On July 4th 2007, one of my clients made a decision to declare his commitment to independence. He decided to fast track the opening of his start up business. He told me he would trust his future to my coaching. I felt the pressure but no stress because of his commitment to a 12 month SEO marketing campaign. I wasted no time setting him on course. It all began with my 5 top search engine and marketing tips.
The short version of the story is the revenue for this start-up company moved from $0 to $7 million in monthly revenue in 9 months. The first 30 days were focused on building the foundation and optimizing his websites. After a review of his initial plans it was clear search engine marketing was essential. My five steps for search engine marketing formed the foundation. Here are the main search engine ranking tips that can help fast track any business Internet marketing success.
1. Build a solid foundation. Use a proven keyword search tool like provided by Google or Yahoo. Go for quality rather than quantity once your keyword choices produce results. For example, if your business is related to credit cards, search a variety of combinations e.g. credit card services, qualify credit cards, credit card sources, etc. This starts the ball rolling with hundreds of choices. Select both high popularity and low popularity ranked keywords and merge them into your marketing materials. This is a proven formula for driving waves of traffic to your door.
2. Once the traffic starts to build test several versions of your marketing materials. Do not be stingy with your investment of time, money and sweat that must be poured into testing. Focus on your graphics, colors, fonts, wording, spelling, etc. A side note regarding a recent test. One client experienced a 20% increase in her conversion rate by purposely misspelling four words in various parts of her material. She didn’t place all of the words on the same page and only tested one misspelling on the main page. The point is to TEST TEST TEST and don’t be afraid to take risks. Your focus here is to find the right mix of search engine optimization and results generated through the variety of approaches you try.
3. If your service or product appeals to the 20 something market do not overlook the social media marketing sites. This requires you join and explore you membership to the fullest extent. Join the forums and submit comments, and participate. Remember you’re there to participate and observe, not to promote and sell. Your time investment will pay off larger than any sales you might be lucky enough to make. This is especially important if you are older than the prevailing members. This is a huge marketplace and the insights you obtain will serve several purposes. The most important take-away is learning about the needs and interest of the energetic, pragmatic, artistic, and just plain folks that make up the largest population segment in the world.
4. SEO articles are a big part of any search engine marketing focus. However, you don’t want to miss most important part of marketing. Namely, your product or service. No mater how flashy or techy or absolutely perfect your product may be, it will not move if your customers don’t understand the value. In this instance value means benefit. Your marketing materials must clearly communicate the answer to “So What?” For example the 70” LCD TV I’m still waiting to arrive from the warehouse wasn’t ordered when I first saw it in November. At that time my 72” Magnavox was still providing the best picture available. Yes the 70” set was newer, more high tech and flashier, but it didn’t provide a good answer for my So What? question. However, once the picture on my other set began to fade the answer to So What? changed. Try to answer the So What question from your prospects perspective and you’ll see the difference in your results.
5. Add testimonials to your SEO marketing materials and don’t be stingy. I always recommend a full page of testimonials to fast track the acceptance of your products. Human nature is a solitary thing in many ways; however, most of us find it easier to make a positive decision when others have already tested the waters so to speak.
5.5 My Bonus Tip.... Start a Blog. If you have not started a blog dedicated to your start-up business you’re missing out. Simple blogs take about 20 minutes to start and about an hour or less a week to maintain...unless you’re serious. The benefit is credibility. Let’s face it. You’re the expert on your business and your service or product. No one knows it like you do. In fact, no one knows you like you know yourself. In today’s reality TV crazy world, everyone wants to know as much as they can about anyone they haven’t met, especially if they share themselves in a public forum. Blogs are a perfect way to begin your PR campaign, especially when it comes to search engine marketing. Stay tuned for more SEO marketing tips.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
SEO Marketing Do It Yourself Tips
If you're serious about your business you must control your expenses. Most new businesses and many seasoned businesses, try to handle search engine optimization marketing on their own. While this decision is based on logic and reason, the outcome can be less than satisfactory.
We are SEO consultants and we encourage business owners to handle seo marketing on their own. However, once the business starts to grow a plateau effect can set in. It's important to know when to call in a professional. Equally important is to know which professional to call. The who-to-call list can be challenging.
For example, your business may be perfectly primed and only needs as seo article marketing consultant to move you to the next phase. Or, depending on your market segment, search engine optimization may be the option you need to act on right away. Then there is the issue of backlinks. Are yours healthy or is it time for an injection?
SEO articles should definitely be a no-brainer for you to act on. I am constantly surprised by how many business owners have not taken advantage of this simple strategy. Starting next month we'll be adding a new service for our blog friends.
Our goal is to prove the value of seo article marketing. We will begin a weekly question and answer newsletter style offering that will kick off with a free custom written article. Stay tuned for more details in the next update.
We are SEO consultants and we encourage business owners to handle seo marketing on their own. However, once the business starts to grow a plateau effect can set in. It's important to know when to call in a professional. Equally important is to know which professional to call. The who-to-call list can be challenging.
For example, your business may be perfectly primed and only needs as seo article marketing consultant to move you to the next phase. Or, depending on your market segment, search engine optimization may be the option you need to act on right away. Then there is the issue of backlinks. Are yours healthy or is it time for an injection?
SEO articles should definitely be a no-brainer for you to act on. I am constantly surprised by how many business owners have not taken advantage of this simple strategy. Starting next month we'll be adding a new service for our blog friends.
Our goal is to prove the value of seo article marketing. We will begin a weekly question and answer newsletter style offering that will kick off with a free custom written article. Stay tuned for more details in the next update.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
What Makes SEO Work?
Search engine optimization is a long time friend of website architects, affiliates and Internet marketers of many different levels of skill and experience. Of primary focus is how relevant is your website to visitors who begin their search via the major search engines?
If your traffic is generated from a large variety of sources and your site is well written you should feel confident you’ll attract thousands of links and favorable treatment by the search engines, especially the prize of the game, namely Google.
Don’t make the mistake made by spammers and the like and think you can manufacture websites by the hundreds and cross link and duplicate and make your website a star. While you will have a measure of temporary success if you are not generating quality links your success will be short lived.
Here is my short list of must dos and must haves for any sophisticated SEO campaign:
• Determine in advance what population you want linking to your website. This will make it easier to give solid relevance to your editing and resultant marketing efforts.
• Always remain focused on quality in content, style and graphic presentation. Your site must shine.
• Refine and redo everything weekly or bi-weekly. Your goal is to move your page ranking higher. If your website becomes stagnant the effort to boost your results is an uphill battle.
• Do not loose your focus on content. If your website does not have enough balance of content and graphics very few visitors will choose to link to you.
So How Do You Make Your Way To The Top? Let’s count the ways:
1. Buy your way. By performing a thorough search for SEO enhancement resources you will find literally thousands of options......all with a price.
While the major search engines don’t like websites that over do the gimmicks and strategies that build top-ranking momentum, you can invest in smart technology and move rapidly to the top without incurring penalities.
2. Think page rank, high page rank but don’t forget about quality. Your best strategy is to link to sites where linking rights can be purchased, but be sure your choices are optimized.
Quality counts not only on your own site but the sites you link to as well. When a site rises to high ranking levels with the a major search engine like Google it will soar on other search engines as well.
3. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize. Only about 20% of your competitors are operating from websites that are optimized to be search engine friendly and attractive to visitors as well.
It also sets you on course to keep ahead of the pack when you tweak your sites meta files and keywords on a regular basis. There are several options for savvy tools to keep you moving upward.
4. Join a marketing forum and join in the discussions. Give advice to build your credibility and post your own links. This builds awareness of your company and helps build a solid core of targeted traffic.
5. Write your information with care and take advantage of professionals to handle some of the editing for your marketing presentations. This is the time consuming part of the process but the payoff is huge.
When all else fails and you’re not getting the results you need, check the forums and scour the ads and hire yourself an SEO professional. You can often test the waters through groups like Yahoo and MSN. Often undiscovered SEO pros can be found through the contacts you make in the forums.
To summarize, the Internet community provides the largest market place in the world. Tapping into this viral market of millions of potential customers is what dreams are made of.If you set your goal to work through the challenges that can only be beat by hard work and focused efforts you can successfully tap this market.
Remember that having a website, even a handsome one, does not guarantee your success. You must learn to master the technical site of the SEO world. Study the available resources and invest in SEO and PPC. This dynamic duo is as close to a guarantee of success as you’ll ever find....as long as you are willing to plan your work and work your plan.
US Commerce figures report that as many as 70% of the Internets’ surfers use Google to locate the sites and pages they ultimately find and shop. Don’t underestimate the value of thorough preparation.About The
Author:Alex Rich PhD, is a business coach with more than 15 years of experienc. He assisted a recent client who grew his business from $0 to $7 million monthly revenue in less than 9 months.
If your traffic is generated from a large variety of sources and your site is well written you should feel confident you’ll attract thousands of links and favorable treatment by the search engines, especially the prize of the game, namely Google.
Don’t make the mistake made by spammers and the like and think you can manufacture websites by the hundreds and cross link and duplicate and make your website a star. While you will have a measure of temporary success if you are not generating quality links your success will be short lived.
Here is my short list of must dos and must haves for any sophisticated SEO campaign:
• Determine in advance what population you want linking to your website. This will make it easier to give solid relevance to your editing and resultant marketing efforts.
• Always remain focused on quality in content, style and graphic presentation. Your site must shine.
• Refine and redo everything weekly or bi-weekly. Your goal is to move your page ranking higher. If your website becomes stagnant the effort to boost your results is an uphill battle.
• Do not loose your focus on content. If your website does not have enough balance of content and graphics very few visitors will choose to link to you.
So How Do You Make Your Way To The Top? Let’s count the ways:
1. Buy your way. By performing a thorough search for SEO enhancement resources you will find literally thousands of options......all with a price.
While the major search engines don’t like websites that over do the gimmicks and strategies that build top-ranking momentum, you can invest in smart technology and move rapidly to the top without incurring penalities.
2. Think page rank, high page rank but don’t forget about quality. Your best strategy is to link to sites where linking rights can be purchased, but be sure your choices are optimized.
Quality counts not only on your own site but the sites you link to as well. When a site rises to high ranking levels with the a major search engine like Google it will soar on other search engines as well.
3. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize. Only about 20% of your competitors are operating from websites that are optimized to be search engine friendly and attractive to visitors as well.
It also sets you on course to keep ahead of the pack when you tweak your sites meta files and keywords on a regular basis. There are several options for savvy tools to keep you moving upward.
4. Join a marketing forum and join in the discussions. Give advice to build your credibility and post your own links. This builds awareness of your company and helps build a solid core of targeted traffic.
5. Write your information with care and take advantage of professionals to handle some of the editing for your marketing presentations. This is the time consuming part of the process but the payoff is huge.
When all else fails and you’re not getting the results you need, check the forums and scour the ads and hire yourself an SEO professional. You can often test the waters through groups like Yahoo and MSN. Often undiscovered SEO pros can be found through the contacts you make in the forums.
To summarize, the Internet community provides the largest market place in the world. Tapping into this viral market of millions of potential customers is what dreams are made of.If you set your goal to work through the challenges that can only be beat by hard work and focused efforts you can successfully tap this market.
Remember that having a website, even a handsome one, does not guarantee your success. You must learn to master the technical site of the SEO world. Study the available resources and invest in SEO and PPC. This dynamic duo is as close to a guarantee of success as you’ll ever find....as long as you are willing to plan your work and work your plan.
US Commerce figures report that as many as 70% of the Internets’ surfers use Google to locate the sites and pages they ultimately find and shop. Don’t underestimate the value of thorough preparation.About The
Author:Alex Rich PhD, is a business coach with more than 15 years of experienc. He assisted a recent client who grew his business from $0 to $7 million monthly revenue in less than 9 months.
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