Accelerate Online Sales - 3 Steps To Generating New Business

Many companies believe that the process of optimizing your Website by adding keywords to the content, title, and meta tags is the silver bullet to generating sales leads.

By itself, it isn't.

Driving prospects to a Website is only the first step in a successful search-engine-optimization program. Unfortunately, 90 percent of businesses only focus on this first step, while a successful online campaign actually has three critical components:

* Drive prospects to your Website.

* Keep them there by creating a compelling benefit-based message.

* Generate sales leads, ensuring the site turns visitors into customers.

To assure that your site successfully addresses all three of these components, potentially increasing your sales leads by 25 to 50 percent in just a few months, follow the site optimization and Web usability best practices outlined below.

Assess your audience and identify what actions lead to sales.

* Success lies in understanding your customers. Who are you trying to attract? What content would attract each of these key audiences? How can you encourage Website visitors to interact with your company?

* Talk to sales. Identify the best type of lead for the sales team. Take into account how the salespeople describe your products and services to prospects, and the objections they receive.

* Evaluate customer buyer cycles and potential "call-to-action" items that could be incorporated onto the site to engage prospects. Do you have relevant content for prospects who are in the early research stages? Do you also have relevant content for those who are ready to engage with your sales team?

Assess your site.

* Evaluate the content on your Website based on the needs of your audience. Do you have content for all audiences? What type of content will keep prospects on your Website?

* Research the competition. Review the Websites of your top competitors and assess how well they rank in the search engines for your top search phrases. Identify competitors that you may not even know about by using the "similar sites" feature in Google. Search engines can find what sites are similar based on the site's content and the links pointing to a site.

* Assess your Website's traffic activity. Where is the traffic coming from? How many visitors leave after viewing the home page? How long do visitors stay on your site? What are the top search phrases used to find you? What is the most visited content?

Identify the right keyword phrases.

* Identify the most valuable keywords for your company based on relevance and popularity. Having your site found for unpopular search phrases is of little value.

* Think like your prospects. Understand how they would conduct searches for your products and services. There are several ways to identify the right keyword phrases:

- Brainstorm with existing customers.

- Analyze Website statistical data.

- Review site search results.

- Research keywords with special tools and search engines.

- Explore competitors' Websites.

- Test with a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign.

* Research the popularity of your search terms and the competition for those same words. Good keyword-selection tools are Wordtracker and Overture.

Optimize your site.

* Create keyword-rich title and meta description tags.

* Optimize each Web page for two to three keywords, using your keyword phrases in a natural way. Dispense with marketing fluff and jargon.

* Include keywords in internal anchor text links.

* Include an extensive site map and link to it from the homepage.

Track performance and re-evaluate.

* Your company will spend considerable resources creating its online lead-generation program. Tracking is the key to defining the effectiveness of this program.

* There are multiple ways to evaluate effectiveness, including the:

- Number of unique or new visitors

- Increase in the rankings of your site for top keyword phrases

- Opt-in email sign-ups

- Information requests by phone or email inquiries

- Visitors taking online product tours or signing up for Webinars

Getting a prospect to click on your listing in a search engine is only the first step in an effective lead generation program. What happens after they arrive on your Website is just as important as how they get there.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Rosemary Brisco is president of ToTheWeb, LLC, which creates customer-oriented Websites that achieve high visibility in the search engines. Clients include venture capital firms such as Mayfield Fund, Mohr Davidow Ventures and Selby Ventures, as well as organizations such as Adobe, Kodak, Stanford University, and numerous Silicon Valley startups. For more information, go to: http://www.totheweb.com

Copyright © 2006, Rosemary Brisco

Accelerate Online Sales - 3 Steps Generating New Business

Many companies believe that the process of optimizing your Website by adding keywords to the content, title, and meta tags is the silver bullet to generating sales leads. By itself, it isn't. Driving prospects to a Website is only the first step in a successful search-engine-optimization program. Unfortunately, 90 percent of businesses only focus on this first step, while a successful online campaign actually has three critical components: * Drive prospects to your Website. * Keep them there by creating a compelling benefit-based message. * Generate sales leads, ensuring the site turns visitors into customers. To assure that your site successfully addresses all three of these components, potentially increasing your sales leads by 25 to 50 percent in just a few months, follow the site optimization and Web usability best practices outlined below. Assess your audience and identify what actions lead to sales. * Success lies in understanding your customers. Who are you trying to attract? What content would attract each of these key audiences? How can you encourage Website visitors to interact with your company? * Talk to sales. Identify the best type of lead for the sales team. Take into account how the salespeople describe your products and services to prospects, and the objections they receive. * Evaluate customer buyer cycles and potential "call-to-action" items that could be incorporated onto the site to engage prospects. Do you have relevant content for prospects who are in the early research stages? Do you also have relevant content for those who are ready to engage with your sales team? Assess your site. * Evaluate the content on your Website based on the needs of your audience. Do you have content for all audiences? What type of content will keep prospects on your Website? * Research the competition. Review the Websites of your top competitors and assess how well they rank in the search engines for your top search phrases. Identify competitors that you may not even know about by using the "similar sites" feature in Google. Search engines can find what sites are similar based on the site's content and the links pointing to a site. * Assess your Website's traffic activity. Where is the traffic coming from? How many visitors leave after viewing the home page? How long do visitors stay on your site? What are the top search phrases used to find you? What is the most visited content? Identify the right keyword phrases. * Identify the most valuable keywords for your company based on relevance and popularity. Having your site found for unpopular search phrases is of little value. * Think like your prospects. Understand how they would conduct searches for your products and services. There are several ways to identify the right keyword phrases: - Brainstorm with existing customers. - Analyze Website statistical data. - Review site search results. - Research keywords with special tools and search engines. - Explore competitors' Websites. - Test with a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign. * Research the popularity of your search terms and the competition for those same words. Good keyword-selection tools are Wordtracker and Overture. Optimize your site. * Create keyword-rich title and meta description tags. * Optimize each Web page for two to three keywords, using your keyword phrases in a natural way. Dispense with marketing fluff and jargon. * Include keywords in internal anchor text links. * Include an extensive site map and link to it from the homepage. Track performance and re-evaluate. * Your company will spend considerable resources creating its online lead-generation program. Tracking is the key to defining the effectiveness of this program. * There are multiple ways to evaluate effectiveness, including the: - Number of unique or new visitors - Increase in the rankings of your site for top keyword phrases - Opt-in email sign-ups - Information requests by phone or email inquiries - Visitors taking online product tours or signing up for Webinars Getting a prospect to click on your listing in a search engine is only the first step in an effective lead generation program. What happens after they arrive on your Website is just as important as how they get there. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Rosemary Brisco is president of ToTheWeb, LLC, which creates customer-oriented Websites that achieve high visibility in the search engines. Clients include venture capital firms such as Mayfield Fund, Mohr Davidow Ventures and Selby Ventures, as well as organizations such as Adobe, Kodak, Stanford University, and numerous Silicon Valley startups. For more information, go to: http://www.totheweb.com Copyright © 2006, Rosemary Brisco

AdSense Expensive Keyword Alert at FreeAlerts.org

AdSense Expensive Keyword Alert at FreeAlerts.org: "Here is the list of the most PROFITABLE, not the most expensive AdSense keywords: Keyword Cost Per Click Clicks/Day Cost/Day insurance $17.41 49,893.5 $868,645.81 hotels $3.52 200,636.0 $706,238.75 film $2.88 183,044.0 $527,166.75 home $3.89 102,282.5 $397,878.91 car $5.09 52,069.5 $265,033.75 schools $4.13 60,913.0 $251,570.69 acting $2.28 106,337.0 $242,448.36 credit $8.67 25,705.0 $222,862.34 cheap $2.71 82,139.5 $222,598.05 digital $1.70 130,607.0 $222,031.91" The idea here is that you want not just hig paying ads, but ads people actually click on. The list is interesting as it doesn't include any of the supposed high paying keyword, but words that people would actually be interested in searching for on the Internet. I know I have searched for a hotel or cheap hotels, insurance, digital cameras and so on. Also, I would be inclined to click on an ad because I am expecting to spend money on the product. The page also provides a subscrition service.

A Hard Look at PPC, Click Fraud and the Alternatives

With the creation of the Overture and Google Adwords systems, many webmasters believed they had finally hit the mother load. It was no longer necessary for small online businesses to invest large amounts of money into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to gain high search rankings in the natural search results. Even webmasters committed to SEO campaigns began to realize its fleeting nature. Given frequent search engine algorithm changes, optimizing a website was no guarantee that in 6 months or less it wouldn't be back to square one and page twenty of the search results. PAY-PER-CLICK SEARCH ENGINE (PPCSE) PLACEMENT With the advent of the PPCSE model created by Overture, and followed by Google Adwords, webmasters felt like they had finally found the level playing field that everyone talks about. Hiring a SEO company was no longer necessary to crack the top search engine results. A Page One placement could be purchased and often for far less than the cost of a SEO company's services. Webmasters discovered that they could get traffic to their website for as little as one cent per click. Pay-per-click, however, has evolved over the last 5 years and not to the benefit of most webmasters. Although five cents is currently the average starting bid price at most major search engines, many sought after keyword terms can cost as much as $30 - $50 per click. Given the increasingly competitive nature of PPC advertising and spiralling costs, many small- to medium- sized businesses today might be better served hiring a good SEO company to search optimize their websites. WHO IS CLICKING YOUR PAY-PER-CLICK LINKS? There are four types of people who click on pay-per-click ads. Knowing who these people are helps explain why experts keep telling us that 20% to 25% of all clicks on PPC listings are "fraudulent clicks". Personality Type #1: True-Blue Prospects These are the people for whom you have placed your pay-per-click ads. They see your advertisement; they like what they see; and they click your link to see if you can actually serve their needs. Personality Type #2: Accidental Clickers Every once in a while, even my finger misfires, and I click an advertisement that I did not intend on clicking. My first thought is usually, "Oh no...", and my first action is to find the back button. I didn't mean to cost that person money by clicking his advertisement... but I did. It was an accident. Now, the advertiser has to pay for my mistake. That bites. Personality Type #3: Jealous Competitors I would like to think that all of my, and your, competitors are fine, upstanding people. And most of them are. But, there are some who are not, and they click on pay-per-click links just to be spiteful or just to cost their business rivals a few dollars. Believe it or not, a good percentage of "fraudulent clicks" are believed to be clicks perpetrated by people against their competitors. Personality Type #4: True-Blue Fraudsters Not that long ago pay-per-click providers realized that there was tremendous opportunity in offering small website owners a method for cashing in on their limited traffic. Today, a webmaster can go to any number of pay-per-click services, add a small piece of code to a webpage and start serving paid advertising the same day. Webmasters thus become revenue share partners with the PPC provider, splitting revenues with the PPC provider for each click. Ethical webmasters, of course, put the needs of their advertisers first and focus on putting eyeballs on their website so that visitors can click on the advertising links. But, the word "ethical" doesn't exist in the vocabulary of some webmasters. These are the "true-blue fraudsters" who believe in making "revenue at any cost... no matter who might be hurt by their actions." They devise schemes to have their own ads clicked in order to drive up their revenue share. These webmasters, although a minority, are responsible for the vast majority of fraudulent clicks. And, they are the same people that should be taken out behind the barn, for a good old-fashioned flogging --- one lashing for each stolen dollar would be fine with me. THE UNSEEN COSTS OF THE PAY-PER-CLICK SEARCH GAME If the experts are correct in estimating that 25% of all clicks are fraudulent, then you are paying out 33% more than you should have to pay to get your business. If you are converting PPCSE clicks-to-sales at a rate of $20 per transaction, then you should be aware that your actual conversion rate for non-PPCSE advertising would cost you an average of $15 per transaction. By escaping the pay-per-click search engine model, you could in effect make an additional $5 per transaction by cutting the fraud out of your marketing budget. Personally, I would rather not pay the pay-per-click mafia the $5 a transaction that they are exacting against pay-per-click advertisers. WHERE MY ADVERTISING MONEY WORKS BEST I have always gained the best bang for my buck with pay-for-placement advertising. In a nutshell, I pay a monthly, quarterly or yearly fee to have my advertising seen on various websites. Banner advertising is always an option, but text links provide better click-through rates (CTR's). At any one time, you can find links to my websites on dozens of other websites. Here are a few examples of pay-for-placement, often referred to as "paid inclusion", advertising networks: ISEDN.org Network: ( http://www.ISEDN.org ) The Independent Search Engine and Directory Network (powered by ExactSeek.com) is comprised of more than 200 specialty search engines, search directories and article directories. Through their system, you can buy quarterly or yearly top ten exposure (http://www.exactseek.com/featured_listings.html) for specific keyword phrases which are then shown through the ISEDN's 200 plus member websites. Their network claims to show paid inclusion ads 150 million times per month. Pricing starts at $4 per month per keyword phrase and goes down according to the number of keyword phrases purchased. Quarterly and yearly rates for one keyword phrase are $12 and $36, respectively. BraveNet.com Home Page Featured Advertiser Listing: http://www.adbrite.com/mb/commerce/purchase_form.php?zone_id=8181 4 BraveNet is the number one provider of free web tools in the world and through their AdBrite sales page you can purchase a 30 day text advertisement at the bottom of the Bravenet home page for $1500 or a 3 month advertisement for $3500. According to the Bravenet Media Kit ( http://www.bravenetmedianetwork.com/mediakit.php ), their network serves 500 million page views per month. ColdFront Network: ( http://www.coldfront.net/index.php/content/view/100/50/ ) ColdFront serves the Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) communities. With 150,000 unique visits and 12 million page views per month, they provide real advertising value, if your target market happens to be in this area. Paid inclusion can be purchased for $250 to $350 per month. WHO LEFT THE BARN DOOR OPEN? We put locks and deadbolts on our doors. In some localities, we put bars on our windows. We keep our valuables in safes. We keep our cars locked when we are not in them. We are a nation obsessed with protecting our valuables. And yet, when we advertise our online businesses, we seem to be willing to let PPCSE providers steal 25% of our advertising budget? It boggles the mind. Personally, I am done with PPCSE companies until they can assure me that my advertising dollars are protected from click fraud. I have always relied on my own search engine optimization skills to strengthen my natural search results. And frankly, I am pretty good at it. And, to supplement my own SEO efforts and organic search result placement sucesses, or lack thereof, paid inclusion currently offers me the best value for my money. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Platt is the owner of http://thePhantomWriters.com Article Distribution Service. Through his system, you can have your Free Reprint Articles sent to thousands of publishers and webmasters looking for good quality content. If you need someone to write articles for you, Bill's writers can create interesting articles on most any topic. If you would like to talk to Bill personally about his services, you can reach him from 9:30am to 6pm CST at: (405) 780-7327.

The What, Why and How of Business Blogs

Blog is short for Web Log or Weblog and the Blogosphere is the online blog world, some parts of which are hyperlinked extensively to each other. This is the Wikipedia definition: Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site. I recommend that you read lots of people's blogs to learn what blogs are. Go to your favorite search engine and type in the word 'blog' and the subject you're interested in. For example, 'web design blog', or 'blog music', or 'sports blog'. You'll find lots of blogs that way. Blogs have become a way in which regular, non-technical people can post information to the Web as easily as they can access it. WHY ARE BLOGS SO IMPORTANT? Well, they're not that important, yet. But they could be soon, and most likely will be. In fact, some would argue that they are already vital in today's Web business world. I am not ready to agree to that yet, but it is becoming more obvious to me over time that blogs can no longer be ignored in business. Online businesses can benefit from blogging by taking advantage of a vehicle for easily posting new, original, and business-related content on a regular basis. HERE ARE SOME MORE BUSINESS BENEFITS OF BLOGGING: * Blogs help to position you and/or your company as experts and leaders in your industry. * They're interactive in nature. At the end of each blog entry is usually a link that allows anyone to add their own comments to your blog entries. This allows your customers and potential customers to make comments about your products or services or ask you questions to help them in their buying process. * Blogs are marketed easily and quickly by their RSS feeds * Blogs allow you to stress your choice of products, services, relevant news stories, quotes, pictures and more with your audience, customers and potential customers. * People are generous with adding links to your blog if the content is good, especially within their own blogs. More links means more traffic and better search engine rankings. HERE ARE SOME WAYS IN WHICH YOU CAN MAKE REVENUE FROM YOUR BLOG: 1. Selling advertisements. Whether you use banners or text links, if your site draws a regular audience interested in your blog topics or theme, try to offer ad space to organizations that are looking to market to your audience. In fact, if your blogs becomes really popular then advertisers will call you. 2. Offering Google's AdSense. Google's website explains, "Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website's content pages and earn money." learn more about AdSense. 3. Affiliate Programs. Affiliate programs allow Web sites who provide links to your site to receive payments or reciprocal advertising in exchange for promoting your Web site. In the case of blogging, this is reversed, where you post links within your blog, and collect money from the owners of those links when they result in a click-through and sale. HERE ARE SOME WEBSITES WHERE YOU CAN GET YOUR BLOG LISTED IN: * BlogWise - http://www.blogwise.com * Blog Search Engine - http://www.blogsearchengine.com * Blog Hub - http://www.bloghub.com * Blog Daisey - http://www.blogdaisey.com * Get Blogs - http://www.getblogs.com * Is Blogs - http://www.lsblogs.com HOW TO BLOG FOR BUSINESS: First you need to get blogging software. You can choose to create a blog that is housed on another site such as http://www.blogger.com (which is a blog service) or you can host it on your own Web server. I recommend the latter since the links that are developed by others pointing to your blog won't be counted in the search engines. This is because the links are attributed to domains, so a link to http://MyNewBlog.blogger.com gives a link credit to blogger.com and not your domain. If your blog is a business blog, you really ought to host your own blog as opposed to using a blog service. You'll need the extra functionality and control. If you plan on hosting your own blog and if you plan to use a UNIX Web server platform then you need to go with blogging software such as Movable Type, for example. If you have a Microsoft Web server platform for your site then you'll need software such as BetaParticle blog. Here is a great list of various blog software: http://www.lights.com/weblogs/tools.html Next you'll need a database to hook your blog up to. The database is what stores the blog entries, among other things. If you don't know if you have a database on or connected to your website server, or if you don't know how to hook up your blog to your database, contact your host company or Web server administrator for help. Once you have the blog set up on your domain (for example http://www.MyWebsite.com/blog) and you've hooked it up to a live database, you can start blogging. Generally, each entry is also a day. So you can write a new entry every day, or whenever you want, and that entry will show up on the blog at the top, moving older entries below. You ought to think of a theme for your blog. In other words, your blog could be about your personal experiences in the industry you're in. It could be about your company's product reviews, or new services. It could be about your thoughts and opinions about issues related to your industry. It could be a place where you regularly find and list new resources to help others in your industry. The list is endless. But be sure to stick to a theme and be original. You want to offer something of value to your website visitors. Sticking to theme helps you position yourself for future advertisers and also makes for better reading for your visitors. Furthermore, you want to give a good impression with your blog and with each and every entry if you want it to augment your online business. Finally, sticking to a theme helps with the search engines since it's believed that engines determine website themes and use this information for ranking. Of course your blog could be about personal things too. Many blogs are just that, an online journal. But since we're interested in Web business here, I am discussing business blogs only. What's great is that blogs get indexed easily and quickly by search engines. Each entry is another "page" that can be potentially listed in Google for example, which will drive more traffic to your site. Another neat thing about running a blog once it's set up is that you do not need to be technical at all to make regular entries. This is helpful if you want to delegate the writing to someone else, since technical skills won't be a prerequisite. This allows you to have the most qualified person regarding the blog's theme and hopefully the best writer actually making the entries. Be creative. Add images to your blog entries to spice things up a bit. Although blogging can be lonely, keep at it. Sometimes it seems like you're just writing new entries each day for yourself only. It may be a while before someone chooses to add a comment to one of your entries. You may not hear from anyone for a long time. But that doesn't mean people aren't reading it. In fact, check your website statistics to see just how many people are visiting your new blog. As you add more entries, get your blog listed on other sites and market your blog. It will build, and eventually you'll have a nice following of engaged readers. Most importantly, be sure to pepper your entries with calls to action. For example, if your business blog is attached to your travel website and the blog's theme is traveling and finding great travel deals all over the world, make sure you add a link to an entry that points people to a travel special you're running on your website. What would be even better is a blog entry about the fantastic vacation you took to Hawaii and included at the end was a link to cheap Hawaii vacation deals on your website. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Jason OConnor is President of Oak Web Works, LLC (http://www.oakwebworks.com/), an e-strategy firm and enjoys reading Sports, Music & Tickets blog (http://www.bestshowticketslasvegas.com/blog/ ). Reach him at: joconnor...@hotmail.com

Tags: second, income, business, blog