November 24, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Operating a business blog can attract new customers and establish your organization as an industry leader. Still, going about this can be a difficult and time consuming endeavor. To compete for new business, most organizations are now operating a business blog page.
That business blogs attract viewers and customers is a well known fact. SEO Consultants have been assisting organizations for years in building this new type of sales tool. Setting up the blog is not a hugely time-consuming or even expensive endeavor. Still, blogging takes time and can require a significant on-going investment. Composing and creating valuable content is not an easy task and to run through the exercise day after day can leave the author worn out and out of ideas. Still, the concept of ‘valuable content’ is central to attracting and re-attracting viewers to the business site. So when things get difficult and ideas are hard to come by, companies frequently ask “how much blogging is necessary?” Posting at least once every day is a difficulty that most successful business bloggers overcome. Generating enough fresh new ideas is a challenge, but if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. So… overcoming the challenges of creating new content each day or multiple times each day is a very important part of a successful blog traffic strategy. New and valuable content must be posted regularly – preferably daily – if you want to compete at the top of your niche for readers.There are two main types of blog readers: Initial visitors, and Repeat readers.Initial visitors may be attracted by a blog post you made on another site, or because your site showed up as a result on a search engine. Once there, they must receive value and be at least entertained by the content you present. Otherwise, they will be much less likely to become repeat visitors. Repeat visitors are ones that have some assurance that the time taken to revisit your site will not be wasted. Repeat visitors may also be members of the niche community that may be searching for new ideas themselves.So how do you use a blog to attract both types of visitors? There really are only two elements to improve traffic and search engine placement with a business blog.
Yup… it just isn’t any more complex than that… just two areas upon which to focus. (These are big task areas though!)Creating Value:
Provide something useful or a guideline that will be helpful to your readers. Thinking of your reader as a customer, he or she won’t invest time with you unless there is something they can get out of the relationship. And… understanding that creating value is a time-consuming effort, the author must schedule in time to prepare good material. Telling People:
Once your content is created and posted, what then? Well….don’t just stand there, tell someone! This is why it is important that you reach out via a blog or social network to let people know they can receive some value by visiting your page. Social marketing such as Facebook and Twitter can help attract readers if you let viewers know there is new and valuable material posted on your site.There are numerous tactics one can while visiting other blogs within the niche, but suffice it to say that you need to be a part of your community and share your knowledge and expertise. A comment on another’s blog that shows insight and wit will attract readers over to your site. And once they are there, they should receive a unique bit of content or value. There is no substitute for visiting other blog pages in your niche. This brings us back to how much new information and blog activity is necessary to attract readers. There is of course no short answer to this. A good rule of thumb is though, to post every day and comment every day. Your level of success will be somewhat dependent on the competition you have in your niche and the size of your potential audience. There is however, no substitute for being active in terms of posting and commenting. And this takes time.Blogging allows you to actively put your message out for the community, but the community must be invited to read it. If the message isn’t valuable or if the community doesn’t know the value is there, you are missing huge opportunities to attract readers and ultimately, buyers.
For more information and assistance about setting up your business blog or using the internet to attract traffic and customers, please visit the SEO Consultants of Denver blog page.
Spending eight years in software development really inspires creativity – especially for things other than software development.
Thus I embarked on a career as an SEO Specialist assisting small and mid sized businesses utilize the internet to attract more sales and increase revenues.
For more information, please visit the SEO Consultants of Denver home page. Provide your contact information via the “Contact Us” tab and we will be with you very soon!
November 13, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
by Daniel Moro
In the world of online business, traffic is like gold. It is something you work hard for, and once you have it, you can turn it into cash, or even barter and trade with it. Above all you must remember how valuable it really is, and invest wisely with it, or your online business will fail.
If you want to grow your online customer base then you must build a good stream of incoming traffic to your web site. Traffic leads to revenue. Depending upon your online business model it probably does that in one of two ways.
For many online businesses, building traffic leads to growth in an opt-in mailing list which leads to establishing relationship or rapport. This in turn leads to strong prospects and an increase in sales volume.
For online businesses consisting of web sites without their own products and services, building a good stream of incoming traffic leads to increased visitor numbers which leads to higher quantities of clicks on affiliate links or advertisements such as AdSense. This in turn leads to an increase in the site revenue.
Let’s look at ten traffic building techniques that have proven to be remarkably effective for growing an online business. In the first part of this three part series we look at Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click Advertising, and Article Marketing. 1. Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of designing and fine-tuning a web page and the links to that web page to improve the web page’s relevance and ranking in the organic, crawler-based listings of a search engine, for particular keyword phrase searches.
Search engine optimization does require some study of the techniques involved. That can be time consuming and the results might take weeks or even months to see but, in the long term, investing your efforts in obtaining natural – also known as organic – high-ranking placement in the top search engines will pay huge dividends.
While it is possible to optimize pages for many search engines, most webmasters working on SEO concentrate on Google, MSN and Yahoo.2. Pay Per Click Advertising
In addition to their organic search results the major search engines publish additional sponsored listings on a pay-per-click basis. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is one of the quickest ways to drive traffic to a web site. This is certainly not the cheapest traffic building technique, but it is probably the most effective technique to guarantee a large quantity of traffic, fast.
The web sites shown in sponsored listings are usually determined through a bidding system. You bid the maximum price that you are willing to pay for each visitor that clicks on your listing and comes through to your site. The more you bid, the more likely your listing will show.
How much you need to bid to get traffic really depends upon the niche in which your web site operates. Although you could easily pay anywhere from $0.01 to $1.00 for each visitor that clicks through your listing, many webmasters obtain traffic for $0.05 to $0.15 per click. 3. Article Marketing
Article marketing involves writing articles and making them available for webmasters and editors to publish. The greatest exposure usually comes from listing the articles at article directories such as EzineArticles and IdeaMarketers. This allows anyone to publish the article without any fee to you, the author, provided they include your ‘Author Resource Box’ at the end of the article. Your author’s resource box should be a small paragraph or two about you including a direct link to your web site.
Article marketing is a great traffic building technique for several reasons.
First, there is an increase in name exposure and brand awareness as people read your articles all over the Internet. They will begin to recognize you as an expert in your topic.
Second, there is direct traffic to your web site from readers clicking through the link in your author’s resource box.
Third, there is the indirect benefit of backlinks increasing your search engine ranking. Backlinks are links on other web sites that point to your web page. Backlinks are important for search engine optimization because some search engines, especially Google, give more credit to web sites that have a good number of quality backlinks.
In Part Two of this article I will discuss Free Ebooks, Viral Marketing, Classified Advertising, and Advertising Swaps.
Daniel Moro has been successfully building online businesses for ten years. Download Daniel’s free report, ‘10 Remarkably Effective Traffic Building Techniques’ today at http://www.DanielMoro.com/traffic.htm
November 10, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
What is Easy Traffic Steps? Is it a Scam? I will answer these 2 question in this review. But let me first touch on the subject of traffic briefly.Traffic – the lifeblood of all websites – is one thing you always want if you have a blog or website. Because in the world of online business, Traffic = $$$. However, this is NOT exactly true!The TRUTH is “Continual Streams of Traffic + Conversion = $$$”. That’s the right formula!I don’t think I need to stress too much about the importance of the above formula, perhaps anyone who has a website or blog already knows that.The question is HOW? How do you get a stream of continual traffic that will convert into cash?That’s what the Easy Traffic Steps is all about. It’s a complete course that will teach you 20 proven traffic generation methods, 1 each week, for 20 weeks. The reason why the course is broken into 20 weeks is because the entire lessons are too BIG or overwhelming if you’re to learn everything in one week.The best part of the Easy Traffic Steps course is that everyone (whether you’re new or experienced) can easily learn how to drive traffic to their websites or blogs from day 1. As mentioned, you not only learn how to drive traffic but also how to convert those traffic into sales.From day 1, besides learning how to get more visitors to your website or blog, you will also learn how to sell more products or services to your visitors and the strategy of how to do up-sales and cross-sales (think about the integration marketing strategy used by McDonald’s). I learn quite a lot on how to increase the number of visitors to my site even from day 1.Another thing I like about the Easy Traffic Steps course is that it’s very organized and hence makes the course very easy to digest. If your intention is to get more targeted traffic to your website or blog, this course is worth checking out. It’s definitely not a scam.However, you do need to be patient with the course as it stretches for 20 weeks. I suggest you just follow the formula laid out by the course step-by-step. Just make sure you learn and understand one method and then implement it for one week, one at a time. There is no need to be rush really, because building a continual stream of traffic that converts well does need some time. You’ve got to do it right from the beginning so that you don’t waste your time building up useless or untargeted traffic that can not convert. That’s why I urge you to just follow the flow or instructions outlined by the Easy Traffic Steps course.Conclusion:Easy Traffic Steps is a very well organized traffic generation course. This course can benefit anyone who has a website or blog and want to know how to generate more traffic and more sales the right way.However, perhaps one unpleasant thing about this product is the fact that it stretches out for 20 weeks (that’s about 5 months). I know it’s kind of long…. but trust me on this…. if you stick with the course, you could have save time in the log run. Many people spend years trying to generate traffic to their sites by going through the trial and error methods. But, most still FAIL to get traffic that converts well.Hope you find my review and some of the advices useful. Good Luck in driving lots of traffic to your website. Thanks for reading.Easy Traffic Steps Worth $1,300 Plus!Order this course at Easy Traffic Steps Bonus Page and receive all our high-quality bonuses worth over $1,300. We believe these bonuses will help you achieve your online business success more quickly. They complement very well with the Easy Traffic Steps course. Check them out now before we remove the bonuses!
You can visit the official Easy Traffic Steps site here. You can also visit our blog for more Internet Marketing Product Reviews. We also share lots of free tips on how to build a successful online business like market research, product research, site building, traffic generation and monetization methods.
November 7, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
You may have a fantastic business model, a stunning website, and an incredible product, but you will not find success for your Internet business without business advertising. You need customers to make money. With an Internet business, traffic equals customers and the best way to achieve traffic is with some simple business advertising. When undertaking some Internet business advertising, consider the following tactics that offer you free ways to ensure plenty of qualified traffic visits your business website.
Article Marketing
An effective form of free business advertising, article marketing only costs you the time it takes you to write articles and submit them to free article directories, like Ezine Articles. Make sure you read the article submission requirements for each article directory because they vary. Some directories allow you to include affiliate links in your author signature, while others only allow direct links to your website.
When writing articles, make sure you focus them around a keyword phrase that is relevant to your business so Internet searchers can easily find your article. When people read the article online, they will be more inclined to click the link you provide if the keyword is focused, repeated several times throughout the article, and relevant to your website.
Do not overstuff your articles with keywords as most readers will find this annoying, leading them to click away from your article without reading it entirely. Make sure your articles are informative and teach something to the reader. Good, well written, educational, and keyword focused articles will bring plenty of visitors to your website.
Forum Marketing
Another popular form of free Internet business advertising is forum marketing. To participate in forum marketing, simply find forums in similar topics to your website and post questions then answer the questions of others. Include a link to your website in your signature line.
Make sure you post legitimate questions and answer the questions of others effectively. Do not use forums to post an advertisement for your website. Keep your website in the signature line and put forth valuable keyword phrase focused information in forums. After all, most people come to a forum to ask a question because they need a problem solved. If you post relevant, helpful information, you will definitely receive visitors to your website.
Blogging
The third form of free Internet business advertising is starting your own blog. You can start a blog for free by going to Blogger or WordPress. A blog allows you to post links to your website or affiliate program along with providing information, funny stories, product reviews, and more to your readers. Blogs allow you to build a long list of readers who will grow to trust your opinion and enjoy your writing. As with keyword articles and forum postings, make sure you include keyword phrases in your blog posts along with a signature link to your main website or affiliate program.
While it may take a little time to take advantage of these free Internet business advertising tactics, it is well worth it in the end. Make time every day to accomplish at least one type of free Internet business advertising and your website will quickly be on its way to success.
Cory Blanchette and his associates have specialized in online ventures. They have also tested many programs and have written reviews on these programs that are being sold on the internet.
http://www.theofficialhomebusinessguide.com
November 4, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Traffic generation is the key to an online business success. No Traffic means No Business. You could have the best product, best sales letter in the world but if no one knows about it sales are going to be very low. Bottom line is getting traffic is crucial.
Traffic generation are the marketing techniques you apply to generating leads for your business and building a massive database which overtime will convert into customers. There are off line and online marketing methods.
For the purpose of this article I will cover predominantly online methods for you to get started but there are hundreds of different techniques you can use to get traffic to your business.
Traffic generation or lead generation for any business tyically requires a cost which is significantly higher cost than getting a customer to buy more products from you, therefore, it is very important to great conversion strategies and retention strategies in place once your business is up and running so you can improve your bottom line.
Today technology is advanced and to many people often a daunting task and for that very reason may stop people from investing into Internet Marketing strategies to help increase sales. If this is the case I would do one of two things. First, I would look to employ someone who specialises in traffic generation. There are people out there today who do this as a full time job. Pay the professionals. Second, I would look to invest some time and money into self education. Alternatively, look towards a mentor or a coach to help you achieve your desired outcome.
Traffic Generation Techniques
There are 100s of ways to generate traffic to your site ranging from offline to online traffic. Some techniques will have a significant cost, others will be FREE, for example, saying to someone at a party here is my business card go and have a look at my site. So open your mind, you may focus on a couple of different methods to start with and then branch out with some more advanced strategies later after you have developed your skills and mastered some of the traffic generation techniques.
Here are a few to kick start your business
Low to No Cost Methods
1. Tell a friend
As mentioned above you surely have a few friends that may be interested. You obviously have a friendship so you may not want to do a hard sell but why dont you just say, I have just joined this program online, it is a way I am looking at making a bit of extra cash if you want to have a look here is the address. Then they can make there mind up yourself. You will probably already have a few people in mind that would most likely jump at the concept.
2. E-Mail
You can send out a group e-mail to all your friends, if they are not interested kindly just ask them to send it on to people that may be interested. If you are advanced you could look into setting up an auto responder. The system has an auto responder working on your behalf to convert your leads, however, we have personally introduced our own auto responder to improve our relationship with our leads to convert to m1 consultants or upgrading consultants from m1 to m3. The other value of our auto responder is we are going to provide valuable e-mails to help all consultants in our team build their business.
3. Social Networking Groups
Groups such as myspace, facebook, youtube are great ways you can sell your product. There are groups on social networking sites that you can join yourself; you can set up a page and just network with people. I joined facebook and had a number of people I had not spoken to in years find me, some of them were actually people that are interested in what I am doing now and have invested money into some business mentoring, and purchased products. You will be surprised at the power of these mediums to generate traffic to your site.
4. Buy a Baby Name Book
This is out there thinking but by going through the names in the book it my spark a thought of someone you know with that name that you can contact and direct them to your site. While not a traditional method, it is cost effective and certainly a way to spark your memory on someones name and then contact them and try to get them to look at your site.
5. Blogging
Blogging is probably a more advanced strategy but it can be free by joining wordpress.com, or blogger.com and setting up a blog post which is effectively an online diary.
This certainly helps drive traffic to your site, it helps build rapport with your customers and creates a connection. Blogging also helps with search engine optimisation.
Some other advanced blogging strategies including
a)Commenting on other peoples blogs and adding your URL on their blog
b)Submit your blog to directories. Directories such as Digg.com and Decicious.com have heaps of traffic.
c)List your products in your blog rolls
d)Google Adsense (listed below)
e)Product reviews with a resource box at the end of the review
f)Give your blog content for other people to use
6. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is the process of ranking your website in the free part of Google or other search engines. Google looks at the code of each website and ranks your site based on a number of features. It is obviously important to get as close to the top as possible because that increases your chances of making a sale or having people click onto your website. The first thing Google looks at is the title tag at the top of the page and the last thing is the bottom right hand of the page. It is known as the first and last principle. You want to have the same keyword at the top and bottom of the page. Some other key features that help with page rank include page title, meta description tag, meta key word tag. This is a simplified look at SEO and can be effected by a number of off page strategies also but if you at least do the basics you will improve your chances of generating some more traffic.
7. Google Ad Words
Google Ad Words is effectively paying for your leads. You put an ad up and when people click on the ad it will cost you money. It can be costly if you do not have any idea on what you are doing. My advice is only start exploring this avenue once you are either generating sales and have some cash to invest in marketing strategies or are very savvy in this area. In saying all that it is a great way to build a database and make some sales once you understand how to do it properly.
8. Zango
Very similar to setting up a Google ad words campaign. It is an online media company that gives people free access to games, videos and other online entertainment. In return for the free content they agree to view targeted advertising.
9 eBay
There are over 270 million people on eBay holding a credit card in their hands. Therefore, for any business in the world I would suggest if you want to get an online presence and do not understand Internet Marketing have an eBay business and set up your store. You can not directly direct traffic from eBay however there are a number of people that creatively send traffic from their eBay business to their Internet business.
10. Google Ad Sense
You can advertise on other peoples websites and blogs and it is a pay per click method. Internet Marketers advertise their products on their own websites because it increases sales significantly.
11. Articles
You can submit articles to article submission websites. Great examples of article submission websites include articlemarketer.com and you can direct the traffic to a specific site. With article submission the subject line is crucial. Like Google adwords and Zango you need to use great key words in your subject line that you think people would put in the search section of Google to find your product. Another important thing to understand with articles is that you only want to advertise at the end of the article and in particular in the authors resource box. Have great content in the article and then they will want to buy your product at the end of the article and then from the authors resource box send them to a forced opt-in page. On the forced opt in offer a free report, newsletter or some form of free gift and then once they have opted into your page have a sales letter with the product. In this instance you drive your traffic to your site and once people opt into your page you will have an auto responder set up to convert your leads.
12. Create products to give away
Another traffic generation technique is to create products. You could write an eBook, create a video or audio and with your product you could promote throughout the product. One method is create a product and give the resale rights to your product. You advertise at the start of the product and the end of the product and maybe with a footer at the bottom of the page. You give people the rights to sell your eBook and keep all the money and the trade off is you can get traffic and branding. That is a win win situation.
13. Hiring someone to drive the traffic
If you are not technically minded, or are not interested in self-education I would strongly recommend you pay someone to drive the traffic to the site. There are plenty of people you can pay to do it for you. Obviously, you would want to budget for this and like any business you need to have a budget for marketing, your budget is set up for outsourcing traffic generation.
14. Affiliate marketing
Save the best for last
Regarded as the greatest way to market your product is by affiliate marketing and giving people commissions for making a sale on your behalf.
These techniques will certainly improve your ability to make a sale and generate sales for you business. As suggested, improve your self help knowledge on traffic generation because once you know how to drive traffic to a site you certainly have significant power in generating more sales and profit for your business. Once again you can have the best product and the best sales letter in the world but if you can not drive traffic to the site you do not have a business.
Craig Schulze is a creator of health, wealth and living the ultimate lifestyle. For a home based passive income opportunity make sure you visit passive income opportunity visit http://www.mymdtcashcow.com
November 3, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Traffic is the soul to any online business, including the recent trend, the blogs. If you imagine it this way:
You have a business in a mall. Customers find information about your business through coupons. Customers come to the mall and go into your business. They look around and decide if they should purchase or not.
The concept is the same with any online business.
You have a website. Visitors (traffic) find information about your website through advertisements. Visitors search on search engines, find your website and click to your website. They look around and decide if they should purchase or not.
If you compare two together:
Online Business vs. Offline Business
Traffic = Customers
Online Ads = Coupons
Search Engines = Mall
Website = Storefront
No traffic to a website is the same as no customers coming into the mall.
No traffic / No Customers = No Sales in both cases.
Blog-driven websites are becoming more and more popular. If you have a blog, pay attention to the tips below: (not in particular order)
1. Choosing the right platform, domain, and internal tagging (categories)
CMS (short for Content Management System) is a computer application used to create, edit, manage, and publish content in a consistently organized fasion. A Blog is a CMS application. The right blog software can make a huge difference. If you use blogger or wordpress templates, make sure they are designed with search engine optimized in mind.
Domain should be carefully thought through before going for it. A domain is not just an URL. A domain represents your brand! It should be unique and easy for people to mention to each other. Don’t make it too hard to pronounce. Ideally a domain should have the most important keyword about your business in it, and it should be no longer than 20 characters. You should also always aim for dotcom domains first, simply because “dotcom” is more well known compared to dotnet, dotorg…etc.
Proper internal tagging is very important for both search engines and users. Internal tagging enables search engines to better crawl the various content within your website. Internal tagging also allows users to navigate your website a lot easier, as they can just choose and display certain categories of their interest.
2. Write Title Tags and Content with both Search Engine and Visitors in mind
Search Engine is all about relevancy. The more targeted keywords you have in your content the higher you will rank in search engine results for these targeted keywords. Title tags and content should have your targeted keywords in them. The more the better, but avoid spamming. This is why you should also write with visitors in mind. If you mention too much of the same words, it’s actually quite annoying. Write with honesty and provide quality content to the best of your ability.
3. Proper bolding and underlying
Your writing has to please your readers. Don’t make your font too small to read. Use proper bolding and underlying to help readers read more efficiently.
4. Use more than just Text
This is self-explanatory. You will see popular blogs or websites make good use of graphics, audios, and videos, just to remove the boredom of plain text.
5. Pay attention to your site stats and focus on topics that’s popular and needs attention
If you pay attention to the traffic logs of your site, you will be able to tell which posts and topics that your audiences like the best. If you find posts and topics that draw the most traffic, they are probably what people are looking for. If you focus on these topics you will be fulfilling people’s needs, thus, increasing your readership and building your authority in these topics. Of course if would be even better if these topics lie around your targeted keywords.
6. Invite Guest Bloggers / Posts
It’s a good practice to invite guest bloggers to post on your blogs. This will improve the variety of the content on your site. Of course, these guest posts should be relevant to your site.
7. Implement Search Feature
I can’t tell you how important the search box feature is to a website, especially for blogs with hundreds of archived posts. These archived posts may still be valuable to your visitors. By implementing a search feature on your website you are connecting related content with respect to your visitors’ demands / needs.
8. Participate in Social Media, Forums, Blogs and Article Directories
Most social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, can allow you to automatically update content to your profile with your blog’s RSS / Atom feeds. These Social Media, if used properly, can bring you tremendous amount of traffic.
Participating in forums and blogs related to your niche will help building up your authority and your voice in your niche. Not only that, you will also get backlinks to your website if you have your website URL in your signature. Also, a lot of people on these forums and blogs will click on your signature URL out of curiosity. Same effects can be achieved with submitting articles to article directories.
9. Include Keywords in your Links
A lot of people only include their direct website URLs in their links. This is a simple mistake that most people make which dramatically reduces the quality of their backlinks. As previously mentioned, search engines are all about relevancy. The quality of a backlink depends on the relevancy between the linking text of the backlink, the title and the content of the website. If your website is about travel (targeted keyword), make sure the keyword “travel” is mentioned in the linking text.
10. Building your Brand
Your brand is like the purpose of your blog. Your readers share the same purpose as you and their loyalty are built based on their level of comfort with your brand. Sticking to your brand is very important as you will be consistently building up your authority and voice within your brand, your community. Your readers follow your brand, and you want loyal, quality, and focused readers.
You can, of course, diversify your website but it takes a lot more work and dedication to build up authority in multiple areas. It also takes a lot of work from the search engine optimization point of view since the relevancy of all the content on your website dramatically changes.
If you already have a solid readers to your existing brand, introducing a completely new subject can be off putting for them.
Aaron Lee
Business Growth Strategist
The Entrepreneur Journey of a Business Minder
