other source of traffíc on the web, except for traffíc coming from my articles on other sites, and even that traffíc probably originated from a search in Google.

Google and Google PageRank have always been important to me - that's one of the reasons a sudden large drop causes so much concern. There's another important reason Google PageRank is important to me.

Most SEO experts mistakenly believe PageRank is meaningless because Google is not giving us the true ranking of any site or revealing all the backlinks, which is supposedly one of the major factors in how Google ranks sites. While this fact is obviously true, it has caused many to jump to another conclusion.

Because Google is not giving us the real ranking, many webmasters have dismissed PageRank as a vital element in their sites. Don't make the same mistake.

Google PageRank is extremely important if you're doing business on the web. The higher PR you have, the better. But it has nothing to do with keyword rankings or first page SERPs.

What many SEO experts fail to realize (not really their business) is the whole "perceived" value of PageRank.

Google, hate it or love it, has become the most respected company on the web in the eyes of the majority of the web's users. It carries enormous weíght and prestige. The "perceived" value of a high PR7 or PR8 is extremely valuable.

We are not talking about link selling; we are talking about how a perspective business partner or customer will treat your site or business.

Say you have two identical sites you want to do business with online and you discover one is a Google PR2 site and the other is a Google PR8 site - which one would you choose to do business with? Honestly?

From first-hand experience, I know any online company or marketer will get more business offers and be offered more partnerships/joint ventures if you have a high Google PR site than a low one. It will make a difference to your bottom line.

PageRank is important. PageRank has meaning. Even if it has little bearing on your SERPs rankings or Google traffíc, PageRank can greatly influence the success of your online site or venture. Don't ignore or dismiss PageRank as a meaningless relic that didn't quite work out as Google had planned for it in the first place.

High PageRank Will Always Be Valuable

The day Google gives its own site a PageRank of PR1 or PR2 instead of the current PR10 - that's the day you can dismiss PageRank as truly meaningless.


About The Author
The author is a full-time online marketer. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools or why not try these: Free Marketing Courses. Copyright © 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Internet 'Street Smarts' Traffic Secret - Audience versus Target Market

Before you jump in and build a website, start by developing a marketing plan that targets an audience rather than just a market.

Let's say your plan is to sell to young mothers, so your AUDIENCE is 'young moms', but within this audience are many small NICHE target markets.

* NOTE: Niche marketing means marketing to a highly targeted market sector versus marketing to a large general audience.

Look at some of the many niche markets for 'young moms':

Young moms that are overweight - are a target market for diet products.

Young moms that are divorced - are a target market for dating sites.

Young moms that want a divorce - are a target market for divorce attorneys.

Young moms that have children with learning disorders - are a target market for special training sites.

Young moms that worry about what their kid's eat - are a target market for a cookbook site.

Young moms that worry about a college education for their kid's - are a target market for an investment advice site.

Young moms with a growing family - are a target market for a mortgage information site.

Young moms with a growing family - are a target market for a home improvement site.

Young moms with a growing family - are a target market for a real estate site.

Young moms with a growing family - are a target market for life insurance.

If you take the approach of concentrating on an AUDIENCE, then you can target the many small NICHE markets that exist within your target audience.

Imagine, in this example for 'young moms', if you have a series of websites each targeted at one of the niche market examples mentioned above. As your email list grows, for each site, you can start to use your email marketing campaigns to cross promote all of your websites because your have a common AUDIENCE.

Example: If one of the 'young moms', that joins your list for say a home improvement site, just happens to want to lose some weight then, you already have a potential customer because you also have a weight loss or diet site.

This works because domain names and hosting are downright cheap.

You can easily setup multiple sites because domain names and hosting are very inexpensive. The cost of owning one website - called a domain name - is less than $10.

To put that domain name on the Internet requires a hosting company. This is a company that will rent you space on a server [a special type of computer] where you store the files that make up your website. Hosting companies have direct connections to the Internet. When people type your website name into their web browser they are sent to your hosting company where your websites files are located.

Another Internet 'Street Smarts' lesson: Create a family of sites.

If you do your homework, you will find hosting companies that will let you host a whole bunch of websites for one low monthly price. That's right, you do not have to pay a separate hosting fee for each site you own if you use the right hosting company.

Since purchasing a website name and hosting a website is very inexpensive make sure and design your marketing plan to take advantage of these benefits. Rather than build just one site, plan on building a family of sites all targeted at the same audience, but with each of your individual websites targeted at a small special niche within your target audience.

Put up one simple niche site a month and you'll have 12 separate moneymakers by the end of the year.

About this author
Here's another Internet "Street Smarts" lesson: Everyday thousands of people search the Internet looking for this one thing. Do you know what this one thing is? Read the real life online adventure about a maverick young mom that has decided to say goodbye to working 50-60 hour weeks and stay at home for more Internet "Street Smarts" lessons. Go here ==> http://www.bathrobemillionairesclub.com/20/

SEO Campaign:Why Keywords Are Vital?

by Omaro Ailoch

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the optimization of a web page in order that it ranks higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) for specific keywords or keyword phrases. The pages that rank higher typically gain the greater amount of search engine traffic compared to pages ranked lower for the same keyword.

The majority of web users click on one of the top 5 results on the first page when they complete a search. As such, the ultimate goal of any SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) is to gain one of these coveted top spots, with the number one ranking being the primary objective.

Targeting Keywords

However, a top position for any keyword won't suffice. In order to increase your ROI, it is vital to ensure that you target the most appropriate keywords for your pages, and for your business. While generic, or very general topic keywords, may have the highest number of searches conducted in a month they are also the most competitive and typically least productive.

Competitive Keywords

The more competitive a keyword the more pages that you need to compete with in order to benefit from an SEO campaign. Many of the pages that appear at the top of the list will also be well optimized and have a powerful link profile, making it difficult to rank highly.

Improved Conversions With Targeted Keywords

General topic based keywords have also proven to have lower conversion rates compared to more specific keywords. Targeted keywords generate targeted visitors, and targeted visitors are much more likely to be active while on the pages of your website.

How Keyword Research Helps

Keyword research helps you to identify keywords that are relevant, targeted, and preferably less competitive. By finding the right blend of these factors you can minimize the time it takes to rank well, actually increase the number of visitors, and improve your conversion rates. Targeted keyword research leads to better profit opportunities and improved ROI.

Tailoring Your Keyword Research To Your Needs

Every page of a website needs to be treated as an individual project, especially in terms of marketing. Each page will usually attract different visitors in different stages of the purchasing process. Deep product pages will often catch visitors while they are at their most profitable - when they're ready to buy. General pages and even product category pages can be used to attract more general terms, but they should still be properly researched and targeted very precisely to your target market.

Niche Keywords

Niche keywords are often talked about as being the ideal variety of keywords for a page. A niche keyword is a highly targeted, very specific keyword. It is geared towards a corner of the market in which you operate and typically has very few competing pages. Niche keywords don't usually create much in the way of traffic but the traffic that they do create is highly targeted and very active. It attracts excellent conversion rates ensuring that you get a good return on your marketing investment.

Long Tail Keywords

Many web pages will gain visitors from natural keywords within the text. These long tail search terms again produce highly targeted visitors and while each individual term will not produce more than one or possibly two visitors over the space of the month, they do all add up. It is virtually impossible to research long tail keywords because of their infrequency, but by using popular keywords you heighten the chances of seeing more on your website.

Why Keyword Research Is Important

Keyword research is an important aspect of SEO because it helps to identify the terms that surfers use to access sites similar to yours. This, in turn, enables you to optimize the pages of your site and your link profile in order to attract those visitors. By doing so, you may also improve the number of long tail searches that lead to your site, and these product highly targeted visitors for little optimization effort.

About the Author
Omaro Ailoch is a senior software engineer, an entrepreneur and the founder of OC IT Services a highly skilled California based web development, design, and search engine optimization firm.

Creativity Boost: When an Idea is Knocking at Your Door

By Kristina Julin-stringer

It happens to all of us. Suddenly, out of the blue, we get an idea of the type of business we would like to do. Those who are serious about starting a business and running their own company will do something about it immediately. They at least write it down. The most eager people might even search on the Internet to find out about the competition, the potential market size, and the likes and dislikes of the customers.

Then there are the 'let me see' people. They have to think about it and sleep over night before they do anything about it. Last are the people who doubt the functionality of the idea and wait for a better one to come.

Which category do you think you belong in?

Opportunity knocks only once. Is this true? Do we only get one opportunity in our lifetime, and if we miss that then we lose our chances to become an entrepreneur?

Opportunities pass but they do not pause.

Some people do not see the opportunity when it first knocks at their door. But the second time their circumstances might have changed and they might actually be looking for a business opportunity. March to the beat of your own drum and pay attention to your idea. If you feel like you cannot take action now, change what you must so that you can take action now. If you do not want to start a business on your own, find a partner.

At the end of the day, it pays to do something with your idea. It is simply easier to correct your actions later on, but if you decide to do nothing when an idea shows up at your doorstep, you cannot help yourself later on, because out of nothing comes nothing. So take action when an idea shows up. No matter how small it might look, it is ten times better than doing nothing.

Question 1: How do you catch your ideas when they arrive?

Question 2: Do you do some research on your ideas?

Question 3: If so, what kind of research? If not, why not?

Being an entrepreneur is a journey inside myself to find out how far I can go and particularly what I can achieve in my life. To me it is really a dream coming true and I would like to share my experience with other people who are perhaps thinking of starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur. I am particularly interested in giving a helping hand by showing how ideas can become good ideas.

Article Source
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kristina_Julin-stringer
Kristina Julin-Stringer http://www.howtocomeupwithabusinessidea.com

Key Marketing Methods For 2008

by Sam Law and Julian Stone

Isn't online marketing by definition, expensive? Not necessarily. Online businesses are coming to the realization that in an organic environment like the Internet, organic marketing is required; paying for traditional or static marketing only gets you so far before it becomes ineffective. The consumer now controls your marketing.

What is wrong with the old methods?

Old marketing methods are failing because users are beginning to wise up (Rise Up) against the old brute force advertising that tries to win users over through sheer volume, using abrasive web-page banners, unrelated Adwords displayed on the page, or repeated newsletters (most being restricted by anti-spam laws).

The old methods no longer work effectively for two key reasons. One is the fact that they are a "flash in the pan", directing users to websites only so long as you continue to pay for the campaign, the second reason is consumers are now at the stage where they either ignore them or go out of their way to block them (with plug-in based browser or email filtering).
Let's quickly run through some of the "traditional" ways to market on the web, and their failings.

Paid Campaigns - (These only work while active) Paid campaigns may lure people to your site, but they are regularly not your target market and after arriving they promptly leave (High "bounce" rate).

Banner Ads - People hate banner ads. Most of the ads on the Internet are loathed because they aren't relevant. Seeing a banner for a better insurance rate when on a gaming site is a massive disconnect for the audience and a significant portion of banner ads are plain abrasive to users. Filling one third of your page with banner ads will not increase the likelihood anyone will care.

Adwords - Adwords (PPC, Pay Per Click) have the same problem as banner ads, though to a lesser extent. Adwords work by displaying "sponsored results," in search engine results. Adword results are separated from normal search results so not many people select them and the unknown quality in the users eye causes distrust (how do I know that a sponsored result is better than an organic result). Competition is fierce, with prices spiraling upwards, and returns staying constant. For more information see our article about Google marketing pitfalls.

Newsletters - One word: Spam. Because of the spam epidemic, users are becoming ever more wary signing up to receive mail from any online source. Legislation and the ever increasing ability of spam filters mean a continually shrinking audience (Restricting the ability to send newsletters, and filtering them before they reach your audience).

The "Old World" marketing relied on one or two large marketing sources to drive traffic with big budgets and marketing firms. You have to get people to create the "news" then you pay other people to distribute the "news", so you are pulling people into your "store" to show them what you have (whether they want it or not).

New methods for marketing

These days having other create and distribute your content for you is in vogue, this can mean syndicating your articles for other users to repost, paying users to review or rate your services, guiding users directly on forums or having users sign up to receive exclusive information. In every case, the handiwork of distribution is left to others.

Lets quickly run through some of the new "web 2.0" ways to market on the web, and the reason you should try them:

Blogs - Blogs are a goldmine to both the reader and the writer. Blogging is less time consuming and considerably cheaper than traditional marketing. Blogs give you the ability to convey your personal thoughts on happenings in your industry and your personal and corporate life, letting you really connect with your audience. Another positive is the viral marketing component where you are referenced through various social media websites, search engines and other blogs, increasing both your credibility and searchability, making it easier for consumers to find and trust you.

Forums - Forums give you an insight into what people are talking about, letting you get directly into the heads of potential customers. An easy way to find an appropriate forum is by asking existing customers what forums they frequent. Join in conversations, threads, contribute to the community and become a trusted member, then you can give your professional advice and mention what you do for a living. You should approach this as a way to get insight into what people are talking about, with the side-effect of possibly generating leads. If you approach this as direct marketing the community will quickly tell and either ban you, or develop a healthy disdain of you.

Articles - Articles are a great way to show you are connected to the issues in your industry and the wider world around you. You can either submit your articles through a syndication service, or post it on your blog, even better is a combination of the two: Choose a topic you enjoy talking about and write an article (like this one!) with your personal opinion or some helpful advice. If it is well-written and educates readers, you will already have an edge on your competition.

The theme of the new marketing methods is tailoring your content to the audience. The intent is to create something reader want to read. Marketing is not about trickery or insincerity, it's about communicating your ideas with honesty and authenticity. If it is worthwhile to your users, then they will happily talk about the content and spread it around, you have to communicate authentically with your customers and it simply doesn't happen using "traditional" online marketing.

A word of caution: if you try any of the above methods but approach them traditionally (as a direct marketing channel) then not only will you annoy a great deal of users, you can also damage your company image. Again I stress the above point, make the content something people want to read, not just marketing material.

Old marketing methods that are now approached differently
Benjamin Franklin said insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." This is increasingly true for some of the more traditional forms of online marketing. It's not so much what people are doing, but more a case of how they are being done.

Let's take a look at how we should be approaching some of the old marketing methods today.

Press Releases - Before we start, I'm sorry to tell you, but unless you are in the 5% of the market that people pay attention to, no-one reads your press releases - at least no potential customers do. A high percentage of companies marketing on the web use traditional methods of delivery, either in print or on a section of their website. Consider changing your press release to positively present your company then send it through a syndication service for papers and online news sources to pick up and republish.

Search Engines - Previously you had to specifically tailor your site to search engine specifications to ensure you had a high pagerank and were located at the top of search results. To put it simply, the important factor was how your site was presented to the user. These days although page display has an impact, it is far more important to have the right content on the site. Search engines now care more about content. Structure your pages logically and efficiently with appropriate content for each page, and be sure to link to those pages wherever possible, especially if you are engaging in blog or forum marketing.

Mailing Lists and Newsletters - With new anti-spam laws coming into effect, coupled with users increasingly annoyed at anything email based, mailing lists and newsletters are becoming far less effective. Ensure all the users on your mailing lists and newsletters have agreed to receive them. You don't need to re-ask permission from your existing list, but be sure to let users op-out, and put an optional op-in form link in your communications.

Old-world communication can still be effective but you need to ensure it is not your only approach.

The Conclusion?

Reevaluation is the key to a healthy online presence. You need to be constantly measuring and reevaluating your marketing methods to ensure you are not wasting money, and can take advantage of effective new methods.

About this author
Sam Law and Julian Stone - Project, Task & Time Management specialists for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com

When Google's Paid Search vs.Organic Results

by Scott Buresh
"Chinese Wall - The ethical (not physical) barrier between different divisions of a financial (or other) institution to avoid conflict of interest..."
Investopedia.com

"While Google nevër sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results."
Google's Webmaster Help Center FAQ

"NO pay for inclusion, and a complete separation of the search index part from the money part."
Google Chief Engineer Craig Neville-Manning, Search Engine Strategies 2004

The good people at Google have long maintained that there is a Chinese Wall between paid search results and organic results – that is, the department responsible for advertising is completely separate from the department responsible for organic search engine placement. The company insists that Google Adwords is a completely separate entity than the Google search engine, and nevër the twain shall meet. This all sounds very good, in theory. But do they live up to this ideal in practice?

You don't hear Google talking much about Chinese Walls these days. This is certainly in part because they have had great difficulty gaining traction in the literal and very competitive Chinese market (headlines such as "Google Hits Chinese Wall" or even "Google Advance Halted at Great Wall of China" were commonplace). But might there be other, more nefarious reasons? Is there a reason why we hear less and less from Google about the virtual wall that separates paid search results from organic search engine placement?

What Is Google Really Doing for Its Big Spenders?

It has long been rumored that Google will provide technical assistance in achieving better organic search engine placement to those who spend more for paid search results. I know for certain that these rumors are true in at least two instances. In fact, I actually have the minutes from one of these technical assistance meetings after the company met with Google engineers. While the identity of these two companies is irrelevant, suffice to say that they are companies that you have almost certainly heard of and that they spend millíons of dollars on paid search words each year.

To be fair, based on the meeting minutes I have, the advice that the engineers gave to the company does not include anything groundbreaking. It is mostly common sense advice that a good search engine optimization firm already knows about organic search engine placement and other issues, and much of it is already covered in the publicly-available Google Webmaster Guidelines. This, however, is beside the point. Google has obviously decided that it must provide perks to its big paid search spenders to keep them happy (or rather, happy enough to not pull their advertising). Clearly, one of these perks is access to Google engineers and the ability to glean information about organic search engine placement, a luxury that smaller advertisers do not enjoy.

Organic Search Engine Placement for Sale – The New Google Reality?

From a business perspective, this makes perfect sense, of course. Big-dollar advertisers make up the bulk of Google's revenue for paid search, and any intelligent business will take whatever steps they deem necessary to hold on to their most valuable customers. This is why larger advertisers already have a designated account representative from Google. I am willing to bet that this perk was not Google's idea. Rather, it almost certainly stemmed from the sense of entitlement that those spending large sums on paid search felt and the fact that technical help with their organic search engine placement is what they demanded.

Unfortunately, this reality leaves an advertiser with a small budget for paid search at a disadvantage. If Google is willing to provide this secret perk to larger advertisers now, what might they do in the future? Provide price breaks to larger paid search spenders? Raise the minimum monthly spend to squeeze out smaller companies and please the larger ones? It certainly has the potential to become a slippery slope, and I am interested to see where it goes next.

One final point – since Google is willing to give advice about organic search engine placement to companies that spend a great deal of monëy on Google advertising, is the phrase "While Google nevër sells better ranking in our search results..." truly accurate? I suppose this is open for interpretation. It may be technically true, but offering advice regarding organic search engine placement straight from the horse's mouth in exchange for millíons of dollars in monëy for paid search results isn't far from selling rankings, in my opinion.

Conclusion

Please don't get me wrong – I still believe that Google is the best search engine out there, I greatly admire the way that they are continually reinventing themselves, and I think they are still the target for those seeking the most benefit from organic search engine placement. They have the folks in Redmond constantly guessing and always three steps behind, and I love how they have started from humble beginnings to take on one of the biggest corporations in the world (and consistently win). I simply believe that they have played the underdog, anti-corporate card for too long, and that even if it has not outlived its usefulness, it has outlived its truthfulness. Google is now a huge multinational corporation that answers to its shareholders. To pretend anything otherwise is silly, but it seems that, for now at least, the charade will continue.

Google's overriding principle, one that they have been happy to espouse to the media, has long been "Don't Be Evil." Whether they still adhere to this principle since they have become a public company is another question that is open for interpretation. If you are a smaller advertiser and feel that Google's favoritism toward larger paid search customers regarding organic search engine placement is evil, it probably seems as though the "Don't Be Evil" principle no longer applies. You may conclude that the principles of "Don't Be Evil" and "Keep Shareholders Happy" are mutually incompatible, and that the latter has gained the upper hand.


About The Author
Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, Organic Rankings, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Download Medium Blue's latest exclusive whitepaper, "Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix," for more insight

Search Engine Optimization Company Owns by Google

If you own or work with a search engine optimization company, or even if you're just hoping to better your search engine placement, then you are probably aware of the recent acquisition frenzy that took hold among the major search engines.

Google paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, Microsoft paid $6 billion for Aquantive, and Yahoo paid $680 million for the 80 percent of Right Media that it did not already own and another $300 million for BlueLithium. The companies purchased are all intended to help widen the advertising range of each of the engines in question, and to take advantage of increasingly sophisticated behavioral-based ad-serving technologies that the acquired companies owned.

What many people failed to realize was that when Google purchased DoubleClick, it now was also the owner of a very large search engine optimization company called Performics, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of DoubleClick.

This fact is of course raising some eyebrows in the industry. Google has consistently maintained that there is no way that people can pay for better search engine placement in the organic index, a stance that the company still claims applies despite this recent purchase. In fact, a portion of Google's published guidelines about SEO says, "While Google doesn't have relationships with any SEOs and doesn't offer recommendations..." In another portion, Google says "While Google nevër sells better ranking in our search results..." However, anyone who hires search engine optimization company Performics is of course now paying Google for better search engine placement. It seems like a pretty black and white issue, but Google would obviously prefer that it was kept delightfully blurry.

A Serious Conflict of Interest

One would think that Google, aware of the controversy that would come from the fact that it now owned a search engine optimization company, would be eager to spin Performics off quickly in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety and of selling search engine placement. Not so, says the official Google/ Doubleclick acquisition FAQ:

Q. What will Google do with Performics?
A. Performics is part of DoubleClick, and we are acquiring it as part of the transaction. We have no plans to dispose of it at this time.

All right, so Google owns a search egine optimization company and seems prepared to hold onto it for a little while at least. Yes, there seems to be a huge conflict of interest. Yes, there appears to be a large double standard. Yes, Google appears to have abandoned its long-standing principles regarding organic search engine placement in the interests of profít. But surely, the search engine optimization company that it bought will quickly be forced to follow the guidelines that Google has published for companies that are looking for a search engine optimization company. Right? Well, no.

Here is a verbatim quote from the guidelines that Google provides to people thinking about hiring a search engine optimization company:

* Make sure you're protected legally. For your öwn safety, you should insist
on a full and unconditional money-back guarantëe. Don't be afraid to request a
refund if you're unsatisfied for any reason...

On the surface, this advice seems solid enough, but as an owner of a search engine optimization company, I can tell you how impractical it is. What would prevent a company that achieved fantastic search engine placement using my service from asking for its monëy back, claiming that it is unsatisfied? "For any reason" is a very slippery slope, and apparently Google agrees – Performics does not provide a guarantëe of any kind. How do I know? Simple -- one of my employees called and asked. We also have it in writing from an email we received from one of their sales reps.

What Are Google's Options?

Let's be charitable and assume that in the heat of the acquisition Google has forgotten to update the page of advice that it has created for website owners. This leaves only four things that can happen:

1. Status Quo: Google keeps this advice up on the page and Performics continues to provide no guarantëe regarding search engine placement. We'll call this the "hypocritical" scenario.

2. Performics gets in line: Google leaves the advice up as is and forces Performics to provide an unconditional money-back guarantëe. We'll call this the "free SEO from Performics" scenario.

3. Guidelines change: Performics maintains zero guarantees for search engine placement but Google modifies the advice to remove the inconsistencies pointed out in this article from its advice section. We'll call this the "shareholder's delight moneygrubber special" scenario.

4. Google spins off Performics and removes itself from the search engine optimization industry. We'll call this the "sanity over dollars" scenario.

I'm not betting on which of these scenarios is most likely. Some time back I would have picked #4, but as I pointed out in a recent article, Google has already crossed an invisible line by offering free advice about organic search engine placement to its biggest pay-per-click spenders.
Google owning a search engine optimization company -- a slippery slope, indeed. What does this mean for those hiring other companies and looking for great search engine placement? We will just have to wait and see.

References:

What will Google do with Performics

Google Webmaster Help Center


About The Author
Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, Organic Rankings, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Download Medium Blue's latest exclusive whitepaper, "Adding Search to Your Marketing Mix," for more insight.

Creativity Boost: Let's Get Creative

Why is it that some people seem to have a flow of creative genius and others are lacking? Well, in reality we all have the ability to be creative. It's just some people don't realize that they can acquire it just like any other skill. Hopefully through this article I can give you some insight to get your creative genius going.

So how can you get your creative juices flowing? First of all, read everything you can get your hands on. You want to take in as much knowledge and learning as you can. Throughout this process be sure to keep an open mind. You may find a few new facts you didn't know about that will interest you.

Next, try to draw something every day. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, just start out doodling. Yes this will seem like it's too much effort at first. But think of it this way, every time you try something new it is an effort. Yes it will seem impossible at times. But the longer you keep at it the easier it will become. Just like every thing new you try in your life.

Speaking of new things, when was the last time you were out of your comport zone? Going to different Places often help broaden perspectives. Try going to a new neighborhood or even going to a museum for the first time. But don't stop with these examples. Keep trying new things, think outside the box. Staying inside the box only limits the creative process.

Another creative thing you can try is photography. Get your camera out and start shooting. These don't need to be anything spectacular. Don't worry about capturing an award winning photo, yet. Just experiment and see what you can come up with. Start out small and work your way up.

Finally, just try to open up and talk to people you meet at the store or some other event. You can learn all kinds of interesting things by talking to people. Keep a journal of what you learn from each person. They may have an interesting story to tell. Then with all your journal entries, who knows, you could write your first book! Get Creative!

Ten Ways To Be Better At Dealing With Difficult People

By Martin Haworth

There are some key points to make when you are dealing with people who, for one reason or another, seem to be difficult, so get ready - it's you that has to change your own behaviors. So, here are a few clues to move you 95% of the way!

Build Relationships

Just talk to people. Listen to people. Spend time with them and show that you truly care.

Focus on Outcomes

Bottom line - you have a business to run - you have goals and visions for your business. Whilst you are working towards these you are able to take really objective positions. Working in tandem with a 'difficult person' is challenging, but focus on where you are going, not the personal issues you face.

See Value

Recognising the potential of 'difficult people' is half the battle. They are a value and flicking the switch that truly turns them on is a worthwhile challenge.

Meet Regularly

For an ongoing issue, make sure that you show and keep your commitments to them. This builds trust and that, in turn, makes resolution a whole lot easier.

Be Honest and Open

It is no good trying to resolve issues when Dealing with Difficult People, if you are going to either renege on your agreements or fall down on your business targets. Now is the time to be frank and honest and get a stake in the ground.

These people have been lied to enough. Be really clear on your expectations and stick to them. Change their view on authority forever!

Deliver

If you can go some way to help them resolve the cause of their anger, and it fits with everything you and your business stands for, then do it - and do it fast. Whatever you promise, deliver on. Liaise with them in good time.

Overdeliver on pace and issues, where you can. You will be amazed at what a difference this makes. Wanna become a hero? This works!

Respect Them

These people are real human beings. They hurt just like you do. They are, it's true, showing some tricky behaviours - so help them with them. Make a difference to that person - you could be changing their life in a way you would never have thought possible. Have some fun even. Share a laugh maybe?

Find a Win-Win

Solutions when Dealing with Difficult People are not cop-outs on either side. A compromise means that someone is losing here. Find a common position and seek to meet half way without losing site of what is the most important to each of you.

There is usually a win-win out there. If not, it's time to find a solution that removes them from your business.

Stick to the Point

Be clear where you are going with your challenges. It is vital to have everything in place with the most difficult of 'difficult people'. It is also of great value to have a majority on your side, albeit subtly to avoid an apparent 'ganging up'. Play this game from a position of strength

Focus on Behaviours

There are often ways of highlighting a 'difficult persons' qualities. Usually when Dealing with Difficult People you'll find they do have them! In many ways these people stick around because they like bits of the role, but not others, so you can play on their capabilities and leverage them.

Treat them not as a difficult employee, more as a misunderstood and valuable person and work on their behaviours. Remember though, that you have to work on your own first!


About The Author
Martin Haworth is a Business and Management Coach. For a free e-course contact cbts01@aweber.com. More? There are hundreds of hints, tips and ideas at his website, http://www.Coaching-Businesses-To-Success.com

Improve Your conversion Rate With An Online Sales Silo

You're probably wondering what an online sales silo is and why you need to create one. In the past, sales and marketing experts told us to create a sales or marketing funnel. You dump all of your prospects into a wide funnel and a few would drop out of the bottom of the funnel that may turn into customers. Using the power of the search engines, you drop highly targeted prospects into a silo instead of a funnel. Once they are in the silo, you lead them directly to the product or service they were searching for and sell it to them.

Why does the online sales silo work so well? In today's society we all have the same problems, lack of time and too much to do. We're unfocused and our attention spans are now measured in seconds. For example, recent studies show that when we visit a new website we decide within 3 seconds if we're going to stay. If the graphics load too slowly, we don't like the colors or fonts, or if we don't find what we're looking for in 3 seconds we abandon that website and move on to the next. We're a society that thrives on instant gratification because our time is precious and we have a million other things on our mind.

When you do a Google search you're looking to solve a problem or you're looking for some form of pleasure or entertainment. When your prospect has a problem they want an answer immediately. They type in a keyword phrase and they land on your webpage where they find your product or service that solves their problem. They complete their purchase and it's a win-win for both of you.

Sounds simple doesn't it? Then why doesn't it always work that way? Because when they type a keyword phrase they're expecting to land on a webpage that contains those keywords and a solution to their problem. If they type "lower back pain" in Google, they want to land on a webpage that offers a solution to their lower back pain. If they land on a chiropractor's home page with beautiful colors, holistic music playing in the background and a picture of him holding a model spine, they get frustrated and click away.

When someone searches for "lower back pain" their back hurts and they want to land on a webpage that tells them how they get rid of their "lower back pain". They don't care what's causing it and how qualified the chiropractor is. They want their "lower back pain" to disappear now!

When you create an online sales silo you create a process that will take them by the hand and lead them directly to what they're looking for. Imagine walking into WalMart and the greeter asks you what you're looking for. You say you're looking for a new pair of running shoes and he takes you by the hand and takes you right to the running shoes. He doesn't' take you near the shoe section. He doesn't take you to the dress shoes or the casual shoes. He takes you right to the running shoes. No distractions. No confusion. Instant gratification.

Turning your website into an online sales silo is a simple process. Using this process will improve your conversion rate, increase user satisfaction, increase your repeat visitor rate and improve your bottom line.

Step 1: Identify what action you want the prospect to take. Do you want to collect their contact information so you can contact them? Do you want to sell them a product on the spot? Determine if your goal is going to be lead generation or to complete an ecommerce transaction.

Step 2: Identify the keywords and keyword phrases that best describe your product or service. Imagine your prospect searching Google and you want them to land on your website. What keywords would they type to find you? You can use keyword research tools like Wordtracker (freekeywords.wordtracker.com) and Google's keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal)

Step 3: Create separate landing pages on your website for each keyword phrase. This webpage should contain only information about that particular keyword phrase. If the keyword phrase is "lower back pain" the webpage should only contain information about solving lower back pain. Keep the reader focused on lower back pain and don't distract them with other services you provide.

The landing page should have a compelling headline that contains the keyword phrase like "7 Ways to Eliminate Lower Back Pain Instantly". The search engines like headlines with keyword phrases. Your content should also contain the keyword phrase to keep the reader focused on what they're looking for.

Stay focused on one keyword phrase or topic per webpage. If you also talk about how you can solve foot pain on the same page, they'll get distracted and forget about their lower back pain. Remember to take them by the hand and lead them directly to the solution their looking for.

Step 4: Make it easy for them to complete the transaction. If you're collecting leads then make the contact form short and easy to complete. Give them a free report, free consultation or some other compelling reason for them to you their contact information. If you're selling them something, make the Buy Now button very clear and visible. Also make the checkout process very easy to complete.

Step 5: Give them an easy way to contact you if they have questions or difficulty on the website. Add your telephone number and an email address to the landing page so they can easily contact you.

Step 6: Add a privacy policy and terms of service agreement to your website. This adds credibility to your website and shows the visitor that you are a real company providing quality products and services.

Step 7: Follow up the transaction with a series of emails. The first email should be a "thank you" email with the details of the transaction. Thank them for signing up for your newsletter and tell them how to download their free report. If they purchased a product, thank them for their purchase and give them some tips how they can best use the product. Follow up with an email every other day for a week giving them more information about your products and services, and always direct them to your website for more information.

That's how to create your online sales silo. Remember to keep the website visitor focused on one topic and only one topic and you'll see your conversion rate soar!

How To Setup A Successful Online Business In 7 Easy Steps

Do you want your own online business? No more than ever it is possible to start a business quickly and inexpensively. Below are seven steps you can follow that will help you start off in the right direction every time.

1. Find a product to sell. You can create the product yourself. You can sell an affiliate product on a commission basis, or you can find a private label rights product that allows you to edit and resell as your own product. The product can be an ebook in a pdf format, or audio format. Video or software could be the product as well. If you are enthusiastic about the product and believe in it, you will have an easier time selling it.

2. Register a domain name that fits your product. If at all possible, include the key words that relate to the product in the domain name. Since domain names are not very expensive these days register several similar names. The content would be basically the same in each one.

3. Find a web host that is reliable and affordable. Make sure the web host has an easy to use control panel so you can upload your web pages yourself. Many of the most popular hosts use CPanel which is very easy for you to master quickly.

4. Create a small website or have someone create it for you. Some websites are only one page long, although it's a very long one page. Others are only three or four pages of content. There are free website sales page templates you can search for and use in your site. When writing the content for the sales page stress the attributes of your product. Make sure your headline grabs the visitors attention and pulls them into the copy. If you include endorsements or testimonials make sure they are from real people. Ask for the sale more than once and include a link to the order page.

5. Set up a payment processor. PayPal is quick, free and easy to set up. There is a fee to process the transactions. This fee is taken right out of each sale so you do not need to keep records. Tell your visitors they do not have to have a PayPal account to use PayPal, they can use their credit card. You have access to your money and can withdraw the money nearly immediately. Clickbank is another alternative. Clickbank takes longer to get your account approved and there is a fee to set up the account. Like Paypal, there is a fee per transaction and a percentage based on the price of the product sold through Clickbank.

6. Be sure to set up product delivery as instant and automatic. Doing this serves your best interest as you do not waste a lot of time emailing the product or download link to the customer after they have paid. And it serves your customer's best interest since they do not have to wait to download their product.

7. Drive targeted traffic to your website. You can use search engine optimization and keywords research. One fantastic approach is article placement in ezine directories. You can participate in discussion forums. And one of the newer marketing methods is social bookmarking.

True these seven steps do not go into any great technical, this is because to much detail would only slow you down in the beginning. There will be plenty of time later to learn the technical side of everything. For now, just get started.

Increasing conversion by SitePal's Talking Characters

Most website visitors leave a site within a few seconds after landing on it. If you can't make them stay a little longer, you will lose them. What's worse is they'll leave your site for your competitors'. Make your web visitors stay a little longer, and increase your chance of generating leads.

Many people believe they need more website visitors to increase leads. But, if you have a steady stream of visitors, you won't need more website visitors to close your sales or generate leads online. According to a study, less than 4% of website visitors actually buy your products or invest in your services. This is called the conversion rate. Most website conversion rates are actually somewhere between 0% to 4%. If you have less than 1.5% it is wiser to spend more time improving your conversion rate than trying to increase number of visitors.

A Study showed that a SitePal-integrated site performs better.

SitePal is an Internet-based subscription service that allows you to create a wide-array of animated speaking characters, which can be added to your website for a variety of professional and personal applications. According to Dr. Ralph F. Wilson's article Engaging Site Visitors with SitePal Animated Speaking Characters, a SitePal-integrated website increases the website visitors' average time on the site by 33%. The article also shows that website visitors for a SitePal-integrated website views 17% more of a page than a non-SitePal-integrated website.

What can SitePal do?
A SitePal avatar can deliver your message. Unlike other web streaming audio you can deliver your message in a friendlier way since SitePal is a human-like talking character. It moves its eyes as you move your mouse on a website as if somebody on the page is watching you. The avatar can also answer visitor's questions by speaking, or it can introduce benefits of some of your best selling products. A live voice is friendlier and more powerful than text on a webpage.

Some SitePal integrated websites.

Think Big Real Estate
In a very competitive marketplace, Think Big Real Estate.com needed to stand above the rest of the competition. With statistics showing that over 75% of homebuyers search for a new property by using the Internet, Think Big executives wanted to be sure to grab the attention of every potential client that visited their website.

Goldfish Software, LLC
Goldfish Software implemented SitePal to provide customers with more consultative information about its products. As a result, the company has experienced an increase in conversion at a rate of 33% since the launch of the SitePal character.

How to integrate SitePal to your website

You first design the avatar's appearance such as gender, hair style, accessories and so on. You can do this through SitePal's web-based admin page. Then record audio file. (There are several ways to do this) Then you will get a few lines of Javascript code which you need to put into your web page's code.

Having a SitePal character in your website will certainly help you stand out among your competition's websites.

Grab now SitePal for your site!.

Have you been to one of those websites that has an animated talking avatar? There is no doubt, the Sitepal buddies are all the rage now and they are COOL! They will soon be all over MySpace I am sure.

Welcoming someone to your site with just text and pictures is a trick few websites master. That's where the Sitepal buddies come in. These talking animated avatars are there to serve as anything you want them to. You might use them to greet your customers, tell them about special deals, tell them what your site is about, explain your companies return policies, ....anything you can dream of. These little animated buddies aren't as good as real salesmen, but they sure give your site a cool vibe.

There are no downloads and any site owner should be able to use Sitepal quite easily as very little technical skill is required to get you up and running. You can personalize your character by choosing through hairstyles, face models, facial hair, shirts, and accessories. You can also choose between background settings or use your own.

The Sitepal buddies are available in 14 languages now and over 60 voices. The truly fun part is their text to speech option where the avatar speaks whatever you type in. It is IMPOSSIBLE to not play around with that for at least a couple of minutes!

All sorts of people are starting to use this technology now including MySpace subsribers, Ebay auctions, and tons of online businesses. This is the wave of the future as I see it and if you haven't stumbled into a site using the Sitepal buddies yet you soon will!!

6 Steps To Improve Customer Loyalty From Site Visitors

by Omaro Ailoch

Online shopping has quickly outstretched high street shopping for popularity and overall spend. One of the big advantages that consumers gain is the ability to comparison shop for a better deal. However, for the e-store owner or service provider, this can make it difficult to survive without offering the lowest prices and the greatest deals. Decreasing prices has an obvious effect on your revenue and profit so it is vital that you aim for the right target market and attempt to build customer loyalty.

Customer loyalty means repeat business and repeat customers offer the lowest marketing spend requirements. As such, improving customer loyalty can vastly reduce your spend and increase your ROI. Many of the methods of retaining customers for your website are developed from tried and trusted methods used by large organizations and businesses offline.

Know Your Target Markets

By really getting to know and understand your target markets you will have a much greater understanding what it is that they're after. By learning this kind of information you will be better placed to send out relevant after-sales communication and entice your buyers to buy more.

Know Your Competitors

Knowing what your competitors are selling and for how much will help you determine the best prices for your own products. If you have a good customer retention rate it is often possible to increase the amount you pay for a new customer or reduce your prices without affecting your overall profit too much.

Customer Service

Perhaps the first aspect that many of us consider when looking at customer retention rates is customer service. You must supply a high level of customer service. If you go the extra mile for your customer, they will go the extra mile to come back to your site. Being polite in all communications is only a very small part of good customer service. Everything from your website content to complaint responses need to be well thought out and geared towards retaining customers.

Branding

The more synonymous your website becomes with the products or services you sell, the more likely that people will return to your site. Make sure that all of your web pages, emails, newsletters, invoices, and other forms of communication include your web address at the very least. Make it memorable and don't chop and change designs and logos unless a re-branding is deemed absolutely necessary.

After-Sales Communication

There is an art to after sales communication, and it is an art that you need to learn to master. So, your website operates online, but that doesn't mean that the whole of your business has to. If you sell digital products that are downloaded then ensure that emails and all online communication includes your branding. If you sell physical products, then your paper invoices, and everything down to your packing labels should also be branded.

Get Your Visitors Involved

Involving your site visitors will help to bring them back to your site time and time again. Web 2.0 applications provide a plethora of ways to involve site visitors. Blogs, forums, and any interactive tool will help to make your site bookmarkable. Even for visitors that don't take action while on your site, you will attract them back more frequently, and the more exposure a visitor has to your website, the more likely they become to make a purchase.

Why Customer Loyalty Is Important To Your Business Website

Return visitors or return customers are one of your greatest assets. You've already done a lot of the hard work with your preliminary marketing campaigns. Ensure that everything from your website to your email newsletter to your packing slips are effectively branded with your website details and always uphold the highest level of customer service and communication. If you can get your site visitors more involved in your site then you stand to profit even more from customer loyalty.

About the Author
Omaro Ailoch is a senior software engineer, an entrepreneur and the founder of OC IT Services a highly skilled California based web development, design, and search engine optimization firm.

Promoting Your Products with Search Engine Marketing

by Michael Fleischner

Do you have a new product or an existing product that you'd like to promote? Search engine marketing can be an effective technique if you know how to optimize your online campaigns and manage your marketing spends effectively.

Most major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN offer pay-per-click advertising. Additionally, you can find search engine marketing opportunities that are associated with an annual fee such as ExactSeek.

You can expect less traffic from second tier search engines like ExactSeek simply because these engines reach a much smaller audience. None-the-less, using second tier search engines can be a great value depending on how competitive the keywords are that can be associated with your product.

Search engine marketing is largely focused on using pay-per-click advertising to promote and sell your product. There are generally two approaches that you can take to best utilize this marketing method. The first approach is to use common keywords associated with your product or service. The second method is to use long-tail keywords or keyword phrases.

Search engines like Google make it very easy to find appropriate keywords to promote your website. Once you set up a Google Adwords account, you can have Google spider your site and propose relevant search terms. When evaluating the list, look for those search terms that are frequently searched for but face little competition. This results in a list of targeted keywords that you can promote.

You can also use the Overture keyword search tool which is available online. Simply enter the common search term or phrases associated with your website and evaluate search traffic results. The only downside to using this method is that you will only know how popular the search terms are but not the competitiveness of the terms.

Long tail keywords involve searching for common search phrases that have little traffic but also very little competition. Again, you can use Google or other tools to find these long-tail keywords. Taken in isolation, a few long-tail keywords won't generate significant clicks or revenue for you. However, when bidding on dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of these long-tail keywords, you may find that you can generate significant traffic and conversions.

One of the key aspects of search engine marketing, regardless of which search engine you choose, is measuring the effectiveness of your keyword campaigns. With the help of Google tracking, this is easier than ever. By placing a small block of code on your payment confirmation (thank you) page, Google conversion tracking can tie the sale back to the specific text link or display ad that generated the sale.

Evaluate this information on a regular basis and fine tune your online search marketing campaigns. You should also set daily spending caps for your keyword related efforts.

Depending on the keywords you choose, the quantity of those keywords, and so on, your costs can be significant. Daily caps protect you by setting a maximum spend for your campaign.

Search engine marketing is a great way to promote a new or existing product or service if you carefully select your keyword phrases, place caps on your daily spend, and track conversions. When using this form of online marketing, pay attention to your successes and failures and reinvest where returns are positive.

About the Author
Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert with more than 12 years of marketing experience. To discover how to improve search engine rankings on Google and other major search engines visit http://www.webmastersbookofsecrets.com/ and the Marketing Blog.